FOR WHOM 'THE BELLS' TOLL

The strange thing about the history of the gothic movement in Britain is that this generally neglected and often forgotten cultural current has roots which go back centuries, crossing paths with other movements and art forms, many of which are long lost, misrepresented, or misunderstood. The role of gothic theatre in the formation of modern goth culture is one such example.

The second wave of British gothic culture effectively began with the first production of 'The Bells', at the Lyceum in London, in 1871. This single production was a key event in both the renaissance and eventual respectability of British theatre, but also indirectly laid the basis of twentieth century gothic. The fact that it is generally ignored these days, then, is a curious and unfortunate development.

'The Bells', a translation by Leopold Lewis of the 1867 play 'Le Juif Polonais (The Polish Jew)' by Erckmann-Chatrian, was first performed by Henry Irving in that production. Irving had taken over management of a failing Lyceum earlier that year. Irving, a renowned 'actor-manager' who took keen (some may say overbearing) interest in the running of the theatre and set the artistic direction of the productions, each of which would invariably star himself, was a huge star in the theatrical world at the time – but even he had his work cut out in turning around the fortunes of the Lyceum. There were many empty stalls when 'The Bells' made its debut. So the huge success of the production was, then, extremely timely.

The play itself deals with a fairly simple gothic trope: a wannabe Silesian Burgermeister who owns a tavern who kills a passing Jewish trader for his money, only to tormented by his guilt in the form of the sleigh bells of his victim. The ingredients of the play – cursed ambition, petit-bourgeois avarice, guilt, madness, and not a little anti-Semitism – were standard fare. But what was more unusual was the powerhouse, barnstormingly visceral performance that Irving's production gave. The histrionic, hammy performance by the Old Man was so electrifyingly emotive that it provided all the thrills and chills that a Victorian theatrical audience were craving; the third act of the production was essentially a showcase for Irving's singularly egomaniacial vision. It was, as Garth Marenghi would say, “raw, balls-to-the-wall horror”, and it was a smash hit. It ran for a spectacular 150 nights.

This production had a number of repercussions. It had the result of making Irving's career, and taking British theatre a massive step forward towards respectability; Irving would later become the first actor to be Knighted. It also rekindled the Victorian appetite for the macabre, and with it the next generation of gothic.

But probably most importantly it provided the basis for the figure that would dominate that next gothic wave. Irving's theatrical manager was one Bram Stoker, who would become so enamoured with the visceral performances Irving gave that he intended his new character – one Count Dracula - to be performed by him. Indeed, the first ever stage performance of 'Dracula' was a dramatised reading on stage at the Lyceum – and the description of the Count in Stoker's original novel, with his grey hair and 'aqualine nose', bears an obvious to the Old Man himself.

Where is that legacy now? Well, in one of those curiously self-defeating things that characterise the goth movement the Lyceum, after being derelict and then a bingo hall, is now showcasing 'the Lion King' on a daily basis whilst we were busy trying to get 200 bands in a small field in the midlands. Irving died at the Midland Hotel in Bradford, just a few miles from Goth City, although this fact in itself has also been largely ignored. 'The Bells' today is just a footnote in the backstory of modern goth.

But that's not important to dwell on at this time. What is important is to remember that ham pays, that audacity pays off, and that things begin. All the time, they begin.

Merry Christmas, gothics!

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ENOUGH TO WAKE THE LIVING

OK, stop that. Whatever you're doing. Yes, that. Stop whatever it is your doing, and what's this.

In the balmy summer of 1954 the prime time variety showcase of American comedian Red Skelton boasted three special guest stars in a spooky, elongated skit. Lon Chaney Jr, firmly established as one of the few bonafide US horror stars of the post-war era and still a much-loved celebrity; Vampira, at that point still the macabre host of a horror showcase TV show; and Bela Lugosi, his career at an all-time low, struggling to resurrect his career. As a slice of timeless gothica, it is irreplaceable, uncanny, and perfect.

Beginning with a scene of Lugosi watching the start of the show on a small television, it moves on to the then-standard format of a corporate sponsor introducing the show (in this case, Geritol). Announcing that Red Skelton will be starring in 'Dial B For Brush', it sets off into an opening gag where Skelton is offered a job as a door-to-door brush salesman on wages of $12 a week, with $15 a week deductions (“Sure I'll take it, I need the money!”) and sent on the worst sales job purely to get him out of the picture.

Cut to a spooky castle laboratory, and Lugosi in lab coat singing jollily as he sharpens his tools. Examining the sleeping girl on the slab, he laments “They don't make gurls like dis anymooor!”. The wolfman (his 'half brother/half wolf') is Chaney, gurning comically through oversized teeth. Mistreated, he's keen to make it up to Dr Lugosi - “Didn't I get your lunch from the blood bank?”. Lugosi explains his plan to place a 'new, unused brain' into the body of a robot, to unlock the secrets of the universe.

Skelton arrives at the door, and is promptly mailed by Chaney. “This is going to be an easy sale!”, he yelps cheerily. As they are sizing him up the slab appears again, the woman screaming unprompted. “Don't ad lib, kid – you're among stars!” Determined to make the sale, Skelton exclaims “I never say die!”, to which Lugosi and Chaney reply in unison “...but we do!”. Drugged, Skelton falls unconscious, Lugosi dances and sings “It's so peeeecceful in de graaaveyaaard!”, and part one of the skit is over.

The second part begins with dancing skeletons, which look quite impressive even today, before Skeleton awakes in a graveyard with Lugosi and Chaney. “Where am I? Pasadena?” Then, stage left, enters Lugosi's 'half-sister' Vampira who instantly lets rip a characteristic shriek. Spotting some new blood in the water in the form of Skelton, she invites him to call her 'after he's dead'. Skelton is unconvinced by her advances - “This is a physical impossibility” (we've all been there). Subsequently hypnotised by Vampira, Skelton is taken to the lab in the graveyard.

After the transformation, Skelton behaves less like a wise god but as a small child – cue much corpsing (no pun intended!) amongst the cast. Lugosi implores him – “Give me the information! I must have the information!”, and when he can't hear Skelton's reply Lugosi looks confused, misses his line, and everyone corpses again. Skelton chases them around the lab, amidst many groans and wails, and Vampira emerges from a slab in the wall to exclaim “Be quiet! You're making enough noise to wake the living!” And then, stage right, enters Geritol-man again to bring proceedings to a close.

It's frenetic 20 minutes of chaos, chills, and sheer joy. Not only are the characters smiling as they perform their macabre work, but the actors are too – it's a wonderful slice of spooky from the golden age of American gothic, and after watching it this terrifying world doesn't seem so bad.

