The Golden Age of Gay Nightlife: Performing Glamour and Deviance in Los Angeles and West Hollywood, 1966--2013
- Degree Grantor:
- University of California, Santa Barbara. Theater Studies
- Degree Supervisor:
- Ninotchka D. Bennahum
- Place of Publication:
- [Santa Barbara, Calif.]
- Publisher:
- University of California, Santa Barbara
- Creation Date:
- 2013
- Issued Date:
- 2013
- Topics:
- Performing Arts, GLBT Studies, American Studies, and Theater History
- Keywords:
- Nightlife,
Gay,
Queer,
Performance,
History, and
Lesbian - Genres:
- Online resources and Dissertations, Academic
- Dissertation:
- Ph.D.--University of California, Santa Barbara, 2013
- Description:
The last five decades marked the golden age of gay nightlife as bars and clubs served as the primary social venues for marginalized gay men and lesbians in Los Angeles. The performance stages within these spaces became theaters for drag queens, actors and other performers to speak to the values and struggles of their audiences, while the dance floors granted patrons license to embody the meaning of songs and to renew themselves through improvised movement. These businesses incubated new subcultures like disco clones, lipstick lesbians, fetish queers, and queer punks that represented interventions in gay and lesbian identities. Through interviews, periodicals and extant club artifacts, I reconstruct the narratives of these entertainments not only to establish the legacy of their artists and entrepreneurs, but also to expose the mechanism by which gay nightlife has transformed sexual norms and popular culture in the United States.
This dissertation examines how the gay and lesbian communities of Los Angeles have deployed nightlife to define, contest and promote themselves in the years following the birth of gay liberation. The circulation of bodies throughout the club space demonstrated the agency of participants in their interactions with various artists as well as the potential for creative and sexual connections among individuals. Gay clubs constitute spectators as co-producers of entertainment with paid performers, and empower political dissenters and sexual deviants to experiment with performance modes and corporeal experiences. Within the artistic and social laboratories of the clubs, these performances of glamour and deviance interrogated queerness and heteronormativity alike and functioned as catalysts for radical change in nightlife and beyond.
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (311 pages)
- Format:
- Text
- Collection(s):
- UCSB electronic theses and dissertations
- Other Versions:
- http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqm&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3596151
- ARK:
- ark:/48907/f3k935mf
- ISBN:
- 9781303425714
- Catalog System Number:
- 990040770480203776
- Copyright:
- Andrew Henkes, 2013
- Rights:
In Copyright
- Copyright Holder:
- Andrew Henkes
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