This chapter contains the results of the ethnoanalytic project described in the previous chapter. It is intended that this data, and the analysis of this data, go some way towards providing a critique of common-sense discourse on the relationship between young people and television.

In the written reports below, all interviewees’ names have been changed. Grammar has been corrected (although the misuse of relative pronouns has not), but not in a way that converts what might be termed ‘written speech’ into ‘writing’ itself. Where ‘...’ appears some words have been omitted as they were irrelevant to the point being made. When the interviewee has over-used a speech ‘prop’ such as the peculiarly Liverpudlian (Scouse) usage of ‘you know’ between sentences, then this has been omitted. Appendix 5 contains a verbatim transcript of Session 1. It is suggested that the reader compare the contents of Appendix 5 with Session 1 below to ascertain the precise transcription techniques used in the representation of interview data. All interviews were held in the summer of 1995. Appendix 4 contains a brief structural analysis of the episode of BPM used in viewing sessions 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 9. The format of this episode does not vary greatly from the episodes used in the other viewing sessions.

In the individual reports below I have deliberately avoided the suggestion that those interviewed are somehow ‘representative’ of members of specific social groups. Within my ethnoanalytical work I want to tread a fine line, emphasising the diversity of readings to be found when young people interact with television texts, whilst avoiding the individualism of many other audience research projects. Categorisations based upon, for instance, gender and class are simply not apparent in the results of my research and to impose them from above would be a distortion of the viewing strategies of dance culture participants.

This is not to suggest that there are no connections between ‘individual’ readings, rather there is a complex web of determinants that feed into the reading of a television text, be they discursive, economic, or social. However, if there is one common thread running through each interview, then it is the discourse of contemporary dance culture itself. Members of contemporary dance culture have a formidable knowledge of the culture in which they invest so much time and money. This knowledge is used in their critical consumption of BPM, with interviewees making direct comparisons between their own experiences of contemporary dance culture and those elements of contemporary dance culture represented by BPM.

A further connection between many of the interviews is a concentration on the aural element of BPM. This, however, does not suggest that all members of dance culture disrupt what might be termed ‘the specular hierarchy’ in the same way, indeed in viewing session 10 Karen and Lorna do the opposite with their suggestion that they normally view the text with the sound turned down, and supply their own musical accompaniment.

There is one consistent divide between two groups of readers, and that is a divide between the readings of participants and non-participants in contemporary dance culture. This is due to the production of BPM employing the discourse of contemporary dance culture within the encoding of the BPM text. To the outsider, this discourse appears transparent or irrelevant; they do not see it, or do not acknowledge it as a crucial part of the text, whilst for the participant in contemporary dance culture the text is decoded with reference to this discourse and compared to their experiences of contemporary dance culture. Often the viewer’s enjoyment is related to whether they consider the programme a ‘true’ representation of ‘their culture’.

I use the phrases encoding and decoding not to draw the reader’s attention to any particularly usage of the model described by Stuart Hall (see Hall, 1980), but to emphasise that many of the texts that represent contemporary dance culture, and many of the texts produced by contemporary dance culture, are coded; they require a ‘key’, and without this key the meaning potential of the text is limited, or at least altered. This key is both learned and earned. Dance culture participants spend a great deal of their lives immersed in contemporary dance culture, discovering the physical, intellectual and emotional joys that are contained within it. Without this ‘key’, without knowledge of this coded discourse, then common-sense discourse is used to interpret the text. As many elements of contemporary dance culture define themselves in opposition to common-sense discourse, then the meanings produced by dance culture participants and non-participants are often diametrically opposed.

Nigel is a freelance lighting designer for various nightclubs throughout the North West, and is in his late twenties. He has been an enthusiastic music fan for many years, and has gradually become increasingly interested in contemporary dance culture, to the extent that it now provides him with a good living and career structure in his home town of Manchester. We watched a time-shifted episode of BPM on the afternoon of 27 July 1995 (programme originally broadcast on 16 July 1995). The episode chosen featured footage from Tribal Gathering 1995, an event that Nigel had attended two months previously. Nigel was the only interviewee that regularly viewed BPM, often watching the programme when he returned from working in nightclubs on a Saturday night. The viewing session was located in the living room of my flat.