So, yes. Stop whatever it is you're doing, and watch this. After all, it's so peaceful in the graveyard...

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SHADES OF HELL

When does horror become horrific? This a question that has been on my mind recently. When do the conceptual, primal horrors of the word and the film become the kind of horror that actually keeps us awake at night?

The culture of terror has always been concerned with the demons of our subconscious, or their manifestations in modern society. So when we talk about monsters, we are actually talking about science, and passions, and fear, rather than actual beasts. A dragon itself isn't as terrifying as the emotions and projections behind it. The witch, the wizard, the ogre, the ghost, the dungeon; these are all expressions of other ideas. By expressing them we exorcise our own negativities, either by catharsis or by turning them into thrills, chills, or laughter.

The horror is the horror; but it is not horrific. The horrific relates to the real pain of real people the actual movements of power and experience that render us powerless. We can all probably recount many examples of the horrific from our own lives, where the reality of pain and suffering makes the memory hard to withstand. These horrors are not entertainment; they are sobering, disorientating, and without comfort.

Furthermore, there is an increasing amount of the horrific in the world today. From the separation of families, the uncovering of abuse on a massive scale, the rise of extremist street violence, and the election of authoritarian misrulers the world over, we are seeing an invasion of the horrific into the world on a massive scale. Fear of disorder, oppression, violence are filtering through into the collective subconscious of society. What can Pennywise or Jason Vorhees do that Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro would not?

It is no wonder, then, that Halloween, that evening of escapism and the macabre, has turned into a month-long festival of spooky: as the horrific grows, horror becomes all the more important. As the real world becomes more and more horrific, the exorcism of our personal demons becomes the preferable alternative to misery. And often, a pretend hell is preferable to a hell on earth.

So, get carving those pumpkins; practice your hexes; and sharpen your scythes. We may be needing the cast our own spells soon enough. And, Happy Halloween!

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HEADING OUT TO SEA...

One of the things which people constantly remark upon in the scene is the lack of venues or a circuit to sustain extensive goth gigs in the UK The days of club tours from lowly and middling goth acts are, it is accepted, long gone.

And it is true that many of the old venues that sustained the scene in the dark days of the '90s have long gone. The Clarendon in London, Jilly's in Manchester, Rios in Bradford, the Duchess in Leeds, as well as a slew of smaller local venues, have all long gone. As have most of the cellar pits and attic belfrys that housed the background 'masses' before. Now most cities have larger venues housing the touring old guard, but increasingly little on the lower rungs.

The larger gigs represent the high tide of the scene, where thousands of people cluster to see the likes of The Mission, or Kiling Joke, or the Nephilim; but very little of these thousands go to their local club or see smaller acts on the scene. So at the lower levels of the scene there are smaller audiences to see bands and sustain live music on a national scale. Indeed, outside of a few key clubs which combine live music with the dance floor, there are few venues that can provide a platform for goth acts to perform – and especially not as part of a planned series of gigs.

It is with great satisfaction, then, that I have returned from one of the rarest of things – a goth tour of the UK Taking in Manchester, Lancaster, Sheffield, York, Newcastle, London and Leeds, the 'Gothism' tour by my act Byronic Sex & Exile was an exercise in that strange and most wonderful experience – actually performing music. And I'm happy to say from what I've observed that the scene – from Manchester's industrial heritage to York's historic streets to Camden's dive bars – is in good health. People still come out to watch live music and apply gratuitous amounts of eyeliner. And if that's in smaller numbers than before, then so be it – goths scare easily, but they'll be back, and in greater numbers.

The real thrill of touring is the transient existence of travelling, passing through towns and cities, finding yourself in a strange cafe or bar in the afternoon and remembering that you're performing again that night – the chance to adapt and change and clear your mind afresh to apply your creativity. It is out there, on the journey between one gig and the next, that the process of creativity starts again.

But the real take-home message from the tour has to be: that a full UK goth tour is still possible.

So: what can we do with that knowledge? We shall see...

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ZEPPELIN OVER BRAY, or HAMMER OF THE GODS

Of all the missed opportunities in the history of popular culture, all the overlooked chances to create something wonderful and special and uncanny, some are more glaring than others. Kraftwerk declining to produce Bowie in his heyday is one of them: what would the Düsseldorf Beatles have done with the cold, methodical chaos of the Thin White Duke? What stratospheric heights would the career of Patricia Morrison have reached if she had been cast in the Vampira reboot, rather than the gig being given to Elvira herself? How would Bela Lugosi's career have risen if he hadn't turned down the part in the original Universal vision of 'Frankenstein'? And what would have become of the creative partnership between Tim Burton and Vincent Price had it not been for the passing of the latter – would they have formed a trio of terror with Johnny Depp to rival that of any in the history of cinema?

These glimpses are even more frustrating when we note the opportunities that were taken, that never should have been. Instead, we got Tom Jones fronting New Model Army; street-punk darlings the Angelic Upstarts going synthpop; the abomination a glam-rock Celtic Frost; a whole movie of Kiss and their robot counterparts fighting a script even dumber than they are; and a Dracula-kung fu mash-up that took kitsch to whole new heights, and the Hammer legacy to new depths. Indeed, Hammer took more of these lamentably-unmissed opportunities than anyone else. Which makes one of the true overlooked creative collaborations even more disappointing...

Led Zeppelin, the undisputed behemoths of '70s rock and the one act on the planet with the most notorious and undisputed links to the occult, found one of the most ostentatious and horrific bases for their late-decade rehearsals – that of Bray Studios, long-time home of Hammer Productions and location for the shooting of an entire raft of Gothic horror classics. So for a brief, glorious period the fortunes of the bastions of heavy diabolic rock and the bastions of Gothic horror cinema overlapped.

This, my dear readers, is a synergy to relish. You can imagine 'Black Dog' blasting down the corridors as the ghosts of Dracula, Victor Frankenstein and Captain Kronos dance to the beat. What possible collaboration could have taken place? Well, one could imagine Bonzo as a grave-robbing extra, or a bearded Jimmy Page as the mysterious wanderer that he had always saw himself being, John Paul Jones as a creepy church organist in a Transylvanian hamlet, or even Robert Plant as the blonde bombshell lead in one of their raunchier sex-horror romps. But even better would have been an attempt to marry the genuine esoteric resources of the band – from Boleskin House to their rich repertoire of thrilling shockers – to the belated attempt by Hammer to update their material to meet the demands of the modern horror era. Could Zeppelin have soundtracked, or starred in, an Exorcist-inspired biopic of a fictional group of Satanic-inspired rockers? Could they have given much-needed credibility to the mid-'70s output of a studio desperately trying to meet the challenge of the new tastes of horror cinema?

