Tuesday, November 8, 2016

S.A.D. Goth PSA (Joke/Proposed)

We see someone get up for work, and on the ride to work (on the bus or subway), everyone is dressed as a Goth, wearing all black, with hair like Robert Smith from The Cure, and with black fingernail polish, black lipstick, black eye makeup, and white makeup on their faces. Then our hero(ine) gets to work, and everyone there is dressed as a Goth too, from administrative assistants to the 60-year-old boss, ranging in styles from 19th Century funeral garb and mourning fashion to bat-wing capes and black leather getups (both rock and roll biker stuff and bondage outfits), with tons of heavy silver jewelry, black eye makeup and lipstick, black fingernail polish, etc.). Then the announcer says that it’s that time of your for S.A.D.: Seasonal Affective Disorder, which is a type of depression caused in part by a lack of sunlight, and we are told what the symptoms are, and how to treat Seasonal Affective Disorder if we suspect we have the symptoms. Then, our hero(ine) goes home at the end of the day, and they look in the mirror, and now they are dressed as a Goth, with the makeup and black fingernail polish and such.

(BTW: While this aims to be a fun PSA, I’m not disparaging Goths here. It’s more a visual metaphor for depression, as that’s a main ingredient to their shtick. I like Goths, and I used to be one myself, but not all the time like the others I knew, so I was occasionally called a “poseur”, but I was really more accurately a misfit; it’s not really that I was a poseur so much as I had many different interests and groups of friends at the time, and I wasn’t one thing all the time. And don’t groups like Goths take pride in being misfits in square society and flaunt their non-conformity as a rebellion in their style of dress? I played in a number of bands, all different styles of music, and all different styles of fashion. So I suppose I had a split personality. It is possible to be more than one thing and still honestly and legitimately be each of those things in different circumstances. {I never did the makeup or black lipstick or fingernail polish though, as it’s not really me.})