Goth Teenagers During the War: The Experience of Ukrainian Teenagers on the Verge of Reality, Death, and the Aesthetics of Darkness
The full-scale invasion of Russia radically changed the reality of Ukrainian teenagers. If just a few years ago the typical challenges of adolescence were school difficulties, conflicts with parents and the search for one’s own identity within the boundaries of fashion and subcultures, now war has been added to it – daily, physically and morally close. Ukrainian children, who today wander around city squares, gather in parks and listen to music in headphones, are growing up not only under the influence of global digital trends, but also under the sound of sirens, against the background of news about the death of friends or the mobilization of relatives.
American publication Vice, known for its attention to underground communities, recently published material dedicated to Ukrainian teenagers who belong to the Gothic subculture. The report of journalist Nikol Dikmans was an attempt to look into the inner world of young Goths who grew up in a country where the daily presence of death has long ceased to be a metaphor. An excerpt from the introduction to the article is indicative:
“In the summer and autumn of 2024, wandering around Ukraine, I came across Goth teenagers. I met them in city squares, playgrounds and parks; on Instagram, in trams and supermarket aisles. For the most part, these Goth teenagers were like those I’d seen anywhere else in the world, except for one important detail: their colorful coming-of-age stories were framed by the specter of war and the prospect of conscription against Vladimir Putin’s meat grinder.”
War as everyday life and Gothic as a way of experiencing this reality – this is what unites these teenagers. Unlike Western Goths, who usually romanticize death as a poetic metaphor, Ukrainian teenagers encounter it every day in the news, in the form of sirens, destruction, funerals, familiar conscripts. Gothic aesthetics for them is not exotic, but a reflection on what is happening in the country. The most expressive in the Vice material is the story of Anna’s hammer:
“I realized that I was in love when he neutralized the Grad shell right in front of me. Knowing that any careless move could destroy us both in an instant made me very close to him.”
18-year-old Anna and her boyfriend spend their free hours, she says, “having sex, smoking weed, and coming up with new ways to kill Russians.” This is an extremely honest, lively, cynical and defenseless position at the same time. For them, Gothic is not just black clothes and depressing music, but a way to make the terrible reality at least a little aestheticized.
At the same time, fascination with gloomy aesthetics is not something new. Even before the war, many Ukrainian teenagers went through phases of interest in a dark image, depressing lyrics and informal circles. However, in times of war, these phases are sometimes exacerbated. Society perceives a teenager as someone who should remain a child, avoiding the topics of war, death, sex or drugs. But for a large part of young Ukrainians, all this is part of the experience. The question is how to react to it.
The mass media repeatedly raised this topic in the Ukrainian media space, analyzing the gothic fascination of children and the anxieties of parents. Vyacheslav Lykhachev, an expert on subcultures, warns: you should not immediately panic if a teenager dyes his hair black or wears contact lenses – Gothic aesthetics in its original form is not dangerous. It is important to maintain trust, maintain dialogue and not push the child away.
Other signals can be dangerous: complete social isolation, refusal to communicate with loved ones, escape to the online world, expressions of devaluation of life, constant preoccupation with the topic of suicide or death. In the conditions of military reality, these risks are doubled – that is why parents, teachers, psychologists must be not only attentive, but also flexible. Instead of banning music or clothes, it is better to try to find out: what exactly is the child looking for in this aesthetic? Security? Explanation? An outlet for emotions? You can’t turn off the war like the TV, so teenagers are looking for ways to make sense of it – and for many of them, Gothic becomes just such a form of making sense of it.
For some Ukrainian teenagers, being goth is a way to hold onto a reality that is constantly falling apart. For others, it is a way not to fall into apathy. And for someone, it is a way to say what cannot be said in words. These children are also children of war. It’s just that instead of volunteering or TRO, they chose another way to deal with fear. And before condemning them, it is worth hearing first.