We will, however, never know. By the time Led Zeppelin were having their last rehearsal at Bray in 1980 Hammer were already in receivership, and it was then that tragedy struck as John Bonham died following a day with Zeppelin at the former home of UK horror. Even this, though, suggests much else – what are we to make of the grim climax of the 'Zeppelin curse' arriving at such an auspicious location? What a rich potential seam of chills could be explored at the place where the cursed band and the cursed studio meet?

That is a place we have yet to visit, and a time that we have lost for good. Unless someone were to open a portal – to a time when 'No Quarter' echoed through the Berkshire night, and magic began to happen...

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THE GOTHIC IDEOLOGY

Anyway, enough ersatz commentary. Let's have some more ersatz commentary!

It's easy, amongst the blood feuds and boycotts and the wall-to-wall saturation of 'alt.chixxxx', to forget where the pulse of the gothic movement is. Often it seems we are trapped in a perpetual cycle of self-deprecation, flatulence and failure. For every great record or triumphant piece of art there are many more slices of casual sexism, cheap sensationalism, and an Alt-Fest. But surely, beneath the velvet coat of the gothic facade, there is something else going on?

Beginning with the roots of the gothic revival with 'The Castle of Otranto' and the explosion of gothic literature it inspired, the gothic has always wrestled with the legacy of the enlightenment and its position in a confusing, newly industrialised world. Its origins were confused, combining a contrived classicism with an extravagantly aristocratic bearing. But what was it trying to get at?

First, what was at the heart of gothic culture was an opposition to the tyranny of irrationality and unaccountable power. From the hooded torturers of the inquisition to the living death of the nunnery, to the despots of remote castles or even the uncontrollable forces of science itself, the gothic pitches the forces of reason against the 'old' forces of dictatorial, patriarchal power. The protagonists in gothic fiction find themselves as the force of a liberal, modern mentality in a world that is archaic, barbaric and medieval in its mentality. Crucially, it is the democratic rights of women, children, and the poor which the gothic advances as they struggle against these (literal) 'dark forces'.

Second, what is evident from the application of gothic principles into reality is the extent to which these principles were put in practice. From Bryon's speech in the Lords in favour of the Luddites and his activism in Greece, to de Sade's role as a section head in the French Republic who refuse to sign a single death warrant, to the socialism of the Shellys, these principles of social radicalism and political progress were the leitmotif of a movement which described a terrible monstrosity in theory, but expounded a principled enlightenment in practice. The horrors of the gothic were not the expression of a morbid, nihilistic irrationality, but quite the reverse.

And the third, lastly, was the breaking of social taboos in areas around liberties in sexual behaviour and political rights. The libertines of gothic fiction, whether exotic princes or villainous Byronic nobles or even undead Transylvanian aristocrats, practice a philosophical and liberating nihilism which rises above (or at least rails against) the established social behaviours of bourgeois society. However, and crucially, the gothic doesn't use this to propose the kind of irrational horrors that we subsequently witnessed in the twentieth century but is instead an expression of the sexual rights and political ideas that we fought to win, and are still fighting to defend, today.

So this is the ideological framework that the gothic movement works within: modern, liberal, progressive, but invoking the irrational as an expression of our personal and political horrors. It is this which we need to move to maintain, and to build upon. It won't do to fall down the same trap door of conspiracy theories, intolerance, prejudice and oppression which were the very conditions which the gothic rebelled against. It won't suffice to allow our own feelings of elitism to separate us from the impulses which the gothic movement represents.

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THE FALL OF VERSAILLES

Needless to say, I did not expect my column from last month to be quite so prescient...

To be so spectacularly dramatically outgunned by reality has come as a great surprise to your humble scribe, unaccustomed as I am to events and happenings of any description. I'm therefore going to have to raise my lyrical game a notch to fully capture the tension of the current hour.

So, let us discuss the political and cultural legacy of Versailles, the orgiastic epicentre of royal power that orbited around the pernicious and mercurial moods of the Sun King. The small hamlet outside Paris became the prison of ambition and scandalous decadence for three entire generations of French nobles, a terrain created for the simple purpose of holding the political class of the nation - whether powerful, talented, mediocre or inept – to ransom, miles away from their family and estate strongholds and dependant upon the grace and favour bestowed by the Bourbon dynasty. One minute you were the lord of a large manor in the country, the next you found yourself applying His Majesty's cuff links for him as your first court act of the day. Your connections meant nothing when you found yourself competing for a place diagonal to the King at dinner.

Stranded in the sticks, members of the court sunk into a morass of drink, sex, debauchery, drugs, parties, gambling, witchcraft and war. Careers rose and fell on the unpredictable whims of the Louis', former favourites were exiled to nunneries and Spain, nations rose and fell, and the people gradually fell into poverty and despair. The nation sunk into debt, as even the victories of the state turned out to be ruinously expensive. And eventually it ended - suddenly, spectacularly, bloodily.

What can we learn from this? That there are limits to autocratic power; that ultimately the creditors take control; and that every party has to end sometime. But the original concept of Versailles – as corrupt, mismanaged, inhumane and disastrous a waste of human talent, effort and life as it turned out to be – did still have the seed of an idea of an ordered, balanced and enlightened utopia of human endeavour. Could Versailles have lasted longer if it was better run, more accountable, more democratic? Is there a way of having power and fun at that same time, and keeping them both?

Of course, we would need to have power – and fun – to find that out.

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DEATH, OR JOY!

The average follower of the dark alternative subculture and its adherents would be forgiven for believing that the scene has taken on a strangely Machiavellian dimension. Everything from the booking of acts to the scheduling of events is imbued with a political subtext which is often merely a skilfully subtle (or not so subtle) expression of opposition; and the body count – not to say the lack-of-body count – is starting to pile up.

In fact, there is more to this comparison that we might think. The UK goth scene is increasingly resembling the warring city-states of Renaissance Italy, locked in a constantly destructive battle for supremacy. Some of these states are republics, others are hereditary monarchies, but all are constantly eyeing up the chance to form alliances or seize territory at anothers' expense. Everyone is wondering how they can claim Scunthorpe, or take Norwich into their sphere of influence. Clashes of events become de facto declarations of gothic war. Flock with the enemies of others and you may soon find a beheaded Pokemon in bed beside you. Friendships and alliances must be chosen carefully, and power blocks bolstered and maintained, all exercised through the power of social media. Plus, also like Renaissance Italy, everyone is drunk – so it all gets deadly (and hilarious) very quickly.

