Get Ready for the RAWRING 20z
☆ by Hunter Lee White ☆
“No but seriously imagine it: you’re watching fall out boy in concert. Everyone around you is having a great time. ‘We have a surprise for you guys’ Patrick says. All of a sudden, Panic! Comes out and start singing ‘this is gospel.’ When Brandon gets to the chorus, someone else starts singing…. ‘When I was a young boy, my father took me into the city to see the marching band.’
Lights flash everywhere, and you see FOB singing ‘this is gospel’ along with panic! while Mcr is singing the Black parade. The crowd goes wild and people are crying. Then as if things couldn’t get any better, Dan and Phil walk on stage and kiss, holding the gay flag”.
This short epic, (author unknown) was birthed on tumblr during the height of pop punk dominance in mainstream media, and lives on as (pun intended) gospel in Subculture lore. Ironically, this emo fantasy has never been more likely to happen at any point in time than right now.
Whilst emos had humble origins in the 80s and 90s with bands with alternative and math rock sounds that shaped the trajectory of the movement; it wasn’t until the early to mid 2000s when Emo culture as we know it truly began to take shape. And the person we have to thank for that is: Osama Bin Laden.
No, really.
9/11 was the first domino in a cultural chain reaction that lead to the formation of Emo as we know it today.
The World Trade Centre attacks, created a social landscape where Emos, and the act of BEING emo, felt like the only logical response to an event that was so socially devastating, its effects can still be felt today in so many parts of the world. What is a subculture anyway, but a community turning against the status quo that failed them, and a sense of belonging? And Emos were that community that thousands of young Americans turned to in the wake of disaster.
En route to a Cartoon Network internship that Tuesday morning, Gerard Way witnessed the 9/11 attacks. Within the next week he had written Skylines and Turnstiles, and My Chemical Romance was born. He says that the music became his ‘therapy from the PTSD that everyone experiences from 9/11.’
Reflecting back the catastrophic legacy, it’s surreal to consider that the event gave the world the image of ‘The Falling Man’, also inadvertently gave the world Jeffree Star Cosmetics.
The past decade has been its own bubbling cauldron of political conflict and social issues, constantly nudging us towards the direction of social reformation.
Social Media, has only made it that much easier to share our thoughts, feelings and anxieties on societal problems and political movements, uniting us through the collective trauma of having lived through those experiences.
Early in the 2010s, came the formation of Black Lives Matter, fighting against the tyranny of police brutality in America, sparked by the death of Trayvon Martin. And since the Sandy Hook shooting in 2013, there has only been a single calendar week where there has not been a single mass shooting in the US.
And the latest source of endless anxiety for the Gen Z? Look no further than 2019’s Time’s Person Of The Year: Greta Thunberg. We are told that we face the possibility of witnessing a mass extinction together - but through social media, we already are. Images of the Australian forest fires, past Amazonian rainforest fires, and news of yet another melting glacier, consume our timelines almost everyday. Nothing like constantly being told you’re on the cusp of extinction to a) take the edge off and b) fan the flames of budding anarchists.
Ultimately, subcultures are more than just wearing a certain hairstyle, or a certain aesthetic; in a way, they are a call to action against the politics of the time.
This new year has begun in the wake of extreme political uncertainty: ending the old decade with the third impeachment of a United States President ever and kicking off the new one with the killing of Qassem Soleimani by the US Government, sparking discussions of a third world war.
In 2013, My Chemical Romance official disbanded. Gerald Way said one of the reasons for the split was that, during Obama's presidency and (what felt like) foreseeable political stability - MCR 'wasn't needed anymore'.
7 years onwards, when the collective optimism felt during Obama’s second term has all but vanished, and society descends further into sci-fi levels of dystopia by the hour, a reunion show was announced.
MCR was needed again. Emo music is needed again. Maybe this means we’ll finally be seeing a surge in blackliner-hot-topic-wearing teens attending the latest climate strike? I honestly don’t know, but I do know that living in 2020, I am constantly struck with the urge to ugly cry to Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge.
Alexa play I’m not okay (I promise).