The music group The Commodores and actress Donna Summer on the set of the Columbia Pictures movie ” Thank God It’s Friday” in 1978.
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Maitra, A. (2011). Hearing queerly: Musings on the ethics of disco/sexuality. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 25(3), 375–396.
Ani Maitra is an associate professor at Colgate University. Maitra, A. (2011) uses the term ‘disco/sexuality’ in this essay to represent both factors of what it meant to be part of the disco community back in the day; liberating and repressive.
Specifically on the lives of the sexually marginalized who have been aware of race, class and gender, one of A. Maitra’s key question is: “is it worth hanging onto disco as a queer cultural critic in the US?” A. Maitra starts off with the notion of Epistemology. Di Stefano’s (Tell me Why) The epistemology of Disco is a video that is thoroughly analyzed for having underlying homophobic antics which present disco as a promiscuous setting where men engage in the most sexual activities with each other while also linking this setting with AIDS/HIV. It paints disco as a ‘disease’, presuming that it’s such a coincidence that disco’s ‘death’ is being pronounced as AIDS. A. Maitra critiques this so-called epistemology of disco as something that will never truly be determined due to the irreversible representation of gay men and the gay liberation movement of the time. A. Maitra adds on to the limits of disco/sexual ‘identification’. Richard Dyer’s ‘In defense of disco’ fails to interpret key points of the fact that one’s experience with disco has to do with sexuality, race and class entirely; not this universal feel of what it means to be on the disco floor. By harshly analyzing and connecting even more interpretations of Disco floor to one another, we see a pattern by which the gay liberation movement is always misrepresented and seen as exactly what it isn’t. They continuously present disco as ‘meaningless’ or ‘repetitive’.
Non-disco society responded to disco in such a way that it was doomed to have a great fall as it created hidden racist and homophobic sentiments to the people that simply enjoyed disco music.
Donna Summer
Photo by Francesco Scavullo
Mankowski, D. L. (2010). Gendering the disco inferno: Sexual revolution, liberation, and popular culture in 1970s America (Order No. 3429429). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I. (762032418).
Diana L. Mankoski studies disco as a revelation and specifically how disco incorporated gender and sexuality as a means to challenge conventional norms. Disco is a culture of music, dancing, fashion and movies. Mankoski writes on what it meant for something so new yet controversial to shape much of the world we know today. It offered a space for a wide range of gender and sexual identities to be represented where they felt the safest and actually fear less the outside world in forming such communities. For example, women were able to sexually express themselves other than the usual rock or pop that usually dominated mainstream media at the times. However, this sexual agency was actually one that quickly became objectified as women were for men, actually causing divas and disco dances to have to compromise in dangerous or uncomfortable situations. Women were trying to simultaneously define their own sexuality while avoiding sexual exploitation. Black divas would try to decrease this sort of exploitation by putting forward characters of their own which were important for increased feminism in popular culture. Moreover, “disco’s cultural influence threatened and reshaped masculinity while opening spaces and acceptance (though limited) for the expression of gay pleasure and style.” This was one of the biggest impacts that disco did, which had both its positives and negatives outcomes. Overall, this piece brings out many of the reasons why eventually, groups of people found themselves through disco where they hadn’t before. Through clear sexual presentations of self, both men and women as well as various gender expressions were able to mirror their true identities and come to accept who they truly were and desired.
Source:https://www.proquest.com/docview/762032418/F4031F127A304BCFPQ/3?accountid=967
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