For the nobility who engage in this there is a great hidden cost – that the vendetta is endless, exhausting, and ultimately self-defeating. You can land, you can expand, you can spin a complex web of political intrigue, but a simple 'costing error' and you are wiped out. Every Cesare Borgia, carving up a kingdom of their own with each battle and conquest, can find their empire collapse with the withdrawal of the key support of others; power is tenuous, and gothic power even more so. Overstretch, and you lose everything; fail to grow, however, and you also fail – for, in this 'game of goths', you either win or you die.

But, obviously, that is not the case. Although maintaining the purity of our social circle and the ethics of our music policy are important, we are all still part of the same scene, drinking from the same trough, ploughing the same gloomy furrow. Our musical taste is still, collectively, terrible. We need centres of unity, participants who resist the Balkanisation of the scene and bring people together in a joint subcultural endeavour. The fight is only part of the fun – the real joy is to play. And to do that requires a determination to have a good time – a commitment to rise above the crap and see the world for what is is.

So don't let the drama grind you down, and resist the factional forces of feck. Or, as Cesare himself would say - “Make your choice: death, or joy!”

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THE CROSSROADS

Founding myths have a very useful purpose. Whether it is that of Romulus and Remus' bitter feud that led to the founding of Rome, or the discovery of Hungary from the pursuit of a magical stag, or even King Arthur and his ideas of honour and chivalry, these myths act as a kind of signature watermark of the societies they are linked to and tell us how they view themselves. Societies born in struggle, nations founded on wandering and travel, cities created in industry and competition – these are the mirror-images that reflect how we wish to see ourselves. And they don't have to be dramatic, or spectacular – even the absence of an event can lead cultures and people to believe that they created themselves by pluck and effort alone (after all, every time someone refers to themselves as a 'self-made man' this is always a pure giveaway that they have created their own myth of virtue and 'grit'). But most of all they are the beginning of a narrative, because without an origin and without events, you don't have anything at all.

Rock music, being based as it is on arcane energy and ritual, also has a founding myth: it is the myth that roots rock music in the Delta, and the moment when Robert Johnson met the devil at the crossroads. At this midnight rendezvous a deal was reportedly struck between the unknown, young blues guitarist and the fallen angel whereby the former sold his soul in exchange for ungodly talent and fame. As a result Johnson went on a blistering creative run, creating a repertoire of tracks that would form the basis for the modern blues and rock; it also cursed him to a tragic, and early, death.

As with other founding myths this is a story that conflates truth and fallacy. Yes, there was a Robert Johnson in the Delta at that time (and we have the recordings to prove it), and there is a metaphorical or symbolic devil in popular culture and in our personal imaginations, but there was no meeting at the crossroads and there was no deal with the devil. Johnson himself did not gain any particular success or notoriety during his lifetime and to some extent remains as obscure and disregarded in the blues' homelands in the south as he is revered elsewhere, to the extent that when writer Elijah Wald went to the Delta to research his own book on the man he was surprised to find that none of the blues-loving inhabitants had heard of him. What was important about this myth is not what it did for Johnson himself (in reality, very little) but what it implanted in the consciousness of rock culture and its view of itself – that there was an element of darkness, an edge of devilry, at the heart of it.

This sense of insurgency is what subsequently defined rock music at its best, just as much as its absence defined rock at its worse; and it also provided a method by which members of the general masses could gain fame and notoriety beyond anything that was previously possible. Rock music created a route for anyone to gain international fame on an unprecedented scale. These are the trace elements that the deal at the crossroads left in the collective unconsciousness of popular culture.

But there is something else essentially liberating about the myth – for the crossroads is a place of choice, opportunity, and possibility. At the centre of the crossroads your position is purely neutral; you are free at that moment to go in any direction. The roads are clear, straight, and pure. These roads are the pathways of our own creativity; they represent the opening of our own internal horizons. And it is this neutrality that represents a calm centre, the eye of our own personal storm.

So, how do we get back to the crossroads? To that moment of clarity and possibility? The answer is simple – close your eyes, imagine the sun on your back and the sky empty blue above you, and you're already there.

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TRANSYLVANIA BLUE

If - as they say - in order to gain inspiration you need to return to the source, then your humble scribe has been on a twilight mission to meet his muse. Yes, I'm pleased to report I have just returned from a brief stay in Transylvania – that region of modern-day Romania that has been a cornerstone of the modern gothic imagination since Jonathan Harker first arrived in Klausenburg (latterday Cluj-Napoca) on his way to Castle Dracula. So, what can you perceive about Goth from a high vantage point under Carpathian skies?
Obviously, the first thing to bear in mind is that it is nothing as you might expect – or at least it isn't if you're expecting a twee Hallmark card of dark romance. The industrial devastation, with miles of factories, warehouses and scrapyards, the suburbs of single-floor detached huts and the grinding post-communist poverty of much of the countryside clearly demonstrated that this was not an expedition to be taken lightly. A cheap holiday in other people's misery this was not, and Transylvania does not exist for the amusement of the casual (OK, not-so-casual) goth tourist from West Yorkshire.
So, the context was real enough. But there were still moments of real magic that hinted at the depths of the delights the land beyond the forest could offer; the long, slow descent of the plane over the Carpathians, the flock of ravens sat on the runway when the plane touched down at Cluj (I almost expected them to start speaking to each other, like some vampiric '80s children's cartoon), the magical night falling over the gothic architecture of the Piața Unirii and it's magnificent statue of King Corvinus, and the no-platform station in the tiny Carpathian town of Reghin as the IR1646 locomotive trod its way through the Transylvania countryside towards Bucharest. It may not have been what you might have expected, but then it just as often very much was.
But what was explicitly Goth in the realm of the vampire? Actually, rather a lot. Cluj was relatively laid back about the Dracula connection, but even they sold Dracula merchandise next to their Hungarian fridge magnets in the shadow of King Corvinus, Transylvania branding everywhere, with a knowing wink. Hotel Castle Dracula, with it's passport stamps, branded carpets, pseudo-masonry and authentic courtyard is a simply fantastic venue, yet it's merchandise game was somewhat subdued. Bran Castle (forget the tenuous nature of the Dracula connection) is a perfect attraction, a home to a professional installation of goth culture and modern accessories but also surrounded by a chaotic morass of amateur vamp-merch that sustains an entire town. There's Bucharest, which goes for Vlad in a big way, and where every souvenir store pushes the link between Romania and the gothic, and there's Bucharest airport with the biggest and most innovative collection of Dracula merch and booze I have ever seen. Transylvania certainly gives Whitby, Camden and Leeds a run for their money in the goth industry stakes (no pun intended). 

Yet probably the most inspiring aspect of the region was that which was authentic, and fresh: that of the chaos, the palinka, the conflicted vampire pride, the indifference and the darkness swirling together in mutual anarchy. Under Transylvanian skies you can feel far away yet still beneath the soil, and there is still the authentically gothic too – in the deep cravasses of the countryside, the lightless valleys of the Borgo Pass, and the timeless streets of Cluj and Brasov. It was the beat of a darker kind of drum.
It is easy to get sucked into vaguebooking, scene drama and bad festivals as our sole access to the gothic, but it is always worth going off the beaten track – like a Harker adventuring on a journey into goth itself – to keep your perspective fresh. There is always much to be said for the classic, if you can view it through clear, Carpathian eyes.

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ABSOLUTE DAMNATION

Well, we all knew it had to happen eventually. With a 40^th anniversary behind them and ten years since their last album, something – anything – had to happen sometime to break the creative impasse. And so, here we are – the Damned have a new album, and a new line-up. Finally!

Of course, few of the acts created from the white heat of punk have had a history quite so convoluted as the Damned. This was an act that after scoring the first UK punk single, the first UK punk album and the first UK punk tour of the USA began to splinter almost immediately, achieving the minor feat of reforming a mere 3 years after their debut and without their main songwriter. Since then there have been a revolving door of bassists, a fistful of guitarists, a dozen record labels, several hits, reformations, splits, farewell tours, lawsuits, punch-ups and assorted farces all of which combine to make the Damned as tenuous a history as any hammy vampire franchise. They may be reduced to dust by sunlight one minute, then with a splurge of bat vomit they are back the next. The Damned ultimately became an almost reassuring benchmark for volatility, always likely to stir up trouble or eject a new record when least expected.

All that changed over the past 20 years. Since the departure of Damned drummer and de-facto boss Rat Scabies in 1996 and the return of erstwhile guitarist and former pop star Captain Sensible the band eventually settled into something approaching stability; a new album in 2001 ('Grave Disorder'), then a new album in 2008 ('So, Who's Paranoid?'), lots of touring, no major bust-ups or rows, and the longest-serving line-up the band have ever had. But stability was never the Damned's M.O – what were the band going to do next? Were they going to do anything at all? As the band appeared to be on an endless cycle of tour-festival-tour, and with no material on their setlist that saw daylight after 1986, it appeared that stability was beginning to mean stasis.

Until, that is, their 40^th anniversary extravaganza at the Albert Hall in 2016 finally saw the band 'believe the impossible' once more, with their biggest and most ambitious gig in decades. The result, an unqualified triumph, was the spark which lit the lightbulb over the bands collective head. Could the band make a new album? Could the band capitalise on their legacy and re-energised fanbase?

And last year we finally got the answer. Out went longtime bassist Stu West, in came Damned alumni Paul Gray who had graced their most creative period; in came Tony Visconti as producer; in came a new record label and a Pledge campaign to fund the album; and off the band went to New York (yes, really) to cut a record. Cue the release of the first new Damned song in a decade, 'Standing on the Edge of Tomorrow', a swirling piece of '60s pop-psychedelia which even came with an actual music video, and a full UK tour ahead of a new album 'Evil Spirits'. All of which, we have to admit, was Damned unlikely even just a couple of years ago.

So, you know the drill. Grab a brandy, get your finest cloak on and feast yourselves on what promises to an increasingly rare experience – a new Damned album and Damned tour. And with the band in fine form it promises to be an experience not to be missed, or possibly even repeated.

This could be the last time, after all....

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RESURRECTIONS

Right you lot, that's enough moping. Lift up your faces and get with the frelling programme. There's only so much sour, dirty reality we can stand before we realise that dreams – BIG, STUPID, GLORIOUS DREAMS – are infinitely preferable.

Let's look at where we are in our own backyard. The 'goth is dead' brigade have been ramming home their remarkably dour message of doom for so long that many of us have almost begun to believe it. 'Oh, that? Old hat. Yesterday's helmet. We don't do that anymore – we're post-dark-indie-alternative-wave. We wear polo shirts and everything!' And as for our old communities, our covenants made in blood and snakebite & black, they have long since been broken. 'Oh, those bastards – we haven't spoken in years. Wouldn't cross the street to piss on them if they were on fire, mate. May they go to a different, crapper hell that I will!' The sweet sugar rush of our shared dream has become the shared stale trough of our collective nightmare, circling the drain of disappointment until someone turns off the light and puts on their Coldplay mixtape.

But, by Vanian's stripe, it doesn't have to be like this. We are participants in the most gloriously panoramic, passionate, multi-faceted cultural enterprise in history. Whether that has been for the past 40 years, or 80 years, or 300 years, or even longer (where were you we sacked Rome?) the Gothic has blazed a velvet trail across the world. And you want to sit on your throne and quit? Never. Snap out of it, Vlad – it's never gonna happen. Or, rather, it's never gonna not happen.

All we need are the following ingredients.

First, spirit. Get in the mood. Remember why you're in this. Purge your bad memories, the rows, the breakups, the hangovers, the crap gigs, the empty clubs, and commune with this spirit of countercultural glamour. What is it all about? It's about schlock and awe, my friends. Schlock. And. Awe.

Second, enthusiasm. Stop incessantly slagging things off  like you're addicted to the negative buzz of the whingeflower. In fact, if you stopped defining yourself in criticising things then you might begin to grow – after all, there is much to be found in most anything creative if you're open to it. That crap band you saw the other week? Dial down your bile a notch and can you at least imagine what their appeal is? Do they have something to say? Are you willing to view their art from their perspective? Do you have the good grace to admit that maybe, just maybe, they have might something? Stop taking everything so seriously. You never know – you might even have fun!

Third, imagination. We don't just take meaning and content from art and events as consumers, we give them meaning by what we put into them. Everything that has lasted, from Whitby Gothic Weekend to the Mobile Gothic Infantry to Real Gothic FC to the Otley Run and beyond, all began with an idea that someone had either from scratch or by riffing on something else. You can enhance and embellish any experience by what you put it into it. And we have so much to choose from – literature, music, fashion, humour, food, drink, art, architecture – that we can't complain about being bored. We make ourselves bored by not being creative with our own experiences.

And finally, participation. This isn't a plea to 'support the sceeeeeeene' as that's akin to making cultural participation a chore, on a par with putting the bins out or doing the dishes. Rather, this is about joining in - getting on board for the great times, the fun, the joy to come. Let's breathe life into what we have all created, let's give it wings so we can have the truly great times back again.

