LE FREAK, C’EST CHIC! DISCO CULTURE AND WHIT STILLMAN’S THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO
LE FREAK, C’EST CHIC! DISCO CULTURE AND WHIT STILLMAN’S THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO

Summary/Abstract: Whit Stillman’s movie focuses on a phenomenon that retrospectively comes out as “more embarrassing for most Americans than Watergate” (David Schickler). I discuss in this essay the disco movement from a twofold perspective: historical and artistic. The historical one centers on the main stages in the development of disco culture, the clash with the rock culture and the message the former advanced, while the artistic perspective refers to an illustration of the phenomenon in the film The Last Days of Disco –a sociological romance which gives us a portrait of the class of yuppies that was on the rise in the eighties. The aim of the present research is to shed light on the bizarre mixture of fascination and loathing that the disco culture produced and on the lifestyles and attitudes that this hugely popular musical style, which is the precursor of nowadays genre-crossing, gender-bending dance music, clubs and nightlife culture, triggered.

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