The Lolita Complex: - Scholarly Commons Home

A Fear of the Future
Essentially, the Gothloli identity, especially the Gothic Lolita, fuses the
Japanese affection for kawaisa with the Gothic. In its nostalgic, historicist
and revivalist aspects the Lolita phenomenon also demonstrates sympathies
with Victorian Gothic Revivalism, particularly in the languishing for an
idyllic past. It should be noted that Gothic revivals, of which the overall
Japanese Gothic & Lolita movement is one, tend to coincide with periods of
societal confusion, transition and cultural malaise. As with the early years of
the twentieth-century Goth subculture – when, stemming from New-Wave,
post-Punk and New-Romantic ideals, notions of the New-Gothic were
being formulated, alternative culture and especially fashion looked back to
Revolutionary France and Dickensian Britain, reflected in Westwood and
MacLaren’s collections, the Recession Dress movement, and Goth attire
which borrowed from Victorian Gothic – the Lolita subculture represents
nostalgic impulses born out of political and economic crises. As with the
Victorian Gothic Revivalists and twentieth-century Goths, Gothloli indicate
a yearning for a utopian ideal, a wariness of the Unknown, and thus a fear of
the future, especially in terms of the regression into childhood.
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