So, see you in Whitby, Reading, Bradford, Leicester, York, Leeds, London and everywhere else.

Goth is dead – long live Goth!

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MORE FIRE

It's probably not surprising that after such a torrid a year as 2017, and with political ineptitude, weaponised ignorance and institutionalised inequality rampant, that December feels gloomier and more bitingly bleak than ever. Associated as the month is with the festive blow-out of Christmas few of us are really in the mood for debt, social obligation or bad decisions.

Indeed, as the sheer amount of information, media, opinion and discord increases exponentially ever year it becomes almost impossible to ignore let alone stomach the plastic and manipulative sentimentality of the season. After all, it is very hard to believe in a season of good will where the John Lewis Christmas advert cost £1 million to make and £6 to promote, and where Virgin Health can successfully sue the NHS during its worst winter funding shortage in decades. In 2017 it feels that, collectively, we are not in the mood.

So maybe it is time to return to the source of the matter. As has been continuously asserted before the Christian festival of Christmas owes both its date and most of its traditions to those of the winter solstice and its associated festivals. The point of those festivals was to celebrate the beginning of the end of the winter, the return of the sun, and the end of the 'famine months' of darkness and want. And the form those festivals took was an excess of drink, food, merriment, dancing and warmth – often centred around the blazing symbol of the fire. These were the origins of the winter fire festival, of the kind that is making a gradual comeback today.

The fire, then, is the key. Bringer of warmth and light, shining in the depth of the winter, almost like a sun that is summoned to appear in our (literal) darkest hour. It also stimulates growth, provides the warmth needed to cook and to thaw cold bodies. It also has other connotations. For example, the Jamaican concept of 'more fire' refers to the cleansing, purging energy of fire and flame that burns away negativity. Similarly, the Romanian term for music played with gusto – 'cu foc' (literally 'more fire') – correlates the fire with passion. Fire has an essential viscerality, especially in the depths of winter, that represents renewal, rebirth, passion and cleansing anger.

It is that spirit, the spirit of a Saturnalian excess and of the beginnings of the new, which are the real roots of the festive spirit. Everything else – sharing, giving, celebrating, reaching out to the less fortunate – stem from this. In this way a basic bonfire has more genuine joy than a thousand Moz the Monsters.

So if the grinding, abrasive weight of the winter starts getting you down this Christmas then simply refocus on the real energy of the season – that of survival, celebration, and hope for the Christmas.

Have a great solstice everyone, and a happy new year.

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ABSOLUTISM, TYRANNY, TRANSYLVANIA

There are several distinct modes of political system under which the gothic in fiction and popular culture operates. They act as a kind of backdrop onto which the tales that explore themes of the suppressed, transgressive and inhumane can be projected. But this do not simply act as a stage for tropes, but they also feed into the form and content of gothic culture.

The most prominent political mode in gothic literature and film is that of the 19^th century, central/east-European model of absolutist monarchy. It is the Europe of the nobility, peasantry, princes, Burgermeisters and priests – effectively, that of the Habsburgs. It is a vast realm, full of ungoverned spaces punctuated by small pockets of arbitrary and brutal autocracy; for every peasant farmhouse or hamlet there was a dungeon, jail or fortress. The Emperor acts as a kind of absentee landlord, generally disinterested in the events of much of the nation and especially of the peripheral wastelands and spaces in which 'gothic' events take place. This is the political backdrop to which nearly all of the main gothic texts and their numerous celluloid offspring takes place.

Another mode, albeit less prominent, is that of the war-torn province. The actual real-life history of the Balkans and of Transylvania between and even during the wars features many eerie intrusions of the gothic into political life, from the psychodramatic theatrics of the Iron Guard fascists in Romania including their strange pseudo-vampiric blood rituals to the blood tests carried out on Transylvania peasants by the occupying Hungarian troops; and this prototype mode of mob rule, violent disorder and tyranny is another staple of the gothic. The tumults of the wars fed directly into the work of James Whale, the acting of Ingrid Pitt and Christopher Lee, and the renewed fascination with the horrors of technology and mortality that became vivid in the televisual age.

The mode that was until recently most prevalent in popular culture was that of the gothic of totalitarianism; during the era of the cold war the image of the darkened depths of a divided Europe, from beneath the Berlin Wall to the edges of the Carpathians, was a form of gothic that resonated a kind of real-time political dread. With this came the related fears of nuclear war, espionage, and political dictatorship. The shadow of the police state hung over all gothic terrain, and where it was not the decadence of a West Berlin took on nihilistic and desperate tones, and the neo-vampiric rule of Ceausescu represented a political nightmare that was all too real.

And finally there is the current political mode of the gothic – that of the playground, the nightclub, the holiday, the big city, of adventures in a crumbling old and rising new world. The postmodern escapades of the 'Underworld', 'Blade', 'Hellraiser' and 'Saw' series are all in this tradition of the contextless, modern rampage.

The interplay between political context and the gothic is always linked to the conflict between monolithic absolutism, in it's various forms, and the struggle of liberal (and modern) forces against it. In effect, that contradiction has had to become more fantastical (even ersatz) as the forces of real tyranny have subsided.

So how can a new political mode be created to fit the struggles of the modern world?

Now, that is an entirely different matter....

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DIODATI & THE BIRTH OF THE GOTHIC

So, where was I? Oh yes – it's winter, the fires are lit, the moon is new, the air is clean with the cold of the season and the darkness of the year grows thicker. The signs in the passing year are clear -

it is the time when the forces in our subconsciousness become vivid, are imagined more forcefully, and are cast onto the blank canvasses of deeper, darker nights.

One of the key elements of this interplay of creativity that becomes externalised as we retreat into our hibernation is that of sharing our stories. Whether by candlelight on Halloween, round the fire on Bonfire Night, or at a seasonal masquerade, carnival, or pantomime. The ritualised aspect of sharing our stories, or pooling our imaginations, is a key part of this process. By mutually indulging our dreams, our imagined demons, we allow our perceptions of reality to shift. We engineer situations that are eerie, are chilling, are atmospheric, so that we can experience reality through a different filter – or, perhaps, no filter at all.

In many ways, the birth of the 'modern' gothic archetypes can be traced back to such an exchange. It was in the summer of 1816 at Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva that three days of incessant rain made it's summertime inhabitants – Shelley and his wife Mary, Lord Byron, and his physician John Polidori – spend their days inside exchanging tales of the macabre and fantastical. It was this shared experience, done in the spirit of collaboration and not a little competition, that led directly to the conception of Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' and indirectly (from Stoker via Byron and Polidori) of 'Dracula' and the romantic conception of the vampire myth.

