(Simply write something, and I will sort it out when I have a chance)
Disco comes from the French discothèque, which is a combination of library and CD, which literally means CD collection or CD temple, emphasizing the nature of space at a glance. In addition, as a dance music, disco mainly cooperates with the action of dancing, which also implies its spatial attribute. You can't go to the open air like a rock festival in the 1960s.
Let's talk about other attributes of disco. I haven't studied music specifically. These are what I got from reading books and still need to be verified. Disco beats 120 beats per minute and loops back and forth without pause. Such attributes are suitable for escape and escape, as if you can be happy all the time in the rhythm. The other is the great invention of DJs: constantly mixing music, and rhythms, to stimulate people who enjoy disco. This is connected to the movie. The structure of the lives of men and women in the movie is like a disco in the hands of a DJ. Love and friendship are paired with each other, and there is also a discussion of pair off in the film.
The rise of disco is the aftermath of various liberation movements in the 1960s. The space formed by disco, various clubs, from Andy Warhol's Factory, Studio 54 to Club Kids, brought disco culture into burger joints/waste workshops, from secret to open, From anonymity to overwhelming fame, from underground to pop culture, disco was revolutionary. Disco culture is a rebellion against mainstream culture, a challenge to a white/heterosexual/male dominated society where young people seek identity, escape oppressive LGBT, independence-seeking people of color and women shine here, with music and clothing language to express themselves. The movie also recognizes this and shows it to the audience, why the characters love disco, there is always a place in human nature to be attracted by disco, to gain recognition/love in disco, to show individuality and independence.
But after disco became mainstream culture, then its decline came. I think the reasons are that the way people consume music has changed. Music has changed from a dancer to a main dish. The rise of Music Video has greatly changed disco. In the movie, Charlotte keeps saying that she is going to the TV industry, which is implied. In addition, venereal diseases and drugs buried the great disco. Among the escapers, the emergence of drugs enhanced the escape and enjoyment, and also made people more unscrupulous. The proliferation of various STIs, the G and H mentioned in the movie, are the most deadly It's the emergence of AIDS (interestingly, Chloe Sevigny played an innocent HIV-infected teenage girl a few years before the film), conservative opposition and the city's regulatory powers to lock up the disco. The director didn't know that 9/11 in just a few short years would completely seal disco, terrorists changed the perception of public space, think of today's covid19, and future research on public space will be more interesting, these are all digressions. Another point is that in disco, the binary opposition of space (mainly public and private) dissolves. The two heroines live under the same roof for economic reasons. Because of space sharing, conflicts arise, but in the disco space , on the one hand, their private space extends to this, on the other hand, they solve problems in the disco space, such as proposing to move out and reconciliation.
But we know that disco is not dead, and Josh's declaration is actually Whit Stillman's. Faced with the history and legacy of disco, we still have a lot of stories to dig and tell. Disco is great, it may be a fantasy, like a movie, but it is also real, like memory, like history.
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