Our man Sheridan is angry again. Apparently, some Wokies claim that the Goth subculture is "cultural appropriation" because it´s vaguely Egyptophiliac and since the ancient Egyptians were Black or colored...well, you get the point. I think Sheridan himself was into "post-punk" in his insufficiently misspent youth, hence his reaction here. I also asked ChatGPT about the Goth scene and its alleged connection to (ancient) Egypt...
Is the so-called Goth subculture to some extent based on ancient Egyptian culture as depicted in Hollywood movies and so on?
That’s a fascinating and perceptive question — and yes, there is a real (if indirect) link between the Gothic subculture and the Hollywood–Egyptian aesthetic, though not in a simple historical or genealogical sense. It’s more about shared symbols, moods, and imagery that entered Western pop culture through 19th–20th century art and film.
Let’s unpack it clearly:
🖤 1. Origins of the Gothic Aesthetic
The Goth subculture that emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s — around post-punk bands like Bauhaus, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and The Cure — drew mainly from:
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Victorian mourning culture (black lace, death imagery)
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Romanticism and Decadence (Byron, Poe, Baudelaire)
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Gothic fiction (e.g. Dracula, Frankenstein)
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German Expressionist film (Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari)
However, the visual and mystical side of Goth also absorbed a broader occult–Egyptian–esoteric imagery that had already been circulating for a century.
🏺 2. Egyptian Revivalism and Occult Symbolism
Starting in the 19th century, after Napoleon’s campaigns and the decipherment of hieroglyphs, Egyptomania swept Europe. Ancient Egyptian motifs — ankhs, pyramids, mummies, scarabs, eye symbols — became associated with:
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Death and the afterlife
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Mystery and immortality
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Secret knowledge (occultism, Hermeticism)
Groups like the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and later Aleister Crowley’s Thelema explicitly incorporated Egyptian deities (Horus, Nuit, etc.) into Western esotericism. These symbols filtered into art deco, cinema, and popular occultism — and eventually, into the visual lexicon of Goth.
🎥 3. Hollywood’s Role
Hollywood reinforced this link between Egypt and the “darkly romantic”:
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The Mummy (1932) with Boris Karloff established the mystical–erotic–deathly Egyptian archetype.
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Egyptian imagery (tombs, amulets, eyes, mummies) became shorthand for death, magic, and eternity.
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These visuals reappeared in music videos, fashion, and album art by later Gothic and darkwave bands — often via the Art Deco revival of the 1980s.
So while Goths didn’t take their cues directly from Pharaonic religion, they inherited an Egyptianized visual language from 20th-century Western media — which had already mythologized Egypt as the “cradle of ancient mystery and death.”
⚰️ 4. Examples in Goth Culture
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The ankh — Egyptian symbol of life — became a Goth and vampire subculture emblem (notably through The Hunger [1983] with David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve).
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Egyptian motifs appear in the fashion of artists like Siouxsie Sioux (black kohl eyeliner inspired by Egyptian art) and in darkwave album covers.
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Occult rock and Gothic literature sometimes merge Egyptian and Christian funerary motifs — both expressing fascination with the threshold between life and death.
🔮 5. In Summary
| Influence Source | Contribution to Goth |
|---|---|
| Victorian Gothic | Death imagery, mourning, melancholy |
| Romanticism | Emotional intensity, the sublime |
| Egyptomania / Hollywood Egypt | Mystique of death, eternal life, esoteric aesthetics |
| Occult revival | Symbolism (ankhs, eyes, tombs) and ritual imagery |
| Post-punk art | Stylized darkness and theatrical identity |
So, to your point:
→ The Goth subculture isn’t “based on” ancient Egyptian culture itself,
but it absorbed Egypt’s cinematic and occult reinterpretations — the version filtered through Western romanticism, 1930s Hollywood, and the occult revival.
Egypt thus became part of Goth’s shared symbolic vocabulary of death, beauty, and mystery — one of several mythic sources (alongside medieval, Christian, and Romantic ones).
Would you like me to trace how The Mummy (1932) and The Hunger (1983) specifically shaped Egyptian aesthetics in the Goth scene? Those two films are key bridges between Egyptomania and Gothic style.
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