Meet Alec Dent, the Opinion Desk Editor of The Daily Tar Heel.
I have rather an eclectic taste in music. While I am particularly fond of indie pop and songs from the '70s and '80s, I’ll listen to pretty much anything — well, except for country, which, let’s face it, is the Adam Sandler of music genres.
Point being, my playlists tend to be a hodgepodge of sounds: some ELO here, some Saint Motel there, maybe a bit of Chance the Rapper sprinkled in. And, yeah, I’ll admit it, George Michael appears across most of my playlists, because you know what? He’s underrated as an artist. I mean the man had 10 number one hits over the course of his career, not to mention the greatest pop Christmas song of all time — come at me Mariah Carey fans, I dare you. I’m not saying he’s the greatest musician of all time, but come on, he deserves more love than he gets. But, ahem, I digress.
Anyway, to get back to the subject at hand — which, may the Associated Press have mercy on my soul, I still haven’t told you anything about! Talk about a buried lede! — about a week ago, I had the opportunity to use one of my favorite movie quotes (viewable here) in a debate about romanticism in a class.
The line in question comes from Whit Stillman’s “The Last Days of Disco,” the final film in his so-called "Doomed-Bourgeois-in-Love” trilogy, which, in addition to quotable lines like the one above, features one of the greatest movie soundtracks of all time. As you might guess, it’s pretty disco heavy. Remembering Stillman’s words of wisdom — and Polonius’ words of immense stupidity — put me in the mood to revisit the “Last Days of Disco” soundtrack, and I’ve been listening to it, and disco as a whole, nonstop ever since.
Disco is just such a fun genre. It’s energetic and upbeat, with a certain joie de vivre that other genres just don’t have. One of the songs in my playlist is about the murder of Rasputin, but it’s impossible to listen to without wanting to just get up and dance. You simply can’t listen to disco and not be put in a good mood.
At the end of “The Last Days of Disco”, one of the protagonists, Josh Neff, gives an impassioned apologia for genre.
“Disco will never be over,” he says. “It will always live in our minds and hearts. Something like this, that was this big, and this important, and this great, will never die. Oh, for a few years, maybe many years, it'll be considered passé and ridiculous. It will be misrepresented and caricatured and sneered at, or, worse, completely ignored. People will laugh about John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John, white polyester suits and platform shoes and going like this” — the disco pose, you know the one — “But we had nothing to do with those things and still loved disco. Those who didn't understand will never understand: disco was much more, and much better, than all that. Disco was too great, and too much fun, to be gone forever! It's got to come back someday. I just hope it will be in our own lifetimes.”
Well Josh, this week I’m doing my part to try to make that happen.
