I dislike disco, but it also strangely fascinates me. Not for the music itself, which I find overly commercial and vapid, but the cultural moment that surrounds it and how quickly it rose and fell. Starting in a few clubs in major cities, primarily New York, disco rapidly expanded its audience and became the dominate force in popular music for a few years. Established artists even felt they needed to make a disco album to keep up with the trend, including, most famously and bizarrely, KISS. Saturday Night Fever was one of the highest grossing movies of a year that also included Star Wars and Smokey and the Bandit.
But just as quickly as disco rose, it also fell. Hard rock/metal fans hated it, and the emerging punks got in on the action, see “Saturday Night Holocaust” by the Dead Kennedys. Yes, punks and metalheads came together to hate disco. And most famously, there was a “Disco Demolition Night.” If you ever want an idea on how quickly disco fell, you can look at two movies made in 1980 and both starring Leslie Nielsen. One of these films, Prom Night, actually contains a disco scene made entirely to show how hip the movie was. The other, Airplane!, jokes about the death of disco.
Now, if you’re a normal person, you likely view the death of disco as a necessary backlash against a bunch of shallow, insipid music that was only concerned with the next party or line of coke. This was the era when great musicians were expected to largely focus on making significant concept albums – even Creedence Clearwater Revival got heat for simply trying to put songs together in a decent order rather than trying to make Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band or The Dark Side of the Moon. Needless to say, no disco artist was going to focus on making a great album. It was a singles-driven genre. In the world of ordinary people (non-Studio 54 attendees), the reaction against disco was because it was cheesy, unserious music that the general public finally got tired of.
But the world of the cultural Left is not the world of normal people. In their eyes, the real reason for the backlash against disco was because of “racism” and “homophobia.” As the Left’s narrative goes, the emerging Reagan America Coalition just couldn’t stand that popular music was being made by black and gay people; therefore, it needed to be destroyed. No, I am not making this up, this narrative is real and is taken as fact by the Left. Of course, it does not hold up to scrutiny. If there really was a huge backlash against the presence of black people in popular music, then the acclaim of Michael Jackson cannot be explained. Michael Jackson was not just simply popular. In the 1980s, he was one of the most admired entertainers to ever live (he was called “The King of Pop”). He even had his own video game, and his music videos would routinely run twice as long as the actual song (if not more).
Nor was it really a reaction against gay people. It’s hard to fathom now, but the average person was blissfully unaware of such things at the time. Nearly every Boomer I’ve talked to has told me they were shocked to find out Elton John was not a heterosexual. And as far as disco goes, the U.S. Navy actually commissioned the Village People to write a song – “In the Navy” – about the Navy for a recruitment video. It was not until the top brass actually watched the music video that they finally figured “it” out. Military intelligence everyone!
But while the Left’s narrative concerning the death of disco is bunk, it does allow for a fascinating look into their basic mentality. There may not be much proof in their assertions as to what caused the destruction of disco, but the fact that they all claim it and accept the narrative so uncritically demonstrates just how paranoid they are of being called racist. Think of it like “The Emperor’s New Clothes” – “Don’t you see the racism? Only a real anti-racist can see the racism here. What’s the matter, you don’t see the racism? What about the homophobia? That must mean you are a racist homophobe!”
And because they live in mortal fear of being called racist, they will go along with that narrative whenever someone calls something racist. If you’ve ever wondered why they turn on something so quickly, that’s why. And much like the young boy in Hans Christian Andersen’s folktale, the correct response is to ask, “What racism?” and watch their worldview fall apart. It is built on nothing more than not wanting to be considered as the Bad Thing™.
All it really takes is one person, and so much of what they’ve managed to achieve is through a culture of silence and intimidation. That’s why they still fear Trump as much as they do, even long after he’s proven that he governs more like George Bush than Nayib Bukele. He’s breached enough codes of etiquette that they fear they cannot keep up this little charade much longer. They know as soon as enough people no longer pretend to see racism everywhere, or an even more horrifying prospect to them, no longer care, it’s all over for them.
anti-disco’s supposed anti-black racism was even retconned into a BeeGees documentary a few years ago. The documentary presented the Disco Demolition night at the Chicago stadium (in between double header baseball games) as an “anti-black” thing, complete with a black “talking head” espousing the idea as if it were fact. I was in Chicago then & the “Disco Sucks” thing was NOT anti-black whatsoever, it was pro rock & roll. It was low key against the feminization & effete-ness (& gayness!) of the disco scene. It was more a lamentation for the loss of testosterone influence in music. It was in NO way “anti-black” – that idea has been retconned into it by the usual suspects in years. Good noticing by the author, btw!
Chic the band is the only decent thing to come out of disco,
Bass player is one of the Best,
The song Funny Bone great
Instrumental
Oy vey! What’s so wrong about race mixing? Race mixing is a win-win for everyone. L’chaim!
On the subject of, “how to deal with liberal accusations of racism” , I’ve always had the most success with countering their arguments with, “you’re just racist against white people.” As odd as it sounds, it has worked dozens of times against the so called “intelligentsia”. Most mainstream liberals in the south will back down immediately in the face of being accused of being racist themselves. As I’m not on the Internet much I don’t know how effective this is when it’s not a real person standing in front of them and they are unable to hide behind an internet server.