One noticeable factor in the viewing session with Nigel was his suggestion that the reason he viewed BPM was to receive information. This would situate Nigel’s reading of BPM within the public service ethos that, as we saw in chapter 3, was so central to the production of BPM. Nigel specifically referred to the fact that BPM’s footage from nightclubs always lists the track playing, and, crucially, the DJ playing it;

Firstly, he suggests that much contemporary dance culture is DJ-oriented. Many dance culture participants suggest they do not necessarily go to a club to meet their friends, or to dance to whatever records happen to be playing; they go to hear a particular DJ. As described in previous chapters, a dance music DJ will recontextualise records in a style unique to them. Through the mixing together of a selection of records (aided and abetted by manual dexterity and sophisticated technology) the DJ is able to play a set that bears little resemblance to a mere succession of records. Nigel gave the example of Laurent Garnier, a Parisian DJ who performed at Tribal Gathering 1995, who is known for his eclecticism, for his use of samplers within his DJ set, and for the structured flow of his long sets (up to eight hours).

Secondly, by giving a taster of a DJ’s particular style and sound, BPM allows dance culture members to make informed choices about how they can spend their time and money. This highlights the discriminating nature of many dance culture participants. The knowledge that Laurent Garnier is to play a nightclub in Liverpool such as Black Magic would mean that participants such as Nigel would make a particular effort to attend in order to hear Garnier’s set. Having said this one thing noticeably absent from BPM is information as to where specific DJs are playing in the future.

Nigel also commented on how he considered that BPM was trying to develop a new aesthetic in its screening of the dance floor; "I like the way they use particular camera tricks, it spices it up more, it can get a bit boring just looking at people dancing all the time".

Nigel also highlighted the qualitative difference between pre-acid house discos and contemporary dance culture, and said this was reflected in how television programmes represent the dance floor. In particular Nigel compared BPM with the programme Hitman and Her presented by Michaela Strachen and Pete Waterman in the late 1980s;

Catherine is a fashion designer and artist, and Robert is a record shop assistant and DJ. Both are in their mid twenties. Robert’s interest in dance culture is long standing and his knowledge is extensive. He is almost entirely immersed within Liverpool’s dance scene, and spends most of his waking hours listening to house music, be it in the club where he DJs, in the clubs he attends out of pleasure, at the shop he works in, or at home, where he has a professional DJing set-up to work with. Catherine, Robert’s long-term partner, is less involved in the Liverpool scene, although she does attend the club Black Magic every week. At the time of interview Catherine was finishing her fashion degree at Liverpool John Moores University (although I work at Liverpool John Moores I had no contact with Catherine, and I was unaware of her status as a student until the interview took place). Catherine and Robert watched a time-shifted episode of BPM on the afternoon of Friday 28 July 1995, five days after the original broadcast on Sunday 23 July 1995.

I approached Catherine during a visit to Black Magic as I had noticed that she had been present on all three of my previous visits. She introduced me to Robert, and suggested that I interview them both. Both had occasionally seen BPM, but were not regular viewers. The viewing session was located in the living room of my flat. As will become apparent, Robert’s in-depth knowledge of dance music marks him out as a true expert, particularly in the anthropological sense of "a person who has an exceptional understanding of the implicit and the explicit, the esoteric, and the ordinary dimensions of his social world and an ability to articulate these" (Irwin, 1972, p.127).

One defining characteristic of the session with Catherine and Robert was the centrality of the categories of ‘underground’ and ‘commercial’/‘mainstream’ within their reading strategies. They used these categories to make sense of the programme, and were quick to position particular clubs, tracks and artists in relation to their interpretation of these terms.

The essential quality of ‘mainstream’ consumers, is according to Robert, a lack of "respect" for contemporary dance music;

Robert’s mention of "The Conti’", the Continental nightclub in central Liverpool, is particularly interesting. The Continental is almost unanimously spurned by the Liverpool dance scene. Robert refers to "The Conti’" whilst Nigel talks of "townies" and "Fridays"; both refer to resolutely ‘mainstream’ nightclubs playing ‘mainstream’ music.

