British band Joy Division recorded only one EP, An Ideal for Living, and two albums, Unknown Pleasures, and Closer, before coming to an abrupt end when 23 year old singer and lyricist Ian Curtis committed suicide in May 1980. Although the band members self-identified as punk musicians and laughed at the pretensions of the emerging Goth style and image, Joy Division has continually been considered foundational to the subculture by academics as well as the subculture’s adherents. However, the majority of academic literature on Joy Division focuses on a textual analysis of Curtis’s lyrics in relationship to his troubled life rather than a discussion of the band-audience relationship. Why do Goths continue to cite Joy Division as a seminal band in the formation of the Goth subculture when the band’s members so strongly identified with punk?
This paper explores the enduring appeal of Joy Division through combining the framework of the Frankfurt School with sociologist Wendy Griswold’s cultural diamond heuristic, which analyzes intersections between a cultural object, the object’s creator, the social world of the object’s creation, and the audience. After examining the band’s formation, sartorial style, live sound, and the persona of lead singer Curtis, I argue that the ghostly sounds and empty space of the band’s recorded output appeals to a subculture characterized by themes of the macabre despite Joy Division’s self-identification as a punk band. The technique of mechanical reproduction, as described by Walter Benjamin in “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” and production style used in making the band’s albums detached Joy Division from their punk inspired live performances and presented the band’s music in a way with appealed to Gothic sensibilities.
About the presenterLeah Bush
Leah Bush is a second year doctoral student in the American Studies program at the University of Maryland. She holds an M.A. in American Studies with a Graduate Certificate in Museum Studies and Material Culture from the University of Maryland, and a B.A. in Sociology from Eastern University. Her research interests center around an interdisciplinary examination of relationships between popular culture, identity formation, and performances of aging within musical subcultures, focusing on the Goth subculture.