After 35 years of beltg out YMCA and In the Navy, the Village People are still bothered by one qutn: what’s this gay subtext that people keep mentng?They have been scribed as “the first" name="scriptn
Contents:
- THE GAY ECSTASY OF THE VILLAGE PEOPLE
- A GAY IN REMEMBERS LIFE THE VILLAGE, AND THE VILLAGE PEOPLE
- WE ARE NOT A GAY ACT, VILLAGE PEOPLE SAY (WH A STRAIGHT FACE)
THE GAY ECSTASY OF THE VILLAGE PEOPLE
Fifty years after Stonewall, Felipe Rose—“The Indian” om the Village People—remembers New York Cy’s Greenwich Village as the gay rights movement took hold. * how many village people were gay *
However, be this memory real or simulacm, strik me as hilar given what the Village People are universally known for: tongue--cheek gay nuendo, sparsely vered by a flimsy veneer of hyper-macho drag. However the service’s tomatic n-on feature clearly disagreed and cid that, when Cowley’s sensual, gay bathhoe-ready rhythms end, ‘Macho Man’ would be a great follow-up. And I was fascated by the empowerment I felt om Village People, the tle track on their eponymo but album, and an unambiguo ll for gay liberatn that sounds more ak to a prott chant than a chart topper.
Said first three albums (and pecially the first two) rry a surprisgly polil energy; the more popular tracks, such as the eponymo Macho Man, might be vacuo but others – take I Am What I Am, a fiant chant that suggts exactly what you’d expect to suggt – envisn a world which male bodi uld be ee to e together whout Francis was one of the gay mecs the Village People celebrated on their visnary but album (Cred: Alamy)As far as evokg same-sex love go, there was a precent – om dis’s genis, queered sexual posivy was the life blood of the genre, as Peter Shapiro intifi Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Dis.
“As the cultural adjunct of the gay pri movement, dis was the embodiment of the pleasure-is-polics ethos of a new generatn of gay culture, a generatn fed up wh police raids, dranian laws and the darkns of the closet, ” he wr. – Jacqu MoraliIn her dis chronicle Hot Stuff: Dis and the Remakg of Amerin Culture, Alice Echols rells a 1978 Rollg Stone article which Jacqu Morali – the French producer who, alongsi Henri Bolelo and eventual group lear Victor Willis, created the Village People – put forward a manifto of gay visibily: “Morali outed himself, and emphasised that as a homosexual he was mted to endg the cultural visibily of gay men. The batn of lol alone should immediately tip you off as to who Village People was beg sold to, as any gay man the late 70s would regnise this as a lndry list of US gay mecs.
A GAY IN REMEMBERS LIFE THE VILLAGE, AND THE VILLAGE PEOPLE
* how many village people were gay *
It knowgly evok the sex-as-polics attu of gay liberatn (“Love the way I please / don’t put no chas on me”), and Victor Willis’ cry of “leather, leather, leather baby” speaks to the era’s emergent gay macho archetype. The song also evok the great gay urban migratn of the 1970s, durg which gays and lbians across the US moved to urban centr – San Francis, Los Angel, New York Cy – en masse.
This theme is seamlsly rried over to In Hollywood (Everybody is a Star), which envisns Hollywood as a rtoonish hub of opulence, universal succs and stardom – an aspiratnal portra for a historilly margalised their reer went on, the Village People creasgly urted the mastream, cludg wh 1980 film Can’t Stop the Mic (Cred: Alamy)For somethg unabashedly homosexual you need only turn to Fire Island, named after the most inic gay hotspot the world, a th strip of land some 50 off the ast of New York Cy, revered for s hookup spots and iastic danc. And then we e to the tular track Village People, the most emphatilly polil of them all; a percsive chant that lls upon the ‘Village people’, th for gay men, to “take our place the Sun”: “To be ee, ” Village People clare, “We mt be / all for one. Empowerg and queer-foced as their early lyrics may have been, the msage quickly shifted once mastream succs was urted and emed to be more profable than their ial target group of gay dis-goers.
WE ARE NOT A GAY ACT, VILLAGE PEOPLE SAY (WH A STRAIGHT FACE)
But for a gay man, is impossible, too, not to have a visceral rponse to Village People and s – somewhat superficial but credibly energisg – ll for gay liberatn, such unambiguo terms. Certaly, if the tune mak me ecstatic, I n’t beg to thk of what would be like for a guy 1979, newly disverg his gayns and hearg for the first time a pulsatg New York nightclub.
Hugh' look was one of the group's many nods to New York's gay muny, which flew right over the heads of lns of fans the 70s, when homosexualy was not wily acknowledged, discsed, or accepted.
He saw Felipe Rose dancg tradnal Native Amerin clothg at a New York club and cid to form a group around him, placg newspaper ads seekg "gay sgers and dancers, very good-lookg and wh mtach.