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The Kind of Places Discos AreAwake!—1979 | March 22
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What is this “pure primitive emotion”—the essence of the disco experience—that is elicited from dancers? Show Business, a professional trade journal, gives us an idea in its article “A Dynamic Decade of Disco,” saying:
“An aura of acceptance surrounds the disco trend . . . Antiquated sexual mores, which were successfully battled during the sixties, have yielded to a new sexual freedom in which people deal with their desires honestly and participate without guilt.
“Gays are dancing side-by-side with straights, and neither could care less. It is this multi-faceted freedom that constitutes the soul of the disco, and its heart is the pulsating disco beat.”
Free, liberated sexual expression—abandonment of restraints—that is the essence, the soul, of disco. Surely this is reminiscent of ancient fertility dances where worshipers broke loose in frenzied, passion-arousing movements that may well have culminated with participants engaging in sexual intercourse so as to coax “Mother Earth” to yield new crops.
True, not all discos necessarily encourage the casting off of inhibitions, but disco is identified with such a ‘sexually-freed’ life-style. “What differentiates discomania from most of its predecessors is its overt tendency to spill over into orgy,” explains Esquire magazine. “All disco is implicitly orgy . . . By offering the instant and total gratification of all sexual desires in an atmosphere of intense imaginative excitement, the disco-inspired orgy promotes the dawning of an exalted state of consciousness, of literal exstasis, or standing outside the body.”
Emphasis on Self
Some may think of disco particularly as a disciplined form of dance featuring the Hustle, and for some it may be that. Yet this really is not what disco is all about. Rather, the attention of dancers is generally focused not so much on dancing with someone else, but on doing one’s own thing—‘getting down’—as the saying is. The scene is one of sexual exhibitionism.
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The Kind of Places Discos AreAwake!—1979 | March 22
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“Saturday Night Fever”
The main character of the movie lives for just one thing—to shine at the disco on Saturday night. The sexual escapades of the disco crowd are featured, including oral sex, which is performed out in the car during interludes to the dancing. The language is of the filthiest kind. Yet all of this is presented as normal—the way of life among those who go to discos.
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The Kind of Places Discos AreAwake!—1979 | March 22
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Disco’s blatant exploitation of sex, including attempts to arouse listeners sexually, was also noted in Time magazine. Its article “Gaudy Reign of the Disco Queen” said: “Back in 1976 . . . she got a gold record by simulating orgasm 22 times.”
Disco album covers, too, give an idea of the type of music they contain. Nudity is sometimes featured, although sexual exploitation is often more subtle. Discoworld says of one cover: “The stances of Jaqui and Dodie, combined with Ednah’s, create a three-letter symbol which on casual observation is invisible to consciousness, but instantly perceivable at the unconscious level: S-E-X.”
The dress styles of the disco crowd are also in keeping with the emphasis on sex. The book Disco Fever shows a photograph of a dancer at a New York disco. Her dress is slit to the waist and her leg is uplifted, showing an inside view of almost her entire thigh. The caption reads: “The scene . . . sums up the appeal of disco.” Paulette Weiss, staff writer of Stereo Review magazine, says of those caught up in the disco experience: “I’ve seen women strip off their clothes on a dance floor.”
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