I’ve had about enough of this. If you follow the news at all or find yourself on the internet for more than an hour a day you’ve undoubtedly read stories about the recent “emo bashing” going on in Mexico. Rollingstone.com reports, “The anti-emo movement has propagated from message boards and social-network sites led by youths who dislike “the emo look and attitude.”” I need to voice a grievance about the way this topic is being discussed. I seem to have missed a major linguistic shift–when did ‘emo’ become a noun, and since when is it ok to call kids who listen to emo “emos”? Does ANYONE outside the media REALLY refer to them like that? Is it the result of a way-too-literal translation from the term for “emo kids” in Spanish? All I have to go on is my high school aged brother, who doesn’t call them “emos”. But he seems to be the only one.
The LA Times is doing it. (an excerpt from the LAtimes.com article about the recent violence against EMO KIDS in Mexico: “Against a backdrop of music by the Cure, the Doors and Manu Chao, representatives of the various youth strains, including one devoted to “Saint Death,” urged their brethren to open their minds and hearts, to respect, to let be.” Saint Death? Brethren?)
TIME Magazine Online is doing it (But the article they published, Mexico’s Emo-Bashing Problem, is actually pretty good. It’s just weird to read a sentence like, “The emo population”)
SFBG Music Blog is on the band wagon (in the same article that asks, “Yikes, what did My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy ever do to these haters? OK, yeah, I know… but still, why can’t kids just get along?”)
But thank the gods of the internet for giving me ONE… I repeat ONE saving grace: On exclaim.ca this issue is covered by a one Brock Thiessen, who doesn’t reference My Chemical Romance. Taken from the article, “Mexico Declares War On Emo” (not war on EMOS, thank you very much:
Chances are if you aren’t emo, you hate emo. But you likely don’t hate this straight-haired, massacre-lined subculture as much as the Mexicans do. In recent weeks, a wave of emo bashings has swept across Mexico, several news agencies have reported, fuelled by punks, rockabillies, goths, metalheads and basically anyone who’s not emo.
Don’t get pissed and don’t claim that I’m “insensitive in such a grave situation” because I haven’t told you the first thing about my thoughts on it. Yet. Here goes: It’s almost as ridiculous as the mods vs. rockers issue, but I feel like even that involved more socio-economic controversy. This is just a petty distaste that has turned into a world-wide social event by angry, ignorant, and aggressive children. Yes I think it would’ve been fucking terrifying for the little 15 year-old me to have to be afraid of getting killed while walking down the street, just cause of the subculture with which she identified but the fact of the matter is that THESE KIDS ARE NOT LISTENING TO EMO. Emo USED to include bands like Mineral, Rites of Spring, and Sunny Day Real Estate–now it’s fucking My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy? And when did a skull and crossbones become an “emo” symbol? Hot Topic used to be for the wannabe goths and store-bought punks. Now it’s the emo super-store? It seems like the articles that reference those shitty bands only identify the subculture with the manner of dress. It also seems like the kids doing the ass-beating and the kids whose asses are getting beaten don’t know the first thing about the sub-culture they may end up dying for.