Robert went on to suggest that the opposition between ‘underground’ and ‘mainstream’ is not necessarily a quantitative difference. Robert explained that, whilst the general perception of ‘mainstream’ music was of a music that was more successful in terms of sales than ‘underground’ styles, this was not necessarily the case. Weekly sales charts are perceived to belong to the world of ‘the mainstream’, and have become recognised as a method of quantifying the success of a particular record. However, in Robert’s experience, ‘underground’ music is frequently more popular than ‘mainstream’ music. This is hidden by the fact that the sales of ‘underground’ music are not taken into account by those who compile sales charts. Robert also suggests that ‘mainstream’ music is often sold on the back of the success of ‘underground’ music. Robert’s job in a specialist record shop has given him some insight into this. Commenting on the choice of a particular video in BPM’s ‘video top ten’, Robert explained how a particular ‘mainstream’ song could get into the charts, and therefore played on radio and the video shown on television, with few people actually liking it;

As in Becker’s study once a group, or a remixer, is perceived to have deliberately altered their style in order to achieve commercial success, then their cultural capital rapidly diminishes. For instance Robert made the following comment on the Public Enemy video in BPM’s video chart;

One noticeable characteristic of BPM that was unreservedly attacked by both Robert and Catherine was the male gaze of the camera in dance floor footage. Whilst I was discussing the qualitative differences between ‘mainstream’ and ‘underground’ cultures, Catherine’s instant reaction to the visual text was "oh no, I hate angles like that! I’m sorry, up the skirts is a no no! I hate that, it really annoys me". Robert’s reaction was "it’s trying to keep the male public attention. You can’t deny that one, it’s up the girl’s backside basically".

One interesting facet of the discussion with Robert and Catherine was the implicit suggestion that, due to the physical presence of the television camera on the dance floor, the true spirit of the dance floor could never be represented on television. The following discussion took place during one particular sequence;

The problem of how to represent dance culture is also present in the promotional videos of records that do have cultural capital. Commenting on the video for Soul Man by Kenny Larkin, the following discussion took place

When discussing videos and interviews the reactions of Catherine and Robert were mixed. For instance Robert said that most of the videos shown were not by artists that would be played at Black Magic, but the interview with Bandulu featured members of the group who were guest DJs at Black Magic two weeks before the viewing session, and he acknowledged that they were "very well respected on the British techno scene". During interviews Catherine and Robert paid little attention to the visual image, and concentrated on the spoken and musical audio track.

In summary, Catherine and Robert’s viewing strategy was to compare the referent of BPM to their experiences of dance culture. On most instances this comparison was based upon a criticism of the referent of the episode of BPM under discussion, a club scene that they deemed ‘mainstream’, although they accepted that, on occasions, BPM did refer to their culture. When this was the case, such as the Kenny Larkin video, it did so in a manner that did not interest them.

This session was the first attempt at a ‘post-club’ screening. This involved visiting the critically acclaimed night entitled ’Bugged Out’, held in the Sankey’s Soap nightclub in Ancoats, Manchester. This viewing session contains three interviewees that I had approached at Black Magic two weeks prior to interview. The interviewees were Angela, a second/third year drama student at Liverpool John Moores University, Julia, a second year business studies student at Liverpool John Moores University, Guy, a Liverpool John Moores University psychology MA student, and Sarah, a recently qualified supply teacher. I had not previously met any of these interviewees. All interviewees were in their mid twenties, and whilst Sarah and Guy had seen previous episodes of BPM, Angela and Julia had not.

We watched the same episode as Robert and Catherine, except that this time we watched the episode on 5 August 1995, two weeks after its initial transmission on 23 July 1995. The viewing session was located in the living room of my flat and began at 6 a.m. The reason a time-shifted episode was viewed rather than a real-time episode was that a ‘deal’ was struck between the interviewees and myself. If I could ensure that they would gain free entry to the Bugged Out night in Manchester a fortnight after initially meeting them, then they were willing to be interviewed. This was arranged with the club promoter, although, as the club was held on a Friday, an interview held during the transmission of BPM proved impossible (BPM is broadcast on a Sunday morning). No drugs were consumed on the night, although both the interviewees and I thoroughly enjoyed our time at the club. The club closed at 3 a.m. and we waited patiently for our 4.30 a.m. coach to Liverpool. After a short taxi drive from Liverpool’s coach stop to my flat, we settled down with cups of tea and the interview began. Despite it being time-shifted, and despite it being held at a slightly later time than BPM is normally transmitted, there was a consensus that this felt like a real-time interview. The interviewees left my flat, tired and weary, at some point after 8 a.m.

