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.
See Emo kids are under attack. Are they scapegoats or sinenrs?
Times Online, UK
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