A Commitment to Clubbing

Smiling at a stranger in the dark confines of a hot and sweaty basement. Holding your arms up in the air, perhaps grasping the hand of someone nearby and cheering as the laser lights dip low over the crowd. Waiting for the bass-line to kick in so you can start stomping your feet on the sticky dance floor. The time nervously waiting in the queue to see your favourite DJ, hoping that the plans you have been making with your friends all week will come to fruition in one night of fun. It can be hard to put into words the commitment that many people hold towards clubbing, and indeed the intense enjoyment and joy clubbers garner from their time-out leisure pursuits. Clubbing is not, for the most part, a commitment to getting high from licit and illicit drug use, as is so often depicted by the media, and by politicians across the Western world who dogmatically and piously fight the war on drugs. This is not to deny that some people and their lives become blighted from so-called "recreational" drug use. Clubbing is indeed a commitment to the hedonism encouraged by our 24-hour consumer culture, a controlled loss of control which for some people can spiral out of control. Yet it is also a commitment to partying while remaining respectful and courteous to those around you. Club culture holds the promise of tolerance towards others, of celebrating life together through music and dance, of accepting that for this moment, and often regrettably this moment alone, a group of strangers can have fun together without punch-ups occurring over knocked elbows and spilt pints. Yet is this ethos of tolerance an apparition, the desert oasis mirage that club culture never reached? The divisions and distinctions within club culture have been highlighted by clubbers and cultural critics alike, as the idealistic "loved-up" dreams of the Acid House and Rave era in the U.K. dissolved with high-profile ecstasy deaths and the rise of urban gun culture. The loving dream, the story goes, turned into a living death. By the turn of the millennium Eminem was able to proclaim, "No one listens to Techno." British "superclubs" closed down (although others opened), or changed their music policies and promotion tactics to attract "Burberry-wearing beer boys." Sexually predatory behavior (supposedly) returned wholesale to the dance floor, making a mockery of the liberating versions of femininity that clubland promised female ravers. Alcohol and cocaine use rose within night-time leisure spaces, bringing with them governmental calls for crack-downs on the "binge drinking" that the licensed pub, bar and club industry encourages through "two-for-one" offers, happy hours and extended opening hours. It's a gloomy picture indeed for dance culture, a culture that to many writing from left and feminist academic traditions appeared to amount to little more