What was noticeable about this session was that the decoding strategies employed by the participants were similar to those of Catherine and Robert in that they all compared BPM to their experiences of dance culture. In particular Julia, Angela, Guy and Sarah compared the dance floors featured on BPM with their earlier visit to Bugged Out. However, whilst their reading strategies were similar to Robert and Catherine’s, they often came to the opposite qualitative judgments, specifically with relation to their views of the video clips featured. For instance the Dreadzone video (which Robert had suggested would not be played in ‘underground’ clubs), was watched, or rather listened to, with great glee by Angela. Sarah asked Angela if she had seen the band, and Angela commented positively on their performance at Glastonbury six weeks prior to the viewing session. All the group voiced their appreciation of the music that accompanied the video.

A further similarity between this viewing session and the previous one was that, like Robert and Catherine, Julia, Angela, Guy and Sarah often concentrated on the music rather than the televisual image. For instance Angela’s viewing strategy was to make a direct comparison between the music played in the dance clubs that she frequented and the music featured in BPM, even in the form of the soundtrack to a video promo. In general comments on the visual image were rare.

There were two further examples of this. First was the discussion surrounding an interview with the Scottish singer Mary Kiani and the video clips of her previous band, Time Frequency. This discussion was entirely based upon the merits of the music. In a sense the visual element of the interview was transparent, they ‘saw through’ the videos and interviews, and concentrated on the music. Sarah and Guy commented on the fact that they had heard the track only recently in a bar. After a few seconds Sarah added that she considered it "an awful song", "twee" and "handbag"⁵, a derisory term used by some clubbers to describe house music that is excessively commercial, and not dissimilar in meaning to Robert’s "cheesy". Guy was the lone voice of support, claiming that the track "would be dead good on the dance floor" and was funny.

The second example of the music accompanying the image being compared to a night out was the discussion that accompanied the footage taken at Kelly’s nightclub, in Port Rush, Northern Ireland. Sarah suggested that they had heard the track playing at the same bar as they had heard Time Frequency. Guy added "this version as well, it was quite good music [that night], well, cheesy music". Like his comments on Time Frequency, Guy’s comments on the music accompanying the sequence from Kelly’s showed a postmodern willingness to appreciate music that he knew had low subcultural capital. Where, for Robert, "cheesy" is simply a term of derision, for Guy, its nearest dictionary equivalent might well be "kitsch". Music could be cheesy, but still enjoyable.

There was only one point in the session when the visual text was commented upon, and this was when the group was asked how the dance floor sequence from Kelly’s nightclub, Port Rush, Northern Ireland compared to their recent experience at Bugged Out. Angela replied

This session was held on Tuesday 8 August 1995 and we viewed the episode watched in the previous two sessions. By now I was really getting the feel of interviewing, and was beginning to notice patterns developing. It was for this reason that I continued to show to interviewees the episode broadcast on 23 July 1995 rather than the episode transmitted on the previous Sunday (6 August 1995). It would have been more difficult to compare and contrast interviewees’ decodings of two different episodes, and my initial fear that dance culture participants would reject older material (even if it was only a couple of weeks out of date) did not materialise. I feel that this was at least partially due to the dance floor footage being at least a couple of weeks out of date at the time of broadcast anyway, so an extra couple of weeks did not matter. In particular I noticed similarities of reading that were based upon interviewees using the discourse of dance culture to ‘unlock’ the discourse of BPM. Watching the same, but by now less contemporary, episode, aided this process.

Graham is a freelance computer programmer in his early thirties, and lives with his girlfriend and their two children. A regular at Black Magic, Graham had not seen a complete episode of BPM before. The viewing session was located in the living room of my flat.

This viewing session was useful in seeing the extent to which a knowledge of cultural theory alters the reading strategy of a BPM viewer (Graham has a knowledge of media cultural theory, primarily drawn from having been a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, a political grouping closely tied to the development of cultural studies in the 1980s). The results were interesting in that I had the feeling that, at times, Graham did not merely view the text and give me his reading, but he gave me his analysis of his reading based upon his theoretical knowledge. He was quite aware of this, stating that this is how he consumes dance culture generally, his textual readings are always mediated through his knowledge of cultural theory and music production.

This helps demonstrate that the discursive nature of the written ‘versions’ of interviews within this chapter does not necessarily invalidate this ‘ethnoanalytic’ project as a whole. As stated earlier, this thesis is not situated within traditional anthropological ethnography in that it is not pretending to be objective; in particular its self-reflexivity allows it to acknowledge and analyse its discursivity. The theorising of interviewees’ readings does not lead to the ‘discovery’ of meaning, rather it helps us to understand the structure of an interviewee’s reading. In the majority of cases, the interviewees themselves do not have the analytical tools that I employ, but when they do, they come to similar conclusions as when I interpret ‘ordinary’ dance culture participants’ readings⁶.

For instance the BPM footage taken at Swoon, Stafford, triggered a comment by Graham on that particular club, and how much he enjoyed his last visit there;

An alternative view is that sexuality in general is flourishing in clubs. In particular gay clubs have never been more popular with heterosexual music fans. It has been suggested that this is because intimate physical contact can take place without there being a ‘penetrative’ agenda, and that admiring, from a distance, the sexuality of dancing is now an acceptable activity in itself. However the intervention of the camera, where the viewer, or perhaps the voyeur, cannot be seen by the dancer, disrupts the sense of ‘trust’ that had previously existed. In viewing session 6 (see below) Sandra makes a comment that is connected to this; "She feels ashamed there, of the camera". The sense of privacy within the four walls of the club has been broken by the camera. Virtually anyone could be watching. Whilst the sense of trust currently found within the contemporary dance scene has been bolstered by tight door policies on the most sexually liberated clubs, with a vetting procedure for male clientele, this good work is undone by the television camera. Whereas acid house clubs rejected sexuality outright, with an emphasis on androgynous clothes, post-acid clubs see a return to overt sexuality. Many wear items of clothes they wouldn’t dream of wearing at any other time, often changing into the most revealing clothes once they had gained entry into the club. The prospect for both men and women of revealing (nearly) all on national television must be truly frightening.

Whilst the interviewees in the previous session commented positively on the fact that BPM attempted to attract members of different dance micro-cultures, and that there was something of interest for dance culture participants with differing musical tastes, Graham thought otherwise. Returning to his thoughts on the disruption of the musical flow inherent in BPM Graham suggested that

Time-shifted viewing of the BPM episode watched in the previous three sessions, held on Wednesday 9 August 1995 (17 days after transmission). Stephen is unemployed and supplements his state benefits by DJing on a weekly basis at Black Magic. At the club I arranged to meet Stephen at midday in a pub that was equidistant from our respective flats, and after walking a short distance the viewing session took place in the living room of my flat. Stephen is single and in his early thirties.

Again, the viewing strategy employed by this particular interviewee can be characterised as a concentration on the music when ‘viewing’ both videos and dance floor sequences. Only when directly asked did Stephen direct his comments away from the music towards the visual text. During a dance floor sequence at Swoon, Stafford, Stephen suggested that "because the camera’s there and everyone knows it’s there, people seem to be reacting to the camera. A lot of them seem really self-conscious."

One noticeable factor in the viewing session with Stephen was that, in commenting on the wide variety of musical sub-genres covered by BPM, Stephen stated that this was, for him, the programme’s strength. In a similar way to Nigel in session 1, yet completely at odds with Graham in the previous viewing session, Stephen saw this diversity as informative, it allowed him to hear "relatively good" tracks from a wide variety of genres. Stephen suggested that his current tastes were very narrow; "I only buy acid house" and "I now actually consciously avoid buying tunes that are by people who are established". Therefore to listen to a "gay club anthem", jungle and hip-hop was, for Stephen, a refreshing change. Despite the limited range of his current tastes, Stephen can still be characterised as a "connoisseur-ist". He is prepared to listen to most of the sub-genres that can be grouped under the title dance music, yet, when he does so, he makes strict qualitative judgments concerning each particular track. However, unlike Robert and Catherine, his judgments on the tracks featured on BPM were mostly positive;

