On Saturday, fans of emo — the shortened term for "emotional hardcore," a sort of Goth-influenced rock — will march from London's Hyde Park to the offices of the Daily Mail. The fans say the newspaper has been unfairly attacking emo music, which it refers to as a "suicide cult."
The protest is once raising the age-old debate over the impact of art, in this case a form of music, on life — in this case a form of humans known as teenagers. Last year a teenager in Kent, England, hanged herself from her bunk bed. Her parents said emo music may have played a big role in her suicide. According to her mother, the 13-year-old started listening to an emo band, My Chemical Romance, two weeks before to her death.
That's when the newspaper likened the music and its listeners to a suicide cult, prompting the fans to speak out.
"The people who listen are very intelligent," says James McMahon of the British music magazine NME, "and they're just sick of being misrepresented."
McMahon thinks fans have a strong case against the Daily Mail, pointing out that rock has traditionally addressed depression and dark themes and that people have been committing suicide long before My Chemical Romance.
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