Party Monster: The Twisted Story of New York’s Club Scene Essay

The mid-1990s was a time of wealth and recreation for the United States, with the combination of economic progress and social liberty producing a new generation of spoiled, unrestrained and often genuinely reckless young ‘celebutantes. ’ As many Americans were making their fortune on the Wall Street or in the Silicon Valley, a counterculture of hedonistic abandon emerged not necessarily in response or even contrast to these patterns, but rather oblivious to them. Centered on the club scene in New York City, the nightlife excesses of this era would closely mirror those of the disco era in the late 1970s. Just as the music, drugs, sex and glamour had come to define such hotspots as Paradise Garage and Studio 54 in the 1970s, so too would such locations as the Limelight and the Tunnel become notorious for the bacchanalian events which transpired inside during the 1990s. The early to mid-90s would in fact play witness to a peak in debauchery and mayhem with some of the scene’s most prominent self-made figures devolving from mere hedonists to perpetrators of serious and grotesque criminal extremity. The real-life narrative of Michael Alig and the Club Kid scene to which he was a self-proclaimed icon is at once a cautionary tale remarking upon the extent to which superficiality can breed outright evil and simultaneously projecting itself as a twisted tale of celebrity intrigue. In the novel by former scenester James St. James, Disco Bloodbath, as well as in the 1999 documentary and the 2003 film, both entitled Party Monster, the events surrounding the rise, peak and fall of the New York club scene are suggested as the hazy underside of a cultural mirror. The figures at the center take on mythic proportions for the hugeness of their appetites, their unwillingness to compromise hedonism even for ethical reflection and their suggested parallel to the most extreme impulses in the broader culture. The film, directed by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato reached limited audiences and fairly consistent acclaim upon its 2003 release. However, in research of television footage, documentary material, newspaper articles and interviews, it becomes increasingly clear that the film does a compellingly accurate job at capturing the personas, ethos and destructiveness of its focal characters. In particular, Michael Alig, played by Macauley Culkin, and James St. James, portrayed by Seth Green, channel the impulsive stupidity that lay at the root of the scene. The New York club scene that is depicted in such vivid and aggressive color by the film at the center of this discussion is one which sprang from the decay of the disco scene. The sexual revolution of the seventies—which opened the door for an unprecedented freedom of expression in the urban gay communities that were so prominent to the club scene—gay way to a more cosmetic interest in gay fashion, gay aesthetics and gay lifestyle excesses during the plastic eighties. This transition gave birth to the new club archetype of the late decade, with figures such as Alig, St. James, DJ Keoki, Amanda Lepore, Sophia Lamar and Richie Rich rising to prominence. Most of these individuals shared the same background as wealthy trust fund children who determined to use college moneys provided by affluent parents in far off places to migrate to the heart of New York’s gay community to shop for clothes, drugs and party supplies. Generally, this is how the club scene would come to be, with the figures collectively creating a genuine and notable ‘happening,’ which centered on the core premises of indulgence in sexual immodesty, costuming, drug binging and non-stop, excessive partying. Most of these individuals would become connected by their shared interests, meeting in the same VIP lounges, after-parties, dance-floors and back-rooms. However, they would soon create their own shared agenda, which largely consisted of concocting the most decadent, elaborate and creative party and club events imaginable. Ingredients for the pursuit of this aim were universally related to the intake of heavy intoxicants such as ketamine, cocaine, heroin and ecstasy as well as the donning of making, costume and androgynous fixings. The connection between these individuals established something of a familial scene in which individuals engaged in free love and unabashed expression. Though there was an artistic oeuvre to the scene, particularly notable in the transgender excesses which distinguished the players, there was not necessarily any meaningful ideology or core intention other than to be, as Alig would so often demand, ‘fabulous. Those who were directly participatory in the club escapades, as would be shown in the film, were of minimal ideological grounding and came from errant and flimsy philosophical consideration. Interestingly though, these figures would with no small air of self-parody project various ideas about a mission or purpose in the proportion of their behaviors. In a very interesting broadcast which can be found on You Tube (http://www. youtube. com/watch? v=2h-JvWdPR0o), the Jane Whitney show would play host to a few members of this scene. In addition to demonstrating the notoriety to which these individuals had risen for essentially showing up to or planning elaborate party