Emo killed my teenager

So, here we are again. A 13 year old English girl has ended her life, and music gets blamed. What the fuck. Some things never change, and being a youngster who listens to edgy music will obviously for ever be a reason to kill yourself. Or to massacre a high school. And if it isn’t music, it’s movies. If not that than it’s probably video games. And within about ten years there’s something else to blame. MSN Messenger, or whatever it is that our mentally instable former hippie sellout asshole parent’s generation can't understand.

Well here’s the obvious question we all want an answer to again: where were you, you lazy freaking parents?

 

Her name was Hannah Bond, a young teenager from Kent, England. Her parents let her explore the phenomena of youthculture, and Emo seemed to suit her the best. Now us metal heads often like to rip on emo, with it’s selfpity and so on. But let’s be real, before emo it was gothic, before that numetal, and if we dig deep enough through layers of grunge, punk and the early stages of metal we end up at the very generation who is now blaming musicians to kill their kids.
Music is an artform, you don’t have to like it, that’s what great about it. Because if you get bullied at school and everyone thinks you’re a prick or a dumb bitch, and your parents are too busy with their five jobs and relation therapy, who you gonna call? Nobody. You put on a My Chemical Romance record and sooth your emotions with the feeling of not being alone. Like Korn did for our generation, and Nirvana did for the one before, all the way back to the Sex Pistols and Elvis. Nomatter if you’re sixty or twenty, you will have to agree that is was fun to middlefinger the generation above you.

 

Now. That is nothing new, I know. But reports such as this NME article piss me off so much. Here’s what that Hannah’s mom had to say:

"There are [emo] websites that show pink teddies hanging themselves. She called emo a fashion and I thought it was normal. Hannah was a normal girl. She had loads of friends. She could be a bit moody but I thought it was just because she was a teenager."

 

So in all her normality she went out, dyed her hair, listened to a My Chemical Romance cd and thought it would be a fun thing to end her life. That’s harsh.

 

But mom, what the fuck were you doing all this time? Are you really trying to convince the world that your daughter went into an overnight suicide fetish? You mean to say your daughter wasn’t unhappy at all? Is it not true that most teenagers are gravely confused and depressed at some point? Doesn’t that go away, mostly because someone tells them THEY ARE NOT CRAZY?

 

And how about this one; isn’t that exactly the thematic in emo? “I understand you”?

 

You can sit there and be angry about websites with pink teddies hanging themselves in retrospect. But maybe you should have taken poor Hannah away from that laptop and ask her what is it that motivates her to identify with these dark themes. Try understanding her instead of saying “what fun, my daugher is a moody teenager.”

 

Kids don’t kill themselves out of fashion, mom.

Hannah wasn’t crazy. She was very much unhappy and found a culture who seemed to reflect that.

 

You should have been there. All the time. Looking over her shoulder. Asking what’s going on.

 

Stop trying to find a scapegoat. My guess is that the origin of this very tragic event lies so close to yourself you are trying to hit everyone around you to hide your own shame. But please, if I’m right, be a truly brave mother and admit you have failed in some sense. Stop the useless tirade against art and maybe try opening up a dialogue on parenting.

 

My sincere condolances.

The article referred to in this column can be read here.