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Jun. 30 | 2012 Bode-Pearson Prize
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Resources: Abstracts of American Studies Dissertations
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Avery, Anthony P. "Folklore and Alternative Masculinities in a Rave Scene," American Studies, University of New Mexico, July 2004.
Rave is a neo-tribal, non-alcoholic, nocturnal dance party that is primarily participated in, performed, and produced by middle-class white youth genders. I argue that the rave folk event attracts many teen-aged boys and young men because it is a safe, shared space to explore alternative masculinities based on a developed value system of Peace, Love, Unity and Respect (PLUR) at the core of a constructed folk event. I demonstrate the creative interplay between the dancing male body and ecstatic trance dance, in the cultural context of the Albuquerque, New Mexico rave dance scene. My ethnographic observations especially note uses of the dancing male body to legitimate a type of male femininity as expressed through ecstatic trance dance. In specific, I find that the dancing male body is reconstituted as a floating signifier; it has no fixed meaning on the dance floor due to ecstatic trance movements. I consider that the dancing male body is shaking off gender gesture codes as “masculine” (i.e., macho stiffness). Losing masculine subjectivity through ecstatic trance dance produces the decentering of “male” from the dancing body. Ecstatic trance dance is a signifier for male femininity, a performance of excessive, effeminate gestures circumscribed by repetitive electronic dance music. While women feel a sense of liberation because there is a lack of the male gaze that is typical in night club environments, men are transformed into softer types of masculinity through the awareness of their bodies and it comes in references to a rave value system of PLUR.
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