events, the talk show showed these to be a collective of very young individuals with a limited sense of purpose. In the sequence linked to above, it is clear that the notables featured on the show would come for a shared background generally distinguishable economic resource and few concerns beyond appearance and the pursuit of pleasurable activity. Richie Rich, Michael Alig, Walt Paper and others featured on the show struggle in coming to a common recognition of that which might be considered a central mission for the Club Kids. The Club Kids were a specific group of these scenestes who were noted for their role in defining said scene. Fixtures at the parties and discotheques, and even of the local gossip columns and celebrity reels, the Club Kids would become notorious for the extent to which they were willing to engage in excessive and what mainstream culture would consider downright dangerous behavior. In Party Monster the Club Kids are portrayed with some degree of sympathy, afforded by the source of most material concerning their activities, which tended to arise from the participants. Such is to say that many of those formerly involved in the scene would become successful as fashion designers, club promoters and performance artists. Indeed, referring back to the interview on Jane Whitney, the Club Kids cite Madonna and RuPaul as two individuals who had risen to genuine mainstream fame from the core of the club scene. In the discussion stimulated by Party Monster, we can see that the Club Kids were really a core of individuals who believed themselves to be engaged in some manner of social liberation. This much is hinted at and simultaneously contradicted in the Whitney interview. However, we can see a more palpable evidence that this is occurring in the alleged words of Michael Alig himself. As one who created his own image as the great party-promoter and chief merrymaker for his time and place, he had also come to play this part with a degree of individual excess that set him apart in a setting where this extremity was the norm. He would characterize his own social calling, according the film according to a personal impetus at how life should be pursued which is conspicuously hedonistic in the most genuine definition of the term. So would the Culkin-played character contend that â€Å"one day I realized I didn’t want to be like all the drearies and normals. I wanted to create a world full of color where everyone could play. One big party. . . that never ends. † (Bailey & Barbado, 1) To his perspective, there was a real mission and purpose in defying the gray habitations of mainstream society. As aspects of the lifestyle tendencies in such individuals were largely rejected by mainstream society—in particular their sexual proclivities and dug consumption habits—this would seem an appropriate framing for an existence of sheer indulgence. Perhaps more succinctly phrased is the explanation supplied by St. James himself in a 2003 interview with Ogunnaike, where he reflects with a degree of assume removal from this belief system today, on the idea that there was some kind of meaning or accomplishment to what was being done. As reported, â€Å"‘while Mr. St. James admits that he and his merry band of misfits were †nightmares and brats’,† he argues that there was an ideology, a club-kid agenda, behind the false eyelashes. †We were going to do away with sexual roles,† he explained. †Ã¢â‚¬â„¢Drag was going to be the norm. Drugs were going to be this gateway into this utopian society. ‘’’ (Ogunnaike, 1) Naturally, as this examination and the film clearly must contend with, the horrific events constituting the end of this scene would sharply counter such ambitions. Still, and quite interestingly, as is noted in a New York Times article from the time of the film’s release, there is concocted by the sympathies of the filmmakers and the author a tendency to frame the events of this time as somehow being worthy of note beyond their implications to the pursuit of fun. To this extent, it is noted that, â€Å"as hard as it is to imagine now, nightclubs seemed somehow important then. Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring were doing installations, the outre 4 a. m. fashion was more interesting than anything on the runways, and people seemed to emerge from the disco as fully formed celebrities. Alig was the last of these self-created downtown freaks. † (Van Meter, 1) The Club Kids, Alig here included, would be remarkable for their aggressive pursuit of the things this implied. The characters that made up the inner circle of the Club Kids were those perhaps most rampantly committed to the extremity of the lifestyle, which consisted of sexual swinging and a consumption of drugs that, by all accounts, is even downplayed in the film in order to prevent audiences from falling into disbelief. Such is to say that reports and self admission as the level of drug abuse in the scene during the late 80s and into the early 90s for such figures as James St. James and Michael Alig demonstrate that it was nothing less than deadline. Ironically, both of these figures have survived to present date to tell this story, but the latter has done so largely from within a prison cell. The story of the Club Kids might seem essentially unremarkable for its representation of New York City during this time. Such