Viewing Session 6: Sandra

Time-shifted viewing of the BPM episode watched in the previous four sessions, held on Monday 14 August (22 days after transmission). Sandra is in her mid twenties and is a professional dancer and teacher. This was the first viewing session held in the interviewees’ own flat, and was held in the early evening. In this instance I felt that the change of context did not affect the reading of the text (although, as we shall see in a later session, this does not prove that context is unimportant). Sandra’s knowledge of BPM has been gained from two sources. Firstly she occasionally viewed the programme in 1993, when she was still an active participant in dance culture. Secondly, Sandra’s work as a classical dancer and choreographer had led her to choreograph a fashion show for an episode of BPM at Kelly’s in Port Rush two years ago. However, unlike previous interviewees, Sandra is not currently a member of a dance micro-culture. I approached her at Black Magic because I thought I had recognised her from a previous visit, although this turned out not to be the case, and she was on a rare visit to the club. I nevertheless took the opportunity to interview a ‘non-participant’, and as we can see, this proved fruitful.

Sandra’s work choreographing a BPM fashion show at Kelly’s meant that her criticisms of the dance floor sequences were influenced by a knowledge unavailable to previous interviewees;

Sandra’s lack of knowledge of the specific pieces of music in BPM meant that she activated different discourses to other interviewees, and her reading was dominated by the visual, rather than the specifically aural readings of previous interviewees. This suggests that there is a difference in reading strategies between dance culture participants and non-participants.

Examples of Sandra’s concentration on the visual were numerous. Here are three examples.

Viewing Session 7: Nicola

Time-shifted viewing of the BPM episode watched in the previous five sessions, held on 17 August 1995 (25 days after transmission). This was another viewing session held in an interviewee’s flat, although, as in the previous interview, I feel that this did not affect the interviewee’s reading of BPM. Nicola is in her early twenties and is unemployed, although at the time of interview she was completing voluntary work at a local ‘listings’ magazine. It was through this magazine that she happened to be at Black Magic, reviewing the club for a forthcoming issue, although she was not a regular visitor to the club.

Again, this viewing session was with an interviewee who is not a current member of any dance micro-culture. By this I mean that, although Nicola is a participant in other youth cultural activities, her involvement in dance culture has so far been limited to the occasional visit to Black Magic in Liverpool, and Whirly-Gig in Shoreditch, London. She has none of the partisan alignments with specific clubs, events and musical sub-genres that have characterised previous ‘connoisseur-ist’ interviewees (i.e. Catherine and Robert: Black Magic, American techno and house, Angela: Megadog, British trance and techno, Stephen: Black Magic, acid house and American techno). Nicola’s musical allegiances appear less micro-cultural, or according to the classificatory system that arises from dance culture, Nicola’s tastes are ‘mainstream’, rather than ‘underground’.

This factor influenced her reading of this particular episode in the sense that she commented on the fact that, at the start of the sequence taken at Swoon, the on-screen information informed the viewer that the DJ was Boy George, who has traded his considerable career as a singer/songwriter for the life of a club DJ. Although we never see him on screen, Nicola’s interest was sparked by his involvement in the dance floor dialectic, and I happened to notice a couple of Boy George audio cassettes in her small collection. What is interesting about this minor detail is that the text is enforcing a micro-cultural perspective on a non-micro-cultural member. By this I mean that the text is positioning the DJ as a central element of contemporary dance culture; the DJ as auteur. Non-micro-cultural members do not place the DJ at the centre of the musical experience. Whereas a member of a house micro-culture (such as a regular at Swoon) could well have been able to tell that the DJ was Boy George by listening to his DJ set, Nicola would never have guessed that this was the case without the prompting of the on-screen text.

