UNBOXING GOTH: THE WORK OF SUBCULTURAL REPRODUCTION AND COMMODIFICATION

This thesis uses a mixed critical/qualitative approach to understand how goth subculture is constructed and commodified in goth nightclubs and on YouTube. The framework is guided by Bourdieu’s theories of cultural production and social capital, critiques of digital labor, and scholarship on subcultures. I investigate how the mainstreaming of a subculture through media and fashion is negotiated by self-identified participants in the subculture. In the critical-cultural section, I analyze clothing haul videos from three popular goth YouTubers (It’s Black Friday, Toxic Tears, and Angela Benedict). As cultural mediators, they perform subcultural capital for a wider audience that includes a mix of newcomers, old timers, and the simply curious. Each account presents a different model for translating among subcultural, social, economic, and symbolic capital. Although they all perform digital labor, they differentially prioritize and communicate typical aspects of goth identity. For the qualitative portion, I conducted ten semi-structured interviews with active participants of the Southern California goth club scene. I uncovered how the participants negotiated their identity performance off- and on- line. Commodification and consumerism play a significant role in the way identity is created and maintained in online spaces, and less so offline. In the final chapter, I integrate critical and qualitative findings. Together, these findings illuminate contradictions between the work of digital labor that translates among different forms of capital and the work of subcultural reproduction, or performing, educating, and modeling tacit and implicit values. This thesis contributes to scholarship on subcultures, labor, and digital media.