Rejecting the Center: Radical Grassroots Politics in the 1970s — Second-wave Feminism as a Case Study
2008; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 43; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1177/0022009408095422
ISSN1461-7250
Autores Tópico(s)Music History and Culture
ResumoOn a warm summer evening in 1979, 7000 violent baseball fans staged a miniature riot at Chicago's Comiskey Park, interrupting a doubleheader between the Chicago White Sox and the Detroit Tigers and leaving their hometown stadium in tatters. 'It wasn't bad pitching that incited the mob to storm the field between games,' explained a newspaper account. 'It was disco.'1 Weeks before, in an attempt to reverse declining ticket sales, the White Sox's corporate promotions department had designated 12 July as 'Disco Demolition Night'. Working in conjunction with Steve Dahl, a popular disc jockey who drew strong ratings in Chicago's working-class, white communities, the team offered a reduced admission rate of 98 cents to any fan who brought a disco record to the park. Between games, Dahl who for several months had been delighting listeners by destroying disco albums on the air, because, he explained, 'disco sucks' would detonate the records in center field, thus ridding America of the scourge that was Donna Summer. From a simple numbers perspective, the gimmick worked. Between 50,000 and 55,000 ticketholders well above the average attendance gained admission to the stadium, while another 10,000 were turned away at the doors. But by the middle of the first game, which the Tigers ultimately won, four-to-one, frustrated Sox fans began throwing LPs onto the field, frisbee-style. Others heaved banners that read, 'Disco Sucks.' When Dahl blew up his accumulated cache of vinyl during the intermission, tearing an enormous hole in the center-field grass, thousands of fans stormed the field, ripping up the batting cage, tearing out bases, igniting small fires, setting off firecrackers, and screaming, 'Disco Sucks!' Thirty-nine people were arrested, and many more injured in the ensuing chaos.2 For anyone familiar with the standard historiography of American politics after the 1960s, an obvious explanation for the Disco Demolition Night riot might center on the desire of white, working-class baseball fans to strike out against an art form that they associated with African Americans, gays and
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