It is easy to imagine the scene: the log fire, candlelight, incessant rain, thunder, lightning and wine of a night spent in collective creativity. It is equally easy – not to say tempting – to think that any such culturally significant act of genius could be achieved if we had the resources and means to spend a summer at a lakeside mansion in Switzerland.

But such an interpretation misses the point. The core activities of that lakeside meeting were the simple acts of creativity and communication; and as an activity that can be performed more or less anywhere at any time this holds in itself a liberating, democratic act of vocalising our summoned spirits. After all, the emphasis placed on the written rather than the spoken word is not universal; the art of handing down and elaborating tales has fallen out of practice due to the saturation of mass communication, rather than dialogue. Yet although the practice of shared storytelling cannot necessarily translate to any widely understood truths, they can absolutely lead to the uncovering of our innate creativity. As a process, it is a key that unlocks our subconscious – and even more so our shared shadows.

So take some time this winter to spend a night with friends, light a candle, share a glass of wine, and enjoy the process or expressing and imagining our stories. And who knows? Perhaps through that process you can unlock some of the doors in your own mind – and these stories may take on a life all of their own.

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A WIZARD SAYS GOODBYE

So farewell, Black Sabbath. After their latest 'no really this is really the last tour' tour, and the soon to be released 'The End of the End' tour film, it really does appear that Satan laughing has spread his wings one last time. So what did Black Sabbath represent?

They were, of course, one of those three gigantic British acts that essentially set the tone for the whole of hard rock and heavy metal. But like Deep Purple, and very much unlike Led Zeppelin, Sabbath's history was a morass of U-turns, reformations, splits, sackings and fiascos. Zeppelin may have had one line-up throughout their proper existence that made all 8 albums of their studio output, but their fellow rockers were not so lucky. It is indisputably the case however that the original manifestation of the Drab Four made 8 albums in an 8-year period that were blow-by-blow comparable to anything Zeppelin did in the same period, and were at their best a superb example of rock musicianship.

Like all myths, there is a core of reality to the Sabbath legacy. When they transcended their jolly, blues-boom roots just as the flower power dream was turning sour (and Geezer Butler memorably put it, “The revolution had failed, and we all thought....what do we do now?”) and embraced the dark side in all it's emphatically monolithic glory, they became the first to create the link between the blues, doom metal, and Satanism. Black Sabbath were essentially the delivery system by which the sulphur blues of Robert Johnson and it's diabolic legacy was injected into the rock mainstream. Everything else that sprung from that, veering from innovation to cliché and back again, was simply the logical result of the Sabs' own Original Sin. Those first few notes on their debut album set the template that the rest of heavy metal inevitably followed.

The first two albums – their eponymous debut and 'Paranoid' – are simply flawless performances that could not possibly be improved. By their economic, unfussy arrangements, broody atmosphere and bleak worldview they smashed the bullseye twice in twelve months. This was followed by 3 more albums of equally immense impact. So it was in those years of 1970-75 that the band's reputation was really made.

Yet it was the unique element of their particular lyricism that gave the band their signature feel – that of the nihilism, the pessimism, the doom, of their approach and message. In the words of 'Wheels of Confusion', 'Sabbath Bloody Sabbath' and 'Under The Sun' were an almost profound dissatisfaction and bleak apathy that by current standards appears quite postmodern; Sabbath were without any moral framework, noble ideals, or well-defined ideas – they were instead expressing an endless and liberating nothingness. The void.

Well, there was that Sabbath...then there was that Sabbath. As the original four-piece capsized due to Olympic levels of drugs, alcohol, lethargy and organisational incompetence the band went on what is best described as a 20-year psychotropic hellride of fiascos, triumphs, disasters, lawsuits, reunions, splits, sackings, cancellations and betrayal. They were the daytime soap opera of metal. And their morose severity gave way to the schlocky hammy gothy silliness we all love so much – the bats, the Stonehenge sets, skulls, inverted crosses, latex pants, Glenn Hughes, Ian Gillan, and all the tropes you can shake a stick at. There is so much joy to be found in even their naffest moments – and if you don't like the ham in 'Headless Cross' then you must be a pig – but the contrast was nonetheless marked.

And it is strange that the last 20 years failed to add anything to the Sabbath brand, a band that became creatively defunct when the original line-up (kinda) reformed. Perhaps now is a good a time as any to call it quits. After all, the world will still be turning when they're gone.

From the nihilistically sublime to the joyously ridiculous. Black Sabbath.

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SO I CANNOT BE KNOWN?

 

There's always that one guy; bitter, ambitious, charming, yet untrustworthy, unsatisfied, and incapable of realising that the rules apply to him. With an eye for the main chance he is ready to push himself forward at the right time and leave his friends in the dust, breaking every taboo in the process, all with a smirk and a wink.

Yep, there's always a Lestat.

One of the many charms of the movie adaptation of 'Queen of the Damned' is that it lays this tart narrative down flat. There's actually very little of the divine or the profound or the despairing in this version, no furrowed brows and painful eternities, none of plush gothic romance of 'Interview with the Vampire', rather a very simple driving force – one man and his ego.

Lestat is an aristocrat, a nobleman, probably destined for great things in the French society of the absolutist Sun King and undoubtedly a libertine bourgeois of the highest order, yet he is plucked by Marius into obscurity, out of the limelight and into an eternal anonymous gloom. Unable to walk the earth in the light, unable to be a public figure due to the vampiric code, unable to even perform a violin duet on the beach and ultimately deserted by Marius himself, he is left for centuries to stumble along alone trying to find kicks wherever he could find them. No wonder he ultimately decides that the sleep of ages is preferable – rather than 'the prospect of eternity' being unbearable, it's really the prospect of an eternity of boredom that makes Lestat disillusioned. A congenital show-off, dreaming of being a major figure, adoring his reflection yet condemned never to seeing his nor his reflection in others, the lack of external recognition leaves his unstimulated and eventually hollow.

So Lestat ultimately feels denied; denied his rightful place in the world, denied the fame and fortune he was born into, and denied the endless adoration of millions which would pour into the bottomless pit of his ego. His next move – 'a bold move', as he puts it – is simply to call everyone's bluff, go for broke and come (un)clean. His subsequent rise to global hyper-mega-stardom echoes that of every unwordly demigod of rock & roll, from Bowie to Prince to Marilyn Manson (whose voice and influence is everywhere in the film), using every trick in his armoury to become the world's most high-profile vampire. Lestat gets his wish – and he is known, after all.

