The dance club is no longer an exclusive venue drawing together people with similar musical interests. Instead, it has become the commercialized superclub, where profit rather than music is the bottom line. As a space traditionally influenced by homosexuals becomes a major business opportunity, this commercialization has led to the inclusion of gay subcultures within mainstream American society. However, this process has served to reinforce social stigma and stereotypes. The advertising and club environment designed to “sell” the experience to the gay customer is founded on the overtly sexual club culture of the 1970s and early 80s. On the dance floor the constructed image of the club combines with the inherent sexual and mind-altering nature of the dance experience to create a space filled with the language of desire. However, the seeming break from the hetero-centric world sold to homosexuals through the club experience does not offer actual escape. The superclubs foster an environment where physical connection between two men is seemingly encouraged while mental and emotional engagement is suppressed.
Drugs, Rock and Roll, Badass, Vegas Hoes, Late Nights, Booty Calls, Shiny Disco Balls
As these lyrics by Subliminal Sessions, whispered in a hissing, syllabic voice, poured out of the speakers at 6:32 am, I realized this was a fitting description of clubland nightlife. The venue that night was Aria, an after-hours superclub located on St. Catherine Street in Montreal, however, the throbbing beat accompanying the words could have been found in any club from Moscow to New York City. Electronica, ambient, garage, hard-house and other forms of dance music are now mainstream. Gone are the days of disco where small groups of devot...
... middle of paper ...
...esleyan.
Clendinen, Dudley (1999, 28 November). Anita Bryant, b. 1940, Singer and Crusader. St. Petersburg Times Online. Retrieved March 20, 2003, from http://
www.sptimes.com/News/112899/news_pf/Floridian/Anita_Bryant_b_1940_.shtml
Ewen, Stewart (2003). Hard bodies. In Syracuse University Writing Program Committee (Ed.), Critical Convergences (pp. 235-238). Boston: Pearson Custom
Publishing.
Lee, Denny (2003, February 23). Flower district: a club is reborn, but critics say a landmark now looks cheap. New York Times, p. P6.
Owen, Frank (2003, February 26 – March 4). Magic carpet ride: clubland potentate David Marvisi gets the rug pulled out from him. Village Voice. Retrieved March 4, 2003, from http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0309/owen.php
Weinraub, Bernard (2002, December 10). Here’s to disco, it never could say goodbye. New York Times, p. E1.
Ten minutes after lining up, I went inside the nightclub. From the door, I could hear the song and the beat of the bass so loud that my heart could feel it. Inside the nightclub, I saw people were dancing everywhere, on dancing floor, on their own seats, everywhere. They would dance and take a big gulp of their beer. Even the bartenders were dancing too, following the rhythm of the loud funky music. The rainbow rays of light moved through the club to make the mood even more exciting and funky.
In Justin Pearson's memoir, From the Graveyard of the arousal Industry, he recounts the events that occured from his early years of adolesence to the latter years of his adulthood telling the story of his unforgiving and candid life. Set in the late 1970s "Punk" rock era, From the Graveyard of the Arousal Industry offers a valuable perspective about the role culture takes in our lives, how we interact with it and how it differs from ideology.
Rock n’ roll gave people the voice they did not have in the early years. As the genre of music became more wide spread, people actually began to speak out. Altschuler touches on the exploration of how the rock n' roll culture roughly integrated with replaced and conflicted with preceding cultural values. Many of these values were very touch topics. Besides black civil rights, sexuality were one of the most sensitive t...
Firstly, the group of friends and writers most commonly known as the Beats evolved dramatically in focal points such as Greenwich Village and Columbia University, and subsequently spread their political and cultural views to a wider audience. The three Beat figureheads William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac each perceived an agenda within American society to clamp down on those who were in some way different from the accepted ‘norm’, and in response deliberately flirted with the un-American practices of Buddhism, drug use, homosexuality and the avant-garde. Ginsberg courted danger by lending a voice to the homosexual subculture that had been marginalised by repressive social traditions and cultural patterns within the United States.
Kidd expands on society’s sexual perspectives in mass media and illuminates the stress pushed towards the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender population. He outlines sexuality as one of many influences on the ways we interpret the culture we consume. He supposes that popular culture has five major social roles: generating basic social norms, producing social boundaries, producing rituals that generate social solidarity, generating modernization, and generating social progress. He pays particular attention to Emilie Durkeim and connects his sociological
McLeese, Don. “The Spirit of a Rocker.” New York Times. 18 October 1987. Web. 11
Inside the album jacket, Serch sums up hip-hop in ‘89: “There was a time when nothing was more important than the New York Rap Scene.” It’s dilluted, but not divided.” To hip-hop afficionados, Serch’s quote sounds like the equivalent to a Vietnam soldier’s letter home. Obviously, the group saw the possibility of the hip-hop culture being tainted.
McNamara, Robert Hartmann. "Homelessness." Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Social Issues. Ed. Michael Shally-Jensen. Vol. 3: Family and Society. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011. 1024-1031. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 2 May 2014. .
Armesto, Felipe. The Spanish Armada: The Experince of War in 1588. 1. 1. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1988. 268-01. Print.
Homelessness is a vast predicament in America and around the world. It is severely overlooked as people don’t really think of homelessness as real world problem. However, there have been ways that people have tried to fix the problem. They have come up with homeless shelters, emergency shelters, food banks and soup kitchens. These solutions have limitations though, which will hopefully come to an end.
Modern homelessness in the United States is conventionally thought of as arising in the 1980s, a period of dramatic demographic transformation in the homeless population. Traditionally dominated by single men, the homeless population was augmented by an increase in homeless families. This phenomenon can be attributed to a few major structural changes in American society. The first is economic restructuring which influenced the decline of the middle class and growing socioeconomic inequality. Consequently, more people turned to welfare in order make ends meet. Unfortunately, the welfare system had essentially eliminated funding for subsidized housing and adopted increasingly
Ryback, Timothy. Rock around the Bloc: A History of Rock Music in Eastern Europe. New York: Oxford UP, 1990.
van Elteren, Mel. “The subculture of the Beats: a sociological revisit.” Journal of American Culture, Fall 1999, v 22, i3, pg 71.
"The first days of Disco were filled with hope, and joy. The last days of Disco might seem very similar the fall of the Roman Empire".
“Sex and the Social Dance” was a streaming video which examined the sexuality of social dances around the world. Regardless of geographical location or decade of popularity, dance conveyed social values. In particular, the sexuality was expressed through physical contact or lack thereof, in the gender roles of the dance, and in the purpose of the dance.