Dark Academia
ISSUE #114
Dark Academia, if you haven't already heard, is a subculture emerging on TikTok and Instagram that adopts the aesthetics of the ivy-trussed campus: think browns and burgundies, greys and ivories, blazers and books like Mrs. Dalloway and The Idiot (Dostoevsky's, though the case could be made for Batuman's as well). Dead Poets Society is often referenced, though I think it hews closer to Wonder Boys. Musically, there's less consensus, so I made my own soundtrack for these rainy quads and columns of stone.
While technically starting a few years ago, the trend took off as 2020 wore on and we were all driven back to our bedrooms. As with most fantasies, it was born out of cultural imagery that's been marinating for decades and dashed with the inability to experience this world in reality. Campuses shuttered this spring, and with Harvard and other criminal institutions set to charge full tuition for online classes, college as we know it is currently history. What do we do with things of the past? We romanticize them, of course.
There are worse things to fetishize than books, though. Most movements worship at the altar of capital—think the travel required for VSCO or the luxury comforts of cottagecore —but books are cheap, sweaters can be thrifted, and reading is often overlooked as a great investment. Glamorizing a costly legacy-lifestyle like college can morph into elitism, but this seems a little more innocuous. There's an understanding here that this isn't what college is really like. It feels more escapism than classism.
Besides, stories have always been fascinated with leaving home to go to school, the crucible of rapid growth. Tastefully authoritarian, college is structured enough to stave off decision fatigue, yet free enough to encourage a little rebellion. These are micro-societies, where love and betrayal and ambition can all be played with fewer stakes. Technofascists may have left the world feeling anemic and sterile, but these turtlenecks still look warm as ever, and beneath our quilts there's always more time to read.