Comments on: Carl’s Rock Songbook #68: THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO

By: Carl’s Rock Songbook #76: Rap and the Summer of ’89 » Postmodern Conservative | A First Things Blog

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 23:48:50 +0000

[...] rock but which are commonly conflated with it, contrasted with it, etc., as I did with the posts on disco, or with various ones distinguishing R+B and rock n’ roll from Rock. That’s what I’m up to [...]

By: Carl’s Rock Songbook #69: THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO, Pt. 2 » Postmodern Conservative | A First Things Blog

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 18:30:58 +0000

[...] But with disco’s popularity, i.e., with success at really achieving what I described last time as a rebirth of social-dancing culture, the Club is forced to pick and choose. (It could have adopted a “first in the door” policy, [...]

By: HT

HT — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 18:11:24 +0000

Brian: I never talk about film. Not even once, because no see it. I do talk about Carl’s essay, always, from beginning. I make that clear.

I think it strange that Carl sort of praise Studio 54 without no mention of drug and sex. That all.

Please continue learned critic of my stupid posts.

(You can lead a young pomocon to a text, but you can’t make him read it with understanding.)

By: Brian

Brian — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 16:42:34 +0000

HT: Your initial post was at least half about cocaine and how dare a disco movie not mention it. My response to you was to ask what the heck you were talking about, since first this subject had nothing to do with the movie review, and second and more important you were merely showing your grotesque ignorance about the movie (which at least you admitted up front before your nonsensical rant). Your posts at 8:07 and 8:31, allegedly in response, don’t mention cocaine at all, which makes your 10:58 post pitifully comical and juvenile. Since I don’t see you anywhere on the masthead here, I think I’ll ignore your kind suggestion of going elsewhere, and treat any further emanations from your keyboard as so much background trolling static. Have a nice life, dude.

By: HT

HT — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 16:09:20 +0000

Carl: I will definitely rent the two Stillman films I haven’t seen, and stand ready to rank him a more “major” figure if I think it’s warranted. I should see Metropolitan again, it’s been a long time; I DO like his sense of humor.

But it can’t be a coincidence that (1) Stillman’s a preppie who makes films about privileged preppies living in a preppie fishbowl, (2) Stillman is formally unambitious, and (3) he’s a darling of the Right, which apparently has this nostalgic longing for some kind of a ‘natural’ (read: artificial) more-or-less Anglo aristocracy.

By: HT

HT — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 15:58:53 +0000

Brian, if you *read my post*, I dodged nothing. Please go off to some more primitive blog where your adolescent emotional displays will be applauded. The good folks here, though I disagree with them on much, are all quite literate.

By: Brian

Brian — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 15:10:30 +0000

HT: You completely dodge the question of what the heck the point was supposed to be of ranting about cocaine in your initial post? That was the one thing you latched on to, bizarrely, and what I responded to. You don’t get to suddenly pretend that didn’t happen…

By: Peter Lawler

Peter Lawler — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 14:56:27 +0000

So I’m going to follow Carl’s advice and study DAMSELS. You should follow Carl’s advice and engage in the inter-textual approach of comparing DISCO the film and DISCO the novel.
I really, really liked TAKING WOODSTOCK, by the way.

By: Carl Eric Scott

Carl Eric Scott — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 14:56:08 +0000

HT, I think you were the one who recommended Taking Woodstock in the comments a while back…saw it recently thanks to that, and you were right, a very good film, a nice counterpoint to The Doors reminding us of the good sides of the Counter Culture Revolution, while still reminding us of shortcomings. Incredible coordination of crowd scenes.

As for your criticism here…as to what I write here on the film itself, well, I’ve said upfront that it’s limited to only a couple topics of the film, and that it’s seeking to convey Stillman’s view, a view my own critique of the broader disco sound and musician-displacing tendency (see #67) does not ultimately agree with. But it is an interesting view, and one we can learn from.

(And right now as I read the bizarre Pete Townsend autobiography, I’m feeling fine about my anti-hard-rock instincts that would on most nights favor Studio 54 over the Fillmore East of the 70s.)

Those who have seen the film of course know that it contains a biting critique of the coke-use and sexual free-for-all that was for many folks the main features of the disco “movement.” And an acknowledgment of the criminality of not a few of the club owners. Stillman acknowledges all of this while nonetheless giving us a vision of what the core meaning of disco really was for not a few of its participants.

So some of your complaining above is just, uninformed.

Now as for your claiming that “the cultural Right” has a tendency to “latch like a remora onto some good but *thoroughly minor* and somewhat ethically ambiguous cultural figure like Stillman,” well, I suspect you’re onto something.

However, I don’t know one way or the other about his personal ethical ambiguity, and don’t think it usually should be the place for a critic like me to work discussion of such into his essays.

And, despite the support DAMSELS will give to your claims of “thoroughly minor,” I really think you’re wrong, and I think I know that careful consideration of Stillman’s films, by conservatives as well as others, is going to go on for a long time.

By: HT

HT — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 13:31:44 +0000

By the way, let me recommend again Ang Lee’s film “Taking Woodstock”. It has a humanistic tone that is actually much like Stillman’s: somewhat wistful, fondly pointing up a milieu’s minor absurdities while noting its unique graces. It is amazing that a director born in China could get the USA of the period so right. (I don’t like his other films, but this one is a winner.)

Another rock film (of sorts) to consider: Antonioni’s Blow-Up, which shows the mid-sixties version of “fashionista materialism”.