Author: Brett Fujioka
When I was working my summer job at a family fun center, I couldn’t help feeling disturbed when I saw what looked like a pre-teen boy dressed as an emo kid. He didn’t even look old enough to wear correctional eyewear, but nonetheless, he sported a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. His clothes were inappropriately tight and I wondered what kind of mother would allow her child to wear Converses that ratty. Something wasn’t right with this picture. Maybe it was the kid’s age, but he looked ridiculous.
What’s equally ridiculous is when concerned parents and others involved in academia refer to emo as a cult, burgeoning culture, subculture or movement. It’s not a cult. Just because a group encourages revealing one’s “battle scars” (self-inflicted wounds) and praises the prospect of death, it doesn’t make it a cult. With this in mind, the Samurais would be the most hard-core cultists of them all. Emo is far from being manly enough to level itself alongside bushido. People labeling it as such are simply out of touch with the times. They have no idea how big of a joke it is.
Furthermore, it isn’t a movement. Don’t be absurd. Even though it’s penetrated virtually every crevice in today’s mainstream culture, it hasn’t produced anything worthwhile. The only similarity it bears to any movement is that it’s reactionary. Traces of emo music came into the mainstream before the Bush administration was even worth hating. Society had nothing meaningful to rile itself up about, so it turned inward.
Another reason why emo suddenly rose was due to the escalating prescription of anti-depressants. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of patients out there who are clinically depressed. At the same time, though, there are also people looking for a quick fix to their problems and refuse to cope with them on their own. Just like emo, they’re running away from their problems, one song at a time.
Don’t even call it a genre. Screeching about heartbreak, unrequited love and your conformist parents is too vague. Singing about nothing but that-now that’s just pathetic. Everyone has had his or her heart broken. Every single person at one point in his or her life liked or even loved someone who wouldn’t return the gesture. No one has ever fully gotten along with their parents at some point in their lives. What’s different is that emo music sings nothing but that. They are incapable of expressing any variety whatsoever even if their lugubrious, miserable lives counted on it.
No, emo isn’t any of these things. Do you know what it is? As clichéd as it sounds, it’s nothing but a trend. It’s a really stupid, idiotic trend that people imitate in order to feel deep.How did this become a trend? Think about some of the central stereotypes that surround emo kids. They write clichéd poetry on their livejournals and whore their photos on myspace. With the advent of the Internet, emo kids have a chance to seek out the attention they so desperately seek.
Labeling it as a trend isn’t novel, but so far I haven’t heard anyone offer a rational solution for eliminating it. Trends die out quickly, but almost everyone wants this one to perish soon. What I say is this: ignore it. Plain and simple, all we have to do is pretend that it doesn’t exist. Stop flaming emo kids online. For all we know, much like their ritualistic self-mutilation, they probably get pleasure from the humiliation. Bashing on the fashion of the ’80s didn’t make it fade away. Deeming it as a temporary flux of the decade gave it the time to fade out of existence like every ephemeral fad in the past.
As much as I hate to admit it, someday we may even miss emo. As embarrassing as it is, this trend is representative of our decade. People once ridiculed the neon colors and baggy pants of the ’80s. Ten years from now, instead of cringing, we’ll look at Toby Maguire’s hair in Spider-Man 3 and feel slight twinge of nostalgia.
Reminiscing fondly of emo-now that’s depressing. I feel like tacos.
Brett Fujioka is a junior ECLS major. He can be reached at bfujioka@oxy.edu
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