Finding Emo
What do you do when your eldest daughter (she’s 15) comes up to you and says that she is “Emo”?
Well, I better clarify this, she didn’t just come out and say it. She was outed by her sister. Then there was the highly delicate task of delving into the secretive world of the female teenager. The myriad of questions: What does it matter? Why do you want to know? And so on. Frustrating stuff.
Why does it matter? Well, any parent with half an eye on the media over the last couple of months would know about the tragic suicide pact involving Melbourne teenagers, Jodie Gater and Stephanie Gestier. They identified themselves as Emo, a brooding subculture supposedly obsessed with suicide. Jodie and Stephanie got themselves caught up in a spiral of depressive thoughts and introspection. Their world was falling apart because their close knit group of friends was in danger of breaking up. They even created a MySpace site to publicize their plight. And when talk of suicide surfaced, everyone thought it was just that, talk.
Finding the means to fulfill their pact, via “How To” instructions to suicide on the Internet (and no, I am not going to provide a link), it then became, I believe, a matter of honor. With both of them involved, it was difficult for either to back out and maintain face and that culminated in their deaths in April. Their young lives prematurely ended and the media spotlight sharply focused on the dangers of both the Internet and the Emo subculture. The parents of both girls had no inkling of the tragedy that would snatch away the lives of the their daughters and ruin their own.
So, it is not surprising that my first reaction about my daughter’s revelation was one of shock and horror.
Then I took a deep breath and gave her the third degree. I did what parents should do and that is talk to their teenage children instead of allowing them to shut themselves away in their rooms under the guise of giving them space or independence. I also did a bit of research on the Internet.
When I did so, I felt relieved. Look, a teenager is a bubbling mass of barely contained emotions and hormones. They are susceptible to peer pressure. They are learning about the bigger concepts in life: love, sex, death, politics, work. The media pumps out messages of hate and despair (so for starters you can limit their exposure to the nightly news bulletin – that will cheer them up no end. It works for me!). It is natural to want to know more about such things and the problem occurs when they turn to their peers for answers.
So what is Emo? I won’t go into it in detail, you can use Wikipedia for that. Basically it is a genre of music derived from the hardcore punk scene in the US and has its own ideas, fashions and mannerisms. It really is no different from the Mods, Skinheads and Hippies of the 1960s; Punk and Disco in the 1970s; New Romantics, Hardcore and Goth of the 1980s; and so on. Just a phase that teenage kids go through. A means of rebelling against their seemingly daggy old-fashioned parents. A way of expressing their individuality – even if that very act of expression means labeling themselves the same way that a lot of their peers do (“Yes, we are all different” – a la Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian’ – a huge film when I was going through my teenage years)
I don’t think there is anything inherently evil about Emo. In any teenage group or music subculture, you will always find someone who wants to do something stupid. Be that breaking the law or, in extreme cases, a wish to make a personal statement and martyr themselves for their cause. How many kids followed the path of Kurt Cobain? Or killed themselves after the deaths of Elvis Presley or Jimi Hendrix? This is not something new. I read somewhere that kids were emulating the protagonist of Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther” when it was published – in 1774! Suicide and copycat suicide are nothing new.
Emo is characterized by some awful and depressing music. Green Day and Evanescence, and a stack of others that I’ve never even heard of. But I don’t think that is going to prompt people to take their own lives (unless they want to avoid listening to this rubbish – yes, I am getting old). I admire the music of Pink Floyd, music that one critic once labeled as “music to slash your wrists to”, but that hasn’t driven me to suicide.
I guess the message here is: talk to your kids. Talk to them about the important stuff in life and teach them to laugh. Listen. Get involved in their lives. You can do this without infringing too much on their personal space and let them know you love them and care about them. Treat them as adults, but don’t be afraid to put your foot down. At the end of the day, you are the parent. They might think your rules, ideas, whole way of thinking is rubbish, but you need to remember that they don’t have the life experience yet to make sense of it all. As Mark Twain once said: “When I was 15 I ran away from home because my Father was the dumbest man I’d ever met. I didn’t see him again for ten years, and was amazed at just how much smarter he’d gotten while I was away”.
Kids are kids and I’m sure that they will look back on their music in 20 or 30 years and be embarrassed by what is in their collection (as I was with that ill-fated purchase of the self-titled Flock of Seagulls album – here is a link to their only hit “I Ran”. Enjoy!).
