Easter Creature Feature

Text & Photos by Fred Berger

On this Easter Sunday, I’m reminded of the photoshoot I did with Propaganda model John Koviak in 1990 at a church in Los Angeles that had a full-size replica of Michelangelo’s Pieta on the premises. Although made of sandstone rather than the luxurious marble of the original 16th century statue, it still made an excellent photographic prop. Considering John’s ultra goth appearance, and the mere act of posing on a representation of the deceased Jesus lying in the lap of the Virgin Mary, it was impossible for our shoot not to be viewed as anything other than blasphemous. Adding to the sense of sacrilege was the Catholic iconography hanging from his neck in the way of a large Crucifix, a smaller Cross, and a Rosary. Such jewelry was commonly worn by goths from the early 1980s to mid-90s, the appeal of which resided in the morbid sensuality of these stylized depictions of the Crucifixion. Plus, its association with graveyards as well as gothic cathedrals and abbeys also appealed to their penchant for melancholy and the medieval.

Not even the vampiric mystique of these children of the night clashed with this stylistic choice, since the Vampire Lestat himself expressed his fondness for Crucifixes in Anne Rice’s novel Interview with the Vampire. Such irreverent narratives in the horror cinema and literature of the period served the purpose of disempowering Christian iconography, whereby these once potent symbols of divine authority were reduced to a mere fashion statement or objet d’art. Although I doubt many people gave serious thought to such things, but instead simply went with the flow of the increasingly secular Zeitgeist. And despite being frequently labeled as Devil worshippers, this was not a widespread phenomenon since goths primarily tended towards the irreligious or paganistic. Yet even a dedicated Satanist would be hard-pressed to display their infernal affiliation due to the lack of baphomets and pentagrams on the consumer market at that time. As for the genuinely pious among the gothic flock, they did exist in small numbers and somewhat clandestinely; every movement has its outliers.