Club Kids- A Celebration of Sin

Going forward into the contemporary design process, I'm looking at the Club Culture of the 1980s as it appears there are similarities between this era in New York City and 1920s Weimar Berlin.

Noted for their outlandish costumes and brazen recreational drug use, the Club Kids were subject to both criticism and admiration. In a slightly warped sense, these people were seen as celebrities of the club culture scene, notorious for their lives of decadence and excess.

Kabuki, one of the original Club Kids

Unknown. (2013). Boundless Innovation. Available: http://imgfave.com/view/4062650. Last accessed 24 Nov 2014.

If the fictional Kit Kat club is Cabaret's home of risque nightlife, it's real-life counterpart has to be The Limelight club in New York. Part of the Limelight chain, this venue was the most infamous of it's type. Formerly a church, the building was acquired by the club chain in 1982 but it was not until 1996 that the club was met with the full glare of media attention when it was linked to the murder of a drug dealer who frequented the venue. Having gained nototiety, it is no surprise that the club is still talked about today:

"I'm bored with that line. I never use it anymore. My new line is “In 15 minutes everybody will be famous”. 

              - Andy Warhol

Warhol, the god-like genius of pop art who in November 1983 hosted the opening night of the Limelight club in New York, had presciently foreseen the democratization of fame in his now iconic one line manifesto in 1968, later riffing on his own credo out of frustration with its journey into cliché.

The Limelight spun that riff into a gyrating, vinyl clad, gender-bending, genre-hopping, and rhythm-soaked reality. It literally hummed with the electricity flowing from the sense that everyone in that wild church of emancipated hedonism was on the cusp of leaping with simultaneous and euphoric abandon through the looking glass of fame - just being there was celebrity itself."

Stewart, B. (). Limelight- Peter Gatien, Un Peu D'Histoire. Available: http://www.culturedivine.com/limelight.html. Last accessed 24 Nov 2014.

This extract on the activities The Limelight was so famous for, really emphasises the similarities between Club Culture and Weimar Berlin. The term "gender-bending" conjures images of Cabaret's Emcee, my focus character for the contemporary look and was clearly a stand-out feature of many of the Club Kids. As Emcee is gender questionable, I find the idea of Drag Makeup a good route of research for the character. So infamous were the original Club Kids that the style is being emulated today by a group calling themselves the Screaming Queens who can be hired as entertainment for parties. 

One of the "Screaming Queens"

Unknown. (). Club Kids. Available: http://www.screamingqueens.com/club_kids. Last accessed 24 Nov 2014.

I am considering Kabuki's pale complexion with bright contouring as possible inspiration for my contemporary interpretation of Emcee.