Should we be scared of emo? The Daily Mail says so. After the suicide
of the 13-year-old emo schoolgirl Hannah Bond, who hanged herself in her
bedroom in Essex last September, a series of headlines have screamed: “Why
no child is safe from the sinister cult of emo”, while accusing the American
emo band My Chemical Romance of encouraging suicide. Across Latin America
it’s even worse. Emo kids are subject to violent attacks, prejudice and
media abuse. This gloomy, gothic teenage rock cult, which began 20 years ago
in America, has never been so controversial.
Emo emerged in the late 1980s as a more expressive offshoot of the Washington
DC hardcore scene with bands such as Rites of Spring and Rain. The term
stands for “emotional hardcore” – punk with a broken heart. Since then the
term has become a catch-all, covering stadium emo acts, such as My Chemical
Romance, and the poppier end of the spectrum such as Fall Out Boy and Jimmy
Eat World. Its appeal is particularly strong for sensitive teenagers as it
has the kind of morbid appeal that in the early 1980s gave potency to bands
such as Joy Division and, later on, to the goth movement.
The look is a sort of glam gothic: heavy mascara, for boys and girls, floppy,
dark fringes with a chunk dyed a brighter colour, black skinny jeans. In
Britain and America, emo is mainly popular with middle-class teenagers. In
the rest of the world, as its popularity spreads, it’s a different story.
British fans of My Chemical Romance are outraged with The Daily Mail’s
coverage. Tomorrow, up to 300 of them will meet in Hyde Park and then
demonstrate outside the paper’s London offices, handing out leaflets. The
protest is being coordinated by 16-year-old Anni Smith via the very
professionally produced websites www.projektinterlude.com
and www.whatthefrank.co.uk.
“The Daily Mail say My Chemical Romance are a suicide cult. Which
isn’t true at all,” she says. “I don’t want to pass judgement on Hannah’s
death. But My Chemical Romance is an easy target.” She points to the
statement that the band issued on their website: “We have recently learnt of
the suicide and tragic loss of Hannah Bond,” it read. “My Chemical Romance
are and always have been vocally antiviolence and antisuicide. As a band, we
have always made it one of our missions through our actions to provide
comfort, support, and solace to our fans.”
The band’s UK record company, Warners, denies any connection with the protest.
But it certainly won’t hurt sales of their forthcoming CD/DVD, The
Black Parade is Dead, featuring footage from shows in New Jersey and
Mexico City.
Coincidentally, Mexico is one country that has recently experienced a wave of
antiemo attacks. The emo cult is growing throughout Latin America, and its
followers are regularly subjected to abuse, prejudice and even violent
attack. They are seen as homosexual, antisocial poseurs, weird and
fanatical. In March antiemo attacks swept through Mexico.
On March 7 a mob of 800 in the city of Queretaro went looking for emos to beat
up. On March 15, a silent march against the attacks, organised by a gay
rights group, was staged in the same city.
In Chile there are reports of skin-heads attacking emo kids. In São Paulo,
Brazil, emo teenagers report regular attacks, especially in the city’s
poorer Eastern suburbs. In Lima, Peru, a gang of anarchist punks recently
attacked emos, kidnapping one who was kicked and punched before he was
rescued.
For South American emos, the appeal is more about identity, means of
expression, and style. Especially for those in the continent’s enormous
urban sprawls, where the increasing economic boom means that families have
internet and cable television but where there are few outlets for
increasingly sophisticated teenage youth.
This is clear in the shabby, nondescript Galeria Brasil in Lima, situated on
the edge of the city’s drab, grimy, suburban sprawl. It’s one of Peru’s most
famous destinations for rock fans. But this grubby concrete mall, with its
CD and T-shirt shops, looks like a Hackney tower block. Teenagers idle out
their afternoons playing out-of-date video games for 25p an hour. Looking
around, it’s easy to see why a cult about teenage identity and isolation
might spread so quickly.
Jimmy Carrillo, a Peruvian TV reporter, profiled emos recently. “The emo
movement is very strong here in Lima,” he says. “It’s a new movement. It’s
very colourful, weird, very estranged from other movements.” Emo is gaining
ground in poorer, transitional barrios such as Villa El Salvador and Los
Olivos, where people are open to the influence of American rock and MTV. But
the prejudice against the perceived homosexuality of emos runs deep. “This
is a very macho country. So homosexuality is taboo,” Carrillo says. Anarcho
punks particularly hate them. “They hate homosexuals. And they look at the
emos as people who stole ideas and music. It’s a double punch.”
Junior Medina, 20, is a singer in Lima’s hottest emo band Ediana. “We are
called gays, queers, pussies, faggots,” he says. “The lyrics are one cause,
because they are romantic, about heartbreak.” Their followers are accused of
being poseurs. “Emos are more concerned about the way they look,” Medina
says, fiddling with his floppy fringe.
Yet Latin American emos are fighting back. In March Medina took part in a
studio debate for the Peruvian TV chat show Enemigos Intimos, in
which emos were heavily satirised. “That was fake,” he says. Realising some
of the other emo participants were imposters, he waited until 1am, and
filmed two of the vacant emo teenagers – actually channel employees –
leaving work. Medina posted the video on YouTube. The national newspaper El
Comercio ran an exposé and the show’s producers were forced to
apologise.
“Emo isn’t emotional, it’s just queer,” is a popular saying among fashionable
youth in Brazil’s most style-conscious city, São Paulo. When the cult hit
the city in 2006, homemade “comedy” videos appeared on YouTube showing how
to lynch an emo.
The assumption among many Brazilians is that emos are gay, unsociable, and
self-centred – none of which goes down well in this conservative, sociable
country. Victor Sousa, 20, is a former emo and he encountered plenty of
prejudice, he says. “The homosexual prejudice is unfair. People say that,
but it isn’t true for everyone.”
Typical of emo’s critics is Ligia Terceira, 30, a salesperson in Shopping
Tatuapé, a vast, hectic mall in Zona Leste, São Paulo, where many emos
gather and where many are attacked. “Many of them look like homosexuals,” he
says. “It seems they don’t like people. They exclude themselves from
society. They have closed minds; they’re radical and fanatical.”
Being gay is less of a problem in São Paulo’s cosmopolitan centre, which
recently staged its giant gay parade. In the suburbs, it is. In Brazil, as
in much of Latin America, emo provides an ambivalent zone where gay or
straight but sensitive teenagers can go without being judged.
In Brazil things are moving fast. A new, upmarket emo cult called From UK is
now popular with teenage girls. It has a more glamorous look, also called
“emo de luxo”. From UK adopts British gothic teenage styles – labels such as
Miss Kitty, white Converse, lots of eyeliner. It’s hugely popular on MySpace
and orkut – the Brazilian networking site – where you need a “nick” (or
nickname) and the right look to be accepted.
On a late Saturday afternoon in Buenos Aires, the sun is fading on the leafy
Praca Rodriguez Peña, but the square is buzzing with teenage wildlife.
Crowds of black-clad alternative youths gather to hang out, smoke and glower
at each other. One gangly teenager has a piece of paper pinned to his back
that reads: “Give me a hug”. To the outsider, these teenagers look like one
tribe, with their floppy fringes and baggy black clothes. But these
Argentine tribes – gothics, “alternativos”, punks – have just one thing in
common: they don’t like emos.
“Everybody has problems,” sniffs one gothic youth with a ring through the
middle of his nostrils, a black shirt, and black painted eyes. “If you can
face your problems, you’re a man. If you can’t, you’re a marecón
[gay].”
We eventually find some teenagers prepared to admit that they are emos.
Emanuel Alvarez, 17, skinny and sensitive-looking, is from the rough
neighbourhood of La Matanza. “There’s no one like me who lives there,” he
says. He gestures around the square. “Here, we know we will find people like
us. That’s why we come.” His friend Maria Belen Spelanz, 17, shows off her
best emo pout. “Some emos believe that when they die they go to a place
called the Black Parade, a place like purgatory,” she says. “But the ones
that cut themselves are not emos. It’s a cry for attention.”
Which, despite what The Daily Mail would have us believe, is what emo
is really about. The suicide of Hannah Bond is an isolated tragedy. And the
media has always sought to sensationalise the darker side of rock music,
from “Satanist” heavy metal to Joy Division.
In our evermore interconnected global village teenagers have increasing
problems with isolation and alienation, but thanks to the internet they come
together to talk about it and, yes, dramatise it. Emo is not the cause, it’s
just a symptom.
And for many it’s just a means of expression, another teenage pose.
“It has to do with the dress and the fashion,” Maria insists, tossing her
hair. “We like the music because it expresses what we are feeling,” adds her
friend. “But in Argentina, the emo thing is more aesthetic. We don’t believe
in the Black Parade.”
In Britain, Anni Smith agrees. “It’s a beautiful story. But I don’t believe
I’m going to go to the Black Parade when I die, I can say that for sure.”