is to say that the metropolitan city has already become a lightning rod for drug use, sexual excess, homosexual liberation and nightclubbing. That a subculture had developed around this would be no major revelation either. Just as had occurred in the disco heyday of the seventies, in-crowd celebrities and self-avowed leaders of the scene would become omnipresent in defining the existence of a cultural occurrence. What tends to set this story is its worthy representation of the horrors which can truly be created in such a cauldron of thoughtlessness. There is, without question, a prime directive guiding the actions of the Club Kids which utterly rejects the premise of consequences. The drug abuse, sexual indiscretion and refusal of responsibility will boil over in the events that compose the climax of Party Monster. When Alig and his roommate Freezes conspire in the chaotic murder of their drug-dealer, Angel Melendez, a lucid collapse would end the so-called Golden Age of the New York club scene. With its end would also come a host of philosophical questions relating the nature of the excess pursued and the form taken by this grisly endnote. Such is to say that there is a certain coldness and emotional detachment that is portrayed in the film and identifiable in the real-life Alig which causes us to view the murder as a direct and inevitable outcome to the abuses and the sheer materialist superficiality fostered by the club scene and its attendant lifestyle. In the Van Meter article, the journalist suggests that there was a clear pattern by which this process of decline had begun to occur, even before the events that killed Melendez. The particular spark that would ignite this incident would be merely symptomatic of a shadowy presence that had begun to rear its head. As the fun and airy ambitions of the Club Kids segued into hard drug dependencies and heartless sexual trysts, the pressure of ketamine and heroin had become dominant. As reported, â€Å"by the mid-nineties, the club scene had grown darker. At Alig’s Disco 2000, the Wednesday-night bacchanal at the Limelight, the warm, fuzzy bath of a roomful of people on ecstasy had turned into a torture chamber: people dressed like monsters stumbling around in their K-holes in a deconsecrated Gothic church while the menacing hardcore-techno music drove them literally out of their minds. † (Van Meter, 1) The impending ugliness of the scene could be scene in no one less than Michael Alig himself. He had been an inspirational party promoter and, in some respects one might have to admit, even a tireless worker in pursuit of extracting enjoyment for others. This is to say that there was some degree of his character which seemed to delight in bringing pleasure to others. And yet, there is a more apparent interest according to many of those who knew him, to delight in the pleasure that others recognized to have been extracted by his efforts. By all accounts, the evidence which the movie and the true events suggest that Alig was a consummate performer, both socially and emotionally. In the interview with Van Meter from his prison cell, which we will return to further on in this account, Alig explicitly claims that he works very hard to maintain a facade of uncaring coolness in deflection of the fact that he is extremely self-conscious about what others think of him. This admission, which is given well after the fact of his crime, lends us insight as we enter into a discussion on the murder itself. Indeed, extreme and reprehensible nature of the crime and causes us to question just exactly what lay beneath this facade. In building toward the event of the murder, the film comes to gradually show what type of figure Alig is. Though it does come after the fact of the murder and Alig’s incarceration, the film seems to leave no doubt that Alig is a man capable of deeply wrong acts. He is shown as one who is by his own nature and accord always attempting to engage of acts of great deviance, mischief and even wanton destruction. While many of the other Club Kids made their advances in the scene according to the utopian premises suggested by St. James, Alig took an altogether different tack to withdrawing from mainstream constraints. We can see as much even the relationship between he and St. James which is captured as the centerpiece of the film. As St. James is shown as marginally more thoughtful than his cohort, Alig is shown to be an almost unreal individual, whose shades of extremity could often infiltrate the territory of outright meanness. To this end, â€Å"the relationship between the two vacillates between tenderness and cruelty (as when Alig serves a glass of his urine to St. James, who takes it for Champagne), and it is the focus of this muddled, sometimes touching movie. (Scott, 1) That there is any type of emotion fostered between them we may say is a factor which actually conspires against such figures as St. James and, at another touching moment in the film, the jilted DJ Keoki (played by Wilmer Valderama). Because in truth, Alig is the figure who most accurately and ably captures the emptiness which is at the center of his scene. As a figure who inspires others to find ever more elaborate and incongruous ways to costume themselves, Alig is perpetually one who hides behind masks even as he aims to be a sweetheart of the spotlight.