Emo Love

What is it that suddenly fires people up and gets them out on the streets in protest? Well in the case of the recent protests against comments directed at the emo community and related music bands in the media, two words spring to mind ‘unfairness’ and misrepresentation’.

Basically a few media articles were published earlier this year, (the main culprit being The Daily Mail), that linked the suicidal death of a teenager to the music she had been listening to a few weeks before she died. This music was from the emo scene, mainly the band My Chemical Romance. This led the articles in question to conclude that this band was the cause of the suicide, and part of a ‘suicide cult’ that ran through the whole emo culture.

Now firstly it is unfair to suggest one isolated factor such as music could induce someone to commit suicide – this drastic and tragic action only comes through a long period of emotional and mental distress, and secondly to judge the whole emo genre as being based up a suicide cult is nothing short of slander. The emo scene is a sociable, music loving community, with a great sense of shared identity. As with any alternative music genre it has its share of morbid and downbeat lyrics, but this is only a small part of the whole, and is meant to be a comment on life as it can be, not instructions on how to feel or behave. The emo scene has a right to be angry and upset at such misrepresentation, as would any community, and protesting is a peaceful and powerful way of registering this anger.