The purpose of this work is to analyze one of the most important subcultures, born in the late '70s from the ashes of Post-Punk, and developed through the '80s with facetings and hardly cataloguing subgroups: The New Wave.
Central to the analysis of the term "subculture" has been the contribution of Dick Hebdige, who in his book Subculture the charm of an unnatural style, analyzes their characteristics through the study of Punk, which he regarded as the last real subculture.
It is precisely by subverting this statement that this work beginning: The New Wave can be considered for every respect a subculture.
All this thanks to immediately recognizable aesthetics and philosophy of life very complex and rich that have contributed to make this subculture one of the long-lived of the sociological view, but at the same time barely analyzed and hastily categorized as “dark”.
The purpose of this analysis is to make a thought study closely and give dignity to a conception of life that unites people of different ages and places, facing the twisted relationship that binds this subculture to all arts.
The New Wave was inspired by the music sector, proposing a type of music due to Post-Punk, but with greater attention to the drafting of the lyrics and texts.
Founding fathers of this trend are musical groups like The Cure, Joy Division, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Sisters of Mercy, Cocteau Twins and Depeche Mode analyzed in later chapters is retracing their history, deepening into the issues that are in their most important album.
It tried to clarify the differences between the various categories of music too often confused or wrongly treated.
A key contribution is given precisely by the Arts, starting by comics, which in their designs and in the plot of theirs stories, try to give an image and translate on paper the ideology and aesthetic of this musical and cultural movement at the same time.
True manifesto of the New Wave can be considered the work of James O'Barr, The Crow, in which the author, fascinated by the richness and lyrism of the work by groups like The Cure and Joy Division, creates a deep and complex character, a romantic and gothic story at the same time, a melancholic atmosphere in which love is so strong that it can win even death. All this is made not only through the development of story, but from sketching design, the use of color (white and black), which can to project magically in a dream and spectral atmosphere.
The same atmosphere that has managed to recreate the director Alex Proyas in the homonym film of 1994, using a gothic set design (characterized by massive use of black and white, tall and thin houses, from the medieval cathedrals and rain, true and protagonist that stresses in any moment lyrical tension and melancholy prevailing), actors perfectly dropped in part (one on all the unforgettable Brandon Lee), an aesthetics which reproduces minutely gothic style and a soundtrack that sees as players the fathers of the New Wave.
The same atmosphere can be found in some japanese manga, in authors as Ai Yazawa, able to deal with the same skill tales in the perfect dark style and stories of bands led back to the New Wave.
The fascination for the unknown and the darkness is also present in Italian authors, in the work of Tiziano Sclavi, who since 1986 edit the character of Dylan Dog.
Always with regard to the seventh art, a contribution is made by the imagination and sensitivity of director Tim Burton, whose visionary direction has managed to create characters that are entered in their own right in the collective imaginary.
Film as A Nightmare Before Christmas, Edward Scissorhands, until recently The Corpse Bride, in addition re-extend and amplify the New Wave philosophy, have created real and proper fashion phenomena, through the birth of lines inspired by the characters of these films.
Moreover, the cinema has tried to retrace the lives of some characters symbol of the New Wave prematurely disappeared, as did the director and photographer Anton Corbijn with Ian Curtis, a leader and frontman of Joy Division, in the film Control.
The contribution of the Arts was crucial in the case of literature, a primary source of inspiration for New Wave groups.
In this work, in particular, it has minutely analyzed the important influence that literature had in the creation and writing Cure’s lyric, comparing them with songs or poems from which they draw inspiration.
Robert Smith, the mind of the group, has repeatedly argued as the writings of prestigious authors as William Shakespeare and Franz Kafka, but also those of lesser writers like Marvin Peake and Penelope Farmer, are vital for the birth of his most inspired songs.
The same is true for the philosophical concept in this album, which rests firmly on literature current such as French Decadentism and English Romanticism, through the revival of issues related to the fear of Death, the futility of feelings, the passage of Time and the desire to Infinity, searched and never found in Love and Faith.
In the last chapter, finally, it felt interesting to analyze how the music industry has tried to market the New Wave, working in a threefold direction: first revaluating groups that have marked the history of music; secondly creating boyband or popstar based on gothic aesthetic, but free of all those philosophical and literary contents that characterize the subculture taken into consideration, and finally facilitating the emergence of groups inspired by New Wave, the so-called New New Wave.
The latter was established at the beginning of two thousand, and the influence is given, not only by the name, but especially by the atmospheric and sound.
All this to emphasize the importance of how New Wave has not exhausted in the short time of its occurrence and its development, but continues to influence the music scene worldwide, including Italian, thanks to indie groups of small and medium relevance including: Bloc Party, Editors, Franz Ferdinand, The Killers, Interpol, Maximo Park and The Organ, which is analyzed in this chapter.
A final part focuses on the Flux, a music channel that in 2006 has shocked all television rules, proposing, 24h on 24, alternative music (especially New New Wave) without any interruption advertising.