Running around art museums late at night, reading thick classic books, owning trenchcoats, and memorizing passages from The Dead Poet's Society and The Secret History like they're sacred text.
These are some of the elements that make up the dark academia subculture, in which intellectual rebels live in a world of tweed and black.
Dark academia is fast increasing and is centered on a desire to learn. However, with growth comes criticism. In this post, I'll walk you through the subculture's issues.
It's eurocentric
The most common criticism leveled towards dark academia is its significant lack of diversity. The origins of items regarded to be part of the subculture (books, movies, fashion, etc.) come from ancient Rome or Greece, or modern European countries.
Academics love V.E. Schwab's The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, Oscar Wilde's masterpiece The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Naomi Novik's A Deadly Education.
All three of these novels have one thing in common: they are all white, white, white.
A Deadly Education had to be edited after it was published because it featured a racist paragraph about locs.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue has also been panned. The story revolves around an immortal French girl who has only traveled inside Europe and the United States in her 300+ years. What makes that possible? She should have been allowed to visit much more countries. Popular dark academic films are likewise deficient in diversity. They include Maurice and the Dead Poet's Society, both of which include ALL white main characters. Even when searching up Dark Academia on social media, such as Pinterest, most of the pictures are of white people.
It encourages unhealthy behaviors
Caffeine addiction and extreme sleep deprivation are common among those who work in the dark world of academia. An academic consume coffee throughout the day. And what about awake hours? That's practically all day for academics.
The aesthetic supports studying 24 hours a day, avoiding sleep, and emphasizing the necessity of mental health to achieve so. This lack of sleep creates a significant problem: sleep deprivation, which can result in cognitive problems and an increased risk of diabetes.
You can't be penniless
To be an academic, you must possess tweed jackets, attend or want to attend a boarding/ivy league/private school and have so many books that you're virtually drowning in them.
You have to be upper-class or at least have some money.
Tweed products, in particular, are exorbitantly priced, even when thrifted. Boarding/private school is considerably more expensive, let alone an Ivy League education. When it comes to drowning in books, have you ever been into a bookshop and looked at the prices of hardcovers, or even paperbacks? Buying more than two of them might get expensive.
The "need" to be upper-class to fit into the aesthetic is related to my first issue, which is the lack of diversity in the dark academic community. Racial minorities are underrepresented in the elite and upper-middle classes because it might be difficult for individuals of color to find work owing to racism.
How do we go about fixing this?
To make dark academia less harmful, I believe those who identify as part of the subculture should give POC in the community a voice before white academics run them all off. I also believe that because academics like to study so much, they should look at dark academic books and movies with different casts of characters.
Being more cost-effective and, eventually, healthier. It's not cool to be sleep-deprived and buzzed off coffee in the wee hours of the morning till late at night.
More representation of communities is what this subculture lacks. And it is a significant omission.
Well, that's all from me folks. Please consider these things! Until next time my friends!
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