As with the previous interviewee many of Nicola’s comments were concerned with visual image rather than musical soundtrack. This is due to non-participants in dance culture placing less importance on music. Whereas many dance culture participants take joy in subverting the specular hierarchy⁹, non-participants do not. Here is one example that encapsulates this;

A further example of Nicola placing emphasis upon the visual, rather than the aural, was in her viewing of the Kenny Larkin video criticised by Robert and Catherine. Unlike Robert and Catherine, Nicola did not compare the quality of the sound track to the video. Instead Nicola concentrated on, or rather allowed herself to appreciate, the visual track, irrespective of the music:

A further example of this is Nicola’s comments on another dance floor sequence taken at Swoon;

Time-shifted viewing of the BPM episode watched in Session 1 (featuring Tribal Gathering 1995) held on 14 September 1995 (approximately two months after transmission). I returned from my annual holiday and decided that, rather than showing Collette a fresh episode of BPM, I would show her the episode used in viewing session 1 to see if there were connections between the readings of two dance culture ‘professionals’. Collette is in her late twenties and, along with her long-term partner Simon, is one of the promoters of Black Magic. Unwilling to watch the episode in either her own or my flat, we settled on the location of my office at Liverpool John Moores University.

The main comments provided by Collette in her viewing of BPM were concerned with the gap that she perceived between the quality of the referent of the text, and how this was translated into a television programme. Here are a few examples;

Time-shifted viewing of the BPM episode watched in viewing sessions 2 to 7, watched on the afternoon of Friday 15 September. Alan, like Stephen in viewing session 5, is a resident DJ at Black Magic. In his mid twenties Alan is well respected within the Liverpool scene, due to his DJing abilities and his deep knowledge of dance music.

Like previous interviewees who were participants in dance culture, Alan’s viewing strategy placed emphasis upon the soundtrack at the expense of visual representations, with Alan criticising musical sequences and video soundtracks if they were perceived to be commercial. For instance, Alan suggested that the soundtrack to the video of Mary Kiani was "just pop music". Asked to explain further, he suggested "I’d see all that on kids’ telly or Top of the Pops. It’s chart-bound material". Alan was aware of BPM and its post-Reithian aims through his in-depth knowledge of dance culture as whole, and expected BPM to live up to its self-proclaimed public service remit of covering ‘underground’ music styles. Where BPM was guilty of pandering to commercial forces it was roundly criticised by Alan. For Alan ‘pop music’ is disposable, unsubtle, and without depth or emotion (a point of view that I personally disagree with); it is, in short, ‘mainstream’. A later comment on the Dreadzone video reinforces this; "I’m not into this really. Quirky, folky. I don’t like folk samples. It’s too er, poppy, it’s at the pop end". Here Alan hints at a slight difference between his and Robert’s categorisations. Whereas Robert suggests that ‘mainstream’ and ‘underground’ are binary oppositions, Alan views the categories of ‘mainstream’ (pop) and ‘underground’ as extreme points on a sliding scale upon which any particular record can be situated.

Whereas the ‘underground’ music that Alan listens to is often defined in terms of its subtlety and refinement, the ‘mainstream’ musical texts that BPM chose to use are, according to Alan, clichéd and ‘obvious’. Commenting on the record Take 5 In The Jungle by Teknicolor, which samples extensively from Dave Brubeck’s Take Five, Alan stated that

When BPM covers an act with micro-cultural capital (as opposed to a ‘pop act’) the result, according to Alan, is the dilution of dance culture’s radicalism;

In his summary of BPM, Alan maintained an ambivalence to the eclecticism of BPM, a reaction that neatly falls between, on the one hand, Graham, who disliked the disruption of flow, and on the other hand Stephen, who praised BPM’s variety;

Time-shifted viewing of two BPM episodes. The first of these was the episode watched in Sessions 1 and 8 (featuring Tribal Gathering 1995). The second was an episode transmitted on 22 October 1995, featuring the London club ‘Eurobeat 2000’. The viewing session took place on Monday 23 October. As well as containing useful information in its own right, this viewing session also acted as a ‘control group’, to check whether the two interviewees would use different techniques in decoding a text broadcast one day after transmission than those used in decoding a text that was broadcast two months previously. They did not.

The two interviewees were Lorna, who is unemployed, and Karen, who is a primary school teacher. Both Lorna and Karen are in their mid twenties. Both regularly attend Black Magic, and it was on the dance floor of the club that I initially approached them. The episode was watched in the living room of the house that they shared with another friend in Liverpool. This had one noticeable effect in that I felt that they were far more open in their comments than they might have been elsewhere, talking about, in particular, drug consumption in an uninhibited manner.