Of course, in doing so Lestat infuriates everybody; all his peers who he has basically scabbed on and betrayed and sold out, catapulting himself to stardom at their expense (who of them would want to follow him, and be dubbed a 'Lestat Mk2'?), baffling and tantalising the experts and the occultists and Talamascans, and all the while taking his fill of all the 'sex, blood and rock & roll' he can stick his fangs into. Yet even when he is at risk of being dismembered he arranges his biggest public event and goads his attackers on. The consummate diva, he simply cannot help himself – he has to be the centre of attention, even in death. Maybe especially in death.

Even the thrill of being the lover of the greatest vampire of them all in Akasha soon runs sour – not for any primarily moral reasons, but because her plans for a universal apocalypse of all life on earth has no subtlety. Lestat's fear of 'a world of corpses' is simply because there will be no one to see him, and he would be alone – and bored – once again.

So yes, he's a tart. But is that such a bad thing? What is wrong with demanding, or even commanding, the attention? Haven't we all secretly yearned to break the last taboo of our social circle, play the winning card and to the devil with the consequences? Lestat may be a diva, but he's not entirely misguided – like a glam-vamp heretic, a Byronic hero, an old ham making his last bid for glory, he channels the spirit of the whistleblower, the supergrass, the tell-all memoir, and the lead singer's debut solo album. A destructive force, it can nonetheless be creative – what's important is how it's done.

And looking good in a tight top.

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Discourses on Westeros

With the much-anticipated 7^th season of Game of Thrones about to begin it may be an opportune time to review what the events in Westeros have come to represent, and what they mean. What can we learn from the struggle for the Iron Throne and the conflict between the characters and realms it causes?

The first thing to note about the world of the Westerosi is that life is complicated. Politics, not in terms of grand ideologies or narratives of state but in terms of the endless micro-politics of feud, bargain and vendetta, is the real subject of Game of Thrones. With few real differences in worldview or philosophy between the Kingdoms life takes on the nature of an endless battle for supremacy or survival, as the interlocking rivalries constantly revolve and interchange.

This lack of clarity in purpose locks the characters in some kind of omnipresent moral fog. It's striking, especially on repeated viewings, how the characters begin the series nearly all suffering under some kind of misapprehension; all misunderstanding each others motives or keeping some secret so that they are all incapable of seeing each other straight. It's not until later in the series do we even begin to understand what really caused events to unfold as they did. Throughout the narrative characters are unaware of what is being said or done by others at the same time, almost as if a constellation of planets was orbiting as-yet-unseen celestial body.

The actual bread-and-butter of politics in the series deals with the realities of government. Ruling is a complicated business that entails building coalitions of support, a great deal of horsetrading, and no little bloodshed. Without this hegemony and the force to back it up, Kings are vulnerable to be deposed. The Mad King's brutality saw him lose allies until he eventually made a coalition opposing him a political necessity, as well as a reality. Robert Baratheon, despite having no claim to the throne, nonetheless wins it. The Lannisters have to continually align themselves with rival houses to peel off some of the opposing forces against them, but even they slowly alienate their supporters and become isolated. The Houses effectively operate as political parties do, garnering and consolidating their support. The layers of legitimate force are also complicated, with the King, the City and the Houses all having their own separate militia. To survive and rule in this world you have to be flexible, lithe, and probably morally corrupt.

The key exemplars of this realpolitik tend to be the most morally bereft and brutal – Tywin Lannister, Roose Bolton, Walder Frey, Cersei. Those characters who try to self-consciously demonstrate a moral rectitude – Eddard Stark, Jon Snow, Daenerys – all suffer for this to varying degrees and ultimately all have to face the fact that the mathematics of political reality still apply to them. Jon's attempts to effectively ride two horses at the same time, performing the greater good and shoring up his support in the Night's Watch, proves futile. Ned Stark discovers that people are much more complicated than he can imagine, and being a man of honour he can't imagine how complicated they really are.

The key event in the series is actually a depressingly modern event – a (literal) palace coup, at a moment of political crisis caused by King Robert's assassination. As such the Lannisters maintain power through a variety of measures which slowly hollow out the integrity of the institutions of state. Their decreasing circle of power throughout the series is in direct correlation to the amount of arbitrary violence that the Lannisters are prepared to use, most spectacularly being the bombing of the Sept of Baelor at the end of season 6. What else can Cersei do to maintain her grip on power after that? What isn't she prepared to do?

Issues of federalism and independence naturally arise. The North wishes to make it ungovernable but ultimately has to contend itself to being a vassal. Life under occupation or as a neo-colonial client state is brutal and hopeless. Those kingdoms that attempt to maintain their autonomy or neutrality, such as the Vale, simply become embroiled in a greater game. Both independence and neutrality appear to be illusory, as it is practically impossible to prevent outside influence corrupting whatever dreams of nationhood that the Kingdoms may have.

Outside the arena of conflict some attempt to maintain a constant opposition. The wildlings are an obvious example, being marked as literally 'beyond' or 'outside' the political arena and whose inability to submit limits their ability to influence events. The Iron Islands have to contend themselves with a kind of nihilistic doomed rebellion, never able to succeed in making a mark on the world and always prone to bloody and inevitable defeat.

The introduction of a supernatural element in the series presents a method where the oppressed and the outsiders are given a kind of deus ex machina to switch the odds. The dragons, previously the vanguard of Targaryen oppression, become the vanguard for the liberation of the slaves. The Lord of Light gives the Brotherhood Without Banners the power of resurrection, and brings Jon Snow back from the dead. The religion of the slaves has teeth. But when spirituality is used for political ends, either by Cersei or by Stannis, it proves to be both authoritarian and disastrous. The Faceless Men also represent a failed liberation narrative – ostensibly disciples of the religion of the oppressed, now merely a guild of assassins bought by coin and inevitably being used for the advancement of oppressive ends.

The sweep of the story is beginning to take on an emancipatory arc, as the Mother of Dragons & Breaker of Chains returns to Westeros after leaving a trail of liberation in her wake. The idea of a 'white saviour' bringing freedom to black slaves is inherently problematic, although some effort has been made to give the liberated a voice in Daenerys' actions. How will the 'rainbow coalition' of warriors, freed slaves, mercenaries and Greyjoy deserters maintain their unity in their new role as conquerors?

Whether there is any actual development towards democracy or liberation in Westeros is open to conjecture, but one thing is for sure – the world of the Westerosi is bound to stay as Machiavellian as ever.

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