Call them morbid, call them pale, they spend five days out at sail. Goth Cruise, the new documentary showing on IFC's Video on Demand—it will be on the network next year—gives us an unprecedented look at an almost forgotten subculture, all grown up and dying for a vacation.
The film shows that many who grew up goth—black hair, nail polish and clothes, worshipping Skinny Puppy and The Cure—in the 1980s have continued to court the dark side, at least aesthetically, even as they joined the corporate world and bred sad teens of their own. And every year, about 150 of them climb on a boat with 1,500 regs and head to Bermuda.
Goth Cruise documents the fourth instance of this presumable aberration. The irony of goths on a cruise ship—sunshine, fruity cocktails—is largely unexplored in the film, aside from a few cracks in the vein of “SPF 8001.” I guess it was seen as too easy a target. But come on, that’s why we paid the ticket price. It makes sense, though, considering of the film’s overall message. For better or for worse, these goths have lightened up.
Goth Cruise’s creators made do with what they had, for the most part. They give us distinct and developed characters, insightful quotes and pretty photography. Each goth protagonist is documented in his or her home habitat, from Portland, Ore., to St. Marks Place, lending that much more depth to the footage from the cruise. The speaking-to-camera, character-development phase never really ends, though, and I ultimately felt deprived of crucial footage ofAzriel Abyss, the Prince of Sorrow, on deck.
One of the best scenes, for example, takes place in the ship’s hot tub, where doughy squishy creatures of the night luxuriate in the froth. Shots of dandies on the ship’s “formal night,” promenading in capes among the ordinary passengers in their ordinary tuxedos, are also memorable.
Mostly, it’s not the filmmaking but the goths themselves that disappoint; they’re way too positive! They flirt with cheery, some of them do. Sure, they have an industrial dance room, but they also jog on the upper deck and, in one case, sit at a café table and gaze at the horizon. “It’s something I’ve really really needed to do for a long time,” that one lost soul says. The horizon? Really? The horizon symobolizes hope. You should be staring at a rotting fish or something, contemplating pain.
Philosophically, the characters rationalize goth so it works into their suburban lives, turning it into a hobby or a lifestyle. One says it brings her closer to her family. Family? You mean the one thing that you hated more than anything in the whole sick world? Another is shown wiping off his black nail polish so he can go to his office job. “I’m a Christian,” says one lady of darkness, “so a lot of that death and destruction and anarchy and there’s-no-god and all of that … that’s not who I am.”
These goths fail to be the people we want them to be. We want them to disturb us, or at least try. Instead, the white-sneakered, orange-tanned normals on the Goth Cruise seem downright delighted. “Ones that I have seen were always very polite,” says one old lady also on the cruise. “Whatever it is that makes them happy, if they’re respectful, as well as we’re respectful to them, that’s fantastic.”
Granted, some of these super-square takes on goth are the best parts of the movie. The cruise minister proclaims his acceptance of “the heavy tattoos that are worn by them over their bodies.” But mostly the word from Goth Cruise’s norms, despite the protagonists’ boasts against the mainstream, is that these are goths gone soft.
“They’re really nice and they’re very friendly, and I think that’s the bottom line,” says the cruise director. “They’re no different from any other guests, and they’re just here to enjoy the cruise like anybody else.”