It was in this session that I felt the interviewees watched BPM in a similar way to how they would have done had I not been present. Three differences however remained.

This in itself is interesting in that it suggests that those who have consumed drugs in the club environment are less self-conscious of the cameras than those who haven’t. The drug Ecstasy enhances and enables ‘the ecstasy of disappearance’ (Melechi, 1993) and its use occasionally enables dancers to ignore the presence of BPM’s cameras. I would combine this with a neo-Freudian analysis, suggesting that the Ecstasy experience recreates a child-like innocence in the dancer, with the dancer revelling in a pre-Oedipal polymorphous perversity. Many of those dancers that Lorna and Karen considered to be under the influence of Ecstasy had their eyes closed. Perhaps it could therefore be suggested that those Ecstasy consumers represented by BPM are behaving in a similar way to children who think that, because they have their eyes shut and can see no one else, then they themselves are invisible. Or at least if they have got their eyes closed, they don’t have to think about the camera tracking their every move. This also provides a link with dance culture’s aural emphasis.

In an informal discussion after viewing session 8, Collette suggested that, rather than appealing to clubbers themselves, BPM was aimed at those people who don’t frequent nightclubs, yet maintain an interest in dance music. In particular Collette suggested that she didn’t watch BPM every Saturday because, at that hour of the morning, she was often attending some sort of private party. Lorna’s view was similar;

Commenting on the perceived sexism of BPM Lorna suggested that "you can tell the camera people are blokes on this, can’t you? They always concentrate on girls’ tits". Karen, when watching the second screening, agreed;

Time-shifted viewing of the BPM episode broadcast on 15 October 1995 and watched a week later on the afternoon of Saturday 21 October 1995 (Mary was unable to take part in a viewing session during the week due to work commitments). Mary is in her late twenties and is a freelance print journalist, photographer and local radio DJ. The episode of BPM under discussion featured footage from the Wildlife club, held at Zone in Port Talbot, Wales. As this was the last interview, and as there was little to be gained from maintaining my previous quiet demeanour during interview, I felt more open to engage Mary in conversation. At times we paid little attention to the television screen, and embarked on long conversations about the state of contemporary dance culture. This interview therefore surfs the boundary between ‘viewing session’ and academic interview, but is enlightening nonetheless.

This particular interview is interesting in the way the interviewee’s viewing strategy oscillated between a concentration on music and a general discussion concerning the state of contemporary dance culture. It was almost as if BPM triggered a whole series of comments that Mary wished to make concerning dance culture. Indeed at points Mary paid little attention to the visual text, and with the soundtrack providing a musical accompaniment to our conversation, she moved from a general discussion of how BPM represented dance culture, to the state of dance culture itself, often concentrating on how changes in dance culture have affected her work as a photographer and journalist.

The first dance floor sequence triggered the following statement;

BPM’s referent had shifted. The BPM cameras couldn’t work in ‘underground’ environments such as Black Magic, with its dark interior and maelstrom of smoke, so it visited clubs such as Zone in Port Talbot, clubs that have little in common with Black Magic. All this was aided and abetted by record companies eager to promote their newly signed dance music artists, and eager to get their promotional videos featured on BPM. In short BPM could not physically film in the most ‘underground’ of clubs, and with the discourse of commercialism taking precedence over the discourse of post-Reithianism, it couldn’t afford to alienate advertisers. Mary continued;

Within the readings of interviewees who were dedicated members of specific dance micro-cultures there was a concentration on the music featured within the programme, with the visual element of videos, dance floor sequences and interviews rarely commented upon. This was particularly the case with regular clubbers, and less so with occasional dance culture participants. When the visual element was commented upon, the male gaze and gendered discourses encoded within BPM were resolutely shunned. Whereas expressions of sexuality, and to a certain degree dance floor scopophilia, were often accepted as valid elements of contemporary dance culture, the camera turned amorphous ungendered sexual play into gendered sexual display for the viewer at home, and to the detriment of the dancers’ ‘privacy’ within the communal body of the dance floor. The community of the dance floor was turned into a televisual individualism.

Several viewing sessions acted as ‘control groups’. The session with Graham showed that