Ioanna Catsimalis
Media St 330W
Professor Herzog
Research Field notes
Subculture: DISCO ERA 1970’s
The Godfather of Disco
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuBGPj-klT8
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“It was a time of cultural revolution. Women were finally demanding their
rights… having sexual freedom. Gay people were participating in all of those
movements.” 9:46
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“..it was instrumental in the Stonewall riots which changed the law in New
York the Cabaret law to say that two men can dance together. Before that it
was illegal for two people of the same sex to get on the dance floor together.”
10:08
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“Once the gay community came out from underground, it really flourished.
The gay culture ”
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At clubs, there were flashing lights, people dancing, airing music that was not
professionally produced.
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Music was used as a tool to fight intolerance, inequality and AIDS.
Comments:
In Defense of Disco by Richard Dyer
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“I recover my nerve partially when I came to see show-biz music as a key
part of gay culture, which, whatever its limitations, was a culture to defend.”
(410)
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‘Three characteristics of disco in context of gay culture- eroticism,
romanticism and materialism.”
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Eroticism- popular song and rock
“…it seems to me that the importance f disco in scene culture indicates an
openness to a sexuality that is not defined in terms of cock.” (415)
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Disco’s romanticism provides an embodiment and validation of an aspect of
gay culture. (416)
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Given that everyday banality, work, domesticity, ordinary sexism and racism
are rooted in the structures of class and gender of this society… (417)
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“Disco can’t change the world of make the revolution. By partly by opening
up experience, partly by changing definitions, art and disco can be
used.”(418)
DISCO AND THE QUEERING OF THE DANCE FLOOR
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“the movement that preceded, ran parallel and ultimately outlasted these
articulations of the culture was queer in terms of its refusal of both straight
normative and gay normative articulations. The queer make-up of disco
culture was grounded in its sexually mixed demographic base in New York
private party and public discotheque venues, which constitute the focus of
the article.”
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“… and will argue that the conditions that coalesced to create the 1970s
dance floor revealed disco’s queer potential or its potential to enable an
affective and social experience of the body that exceeded normative
conceptions of straight and gay sexuality.”
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“…that disco emerged as an outgrowth of the Stonewall Rebellion of June
1969 and unfolded as a predominantly male gay subculture;”
Gay documentary 1970s Brighton "Coming Out" Southern Report -- February 1976
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKIA8Udsi0o
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“fighting change towards attitude towards homosexuality. Attitude, which
pursue many people, including gay, that they are sick, leading 40 people
towards suicide.”
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“It’s a campaign of education and political lobbying to change the law so that
homosexuals can express their love openly.”
Gay en-brightened and formed a new group so that homosexuals can come
out.
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“To think that I have been try to crush the thing inside of me, my emotion, to
try to get rid of them is absolutely criminal. I want to do my dandiest to make
sure the society becomes a much better place for homosexual people to grow
up and realize that homosexuality is actually beautiful and not something
disgusting.”
DISCO AND THE QUEERING OF THE DANCE FLOOR
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In order to assess the significance of queer disco, it is necessary to note that
the social dances that preceded disco - most notably the Waltz, the Foxtrot,
the Lindy Hop (or Jitterbug), the Texas Tommy and the Twist - were to
varying degrees patriarchal and heterosexist.
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And while gay men were ushered to the front of the door queue in venues
such as Arthur on the basis that they would help energize the dance floor,
once inside they could only take to the floor within the structure of the
ostensibly heterosexual couple, and the same restrictions were applied to
lesbian women. (231)
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The Santuary- A lot of straight people thought that it was the coolest place in
town and there were definitely a lot of women because that was part of what
was going on at the time’ (because gay men such as La Torre were often
involved sexually with straight women). ‘I would say that women made up
25% of the crowd from the very beginning, probably more. People came from
all cultural backgrounds, from all walks of life, and it was the mixture of
people that made the place happen.’
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When the Sanctuary went gay I didn’t play that many slow records [records
introduced to work the bar] because they were drinkers and they knew how
to party,’ (Grasso 235)
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DJs were generating a soundtrack that encouraged dancers to be multiple,
fluid and queer
…disco, argued Dyer, ‘restores eroticism to the whole body’ thanks to its
‘willingness to play with rhythm’, and it does this ‘for both sexes’. Dyer
added: ‘Its eroticism allows us to rediscover our bodies as part of this
experience of materiality and the possibility of change’ (1979/1995, p. 523,
527).
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Where to Now? The Gay Rights Movement
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Much of the value of a same sex relationship in our present society is that it
undermines the tyranny wielded by gender and sex conformity.
Pictures: