Transman Badass

Dark academia, then, is the dissonance between: A) The veneration of, the instruction and/or indoctrination therein, an institution, often but not always an academic institution, to the point where the institution is elevated above the characters' belief in the right of the individual to dignity, compassion, or any sort of value whatsoever - conformity to an existing power structure with the explicit intent of belonging to the higher status within a hierarchy - and often very specifically the articulation of a philosophy that promotes this idea; and B) The existence of something so much larger than individual human lives that it dwarfs this philosophy and institution and leaves the characters confused, destitute, miserable, traumatized, broken, or perhaps in more positive works liberated or content in their submission to that greater thing. This "something" can be more or less anything but it is crucial to the work as it is the juxtaposition between A and B that creates the "dark academia" genre. It can be as vague as a general principle such as mercy, justice, mortality; it can be God or the existence of an untamed supernatural at all; it can be explicit cosmic horror. 

The dissonance between these things creates, at varying times, dry humor, pronounced tragedy, and drama that ranges from pettiness to pathos.

The genre often features a specific focus on art, history, literal academic settings, book study, queer themes and/or subtext, obsession, murder, the supernatural, gothic themes of corruption and decay, but none of this is automatic.

Because of the explicit focus on an institution and the veneration thereof many works in dark academia will elevate specifically classist and/or imperialistic ideals of beauty, power, etc. Hence the disproportionate focus on European art, history, places of learning; prestigious schools; wealth and privilege, et cetera. I do not believe that a work must be self-aware about this to constitute "dark academia". In fact many of the most perfect examples are entirely un-self-aware and do not attempt to deconstruct said veneration at all. I think this is fair to criticize but I am not interested in arguing about the morality of dark academia here. I am only trying to define it. I believe that like most genres this encompasses both straight examples and deconstructions.

The primary example is of course The Secret History, which is the blueprint and I believe was the foundational text of the original tumblr bloggers, who more or less began by emulating the core cast of the novel. Early Richard describes the novel's theme as his core flaw, "a fatal longing for the picturesque at all costs". What this translates to is the elevation of beauty (as embodied by book learning, classism and snobbery) above all other concerns and how this ruins his life and everyone else's over the course of the novel. Richard makes his life choices for shallow, aesthetic reasons and ends up sucked into, essentially, a cult when he joins the Greek class. This philosophy is articulated in that line but also multiple times by other characters (including the infamous "beauty is terror" line). "Beauty is terror" also juxtaposes our points A and B. "Picturesque" is, after all, not beautiful in a way that inspires terror. Multiple things which dwarf the characters' shallow philosophies include the intense guilt they feel over committing murder, the ambiguously supernatural bacchanal in which the Greek class cannot explain what has happened to them, and the simple fallibility of man (as demonstrated by their interpersonal bullshit and Julian's abandoning them when he learns the truth; also, arguably, their inability to graduate after the trauma). These latter things are insurmountable, thus demonstrate the shallowness and vanity of the original hubristic philosophies. The in-between, the dissonance, creates a lot of drama both poignant and petty, directly leads to two people dying and a number of people's lives being ruined, and it is also wildly funny. Not everything in "dark academia" is inspired by TSH, but much is.

Some other examples!

Plein Soleil (1960) - A is Tom Ripley's methodical and articulate approach to coveting and stealing Philippe Greenleaf's life (the institution here is 'wealth and privilege' and it is partially embodied by Marge as a character, and the film's emphasis on her studying art history is a very dark academia motif); B is the concept of mortality, justice, and God. The visual comparison between the people Ripley kills and food, particularly the sequence in which he struggles at a fish market because the dead fish remind him of Philippe's corpse, highlights both the philosophy that renders human beings' lives as disposable and  the gravity of what he has done. And the frequent Catholic imagery highlights that God can see all he does even when he has outwitted everyone else.

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) by Oscar Wilde - A is the belief that youth and beauty (and implicitly wealth and art) are more valuable than human life or virtue; B is of course, mortality and the notion of sin and conscience. Even at the end when Dorian has gotten away with all of his crimes, he himself cannot be satisfied, because he cannot escape his own conscience.

The Historian (2005) by Elizabeth Kostova - A is the book's arc theme of 'being a historian' and the innately profound nature thereof, the veneration of studying history even if, lol, even if it gets you killed by a vampire; B is. B is Dracula. And mortality, as embodied by Dracula. This book is somewhat funny because there really is no self-awareness in it whatsoever that, say, studying French as a second language in Oxford and being extremely special and unlike all the other girls your age is an inaccessible virtue to elevate. But there is a sort of charm to how blatant the idealization of Studying History in an Institutional Setting is. It is really worked into the novel (is Dracula the Ultimate Historian??) and Kostova is so damn sincere. The epistolary format and the inclusion of fake documents, as an embodiment of the veneration of study and book learning being so strong that it is built into the novel's narrative structure, is classic dark academia.

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) - A is simple conformity within the setting of an Edwardian girl's school and its attendant social hierarchies, B is the notion of fate and the insignificance of humanity contrasted with the majesty of the Rock itself, which is millions of years old and, as a geological feature, totally indifferent to the lives of a bunch of schoolgirls. The grief and confusion of the community in the wake of the girls' disappearance is also B. It's really a lot of symbolic and editing choices that elevate PAHR to feeling almost like cosmic horror, for instance the shot of Michael dissociating with a bloody mark on his forehead and a scrap of lace in his hands, the shot of the ants on the picnic cake juxtaposed with aerial shots of the girls on the rock, etc. A moment in which Irma comes to say goodbye to her classmates and they go berserk and swamp her demanding to know what happened is a good example of 'tension between A and B'. Irma is the height of elegance and grace, the girls' school setting demands decorum, but the girls' grief is so maddening that the situation rapidly deteriorates. 

And very recently I read Villette (1853) by Charlotte Brontë, which also felt prototypically dark academia. Its A is also conformity, but especially to class and gender roles, and social categories like Protestantism versus Catholicism, while its B is a strange, tragic sense of fatality, almost embodied by its protagonist Lucy's depression. There is a nearly cosmic sense that Lucy cannot find happiness or liberty. A juxtaposition exists in the novel between Lucy's deep faith in God and the material fact that being virtuous does not in reality lead people to live happier lives - that some good people are happy, but also many callous, selfish, malicious people are happy, whereas Lucy, who does strive to be good, cannot be happy - and the dissatisfaction this produces in her and also the reader seems to be the entire purpose of the book. "Farewell"!