Not surprising, really...the NYC scene had been been wallowing in a camp-ironic revival of retro-schmaltz for years by that point. I suspect Danceteria lot were belatedly picking up on a lot of the camp cabaret offerings that that were common fare at certain East Village clubs earlier in the decade. Maybe some of it was a holdover for the backward-looking aesthetics of certain punk acts (e.g. Blondie). Or the fact that early John Waters films were standard cinematic fare with that crowd. You see it turning up fairly frequently in a number of “no-wave” films from that time.
(BTW: Speaking of such stuff, it only now struck me how ironic it was that Godard’s “Alphaville” was such a frequent stylistic reference point with that NYC crowd in the late 1970s. Y’know, seeing how the release of “Bladerunner” was only a year or so away.)
Not surprising, really...the NYC scene had been been wallowing in a camp-ironic revival of retro-schmaltz for years by that point. I suspect Danceteria lot were belatedly picking up on a lot of the camp cabaret offerings that that were common fare at certain East Village clubs earlier in the decade. Maybe some of it was a holdover for the backward-looking aesthetics of certain punk acts (e.g. Blondie). Or the fact that early John Waters films were standard cinematic fare with that crowd. You see it turning up fairly frequently in a number of “no-wave” films from that time.
ReplyDelete(BTW: Speaking of such stuff, it only now struck me how ironic it was that Godard’s “Alphaville” was such a frequent stylistic reference point with that NYC crowd in the late 1970s. Y’know, seeing how the release of “Bladerunner” was only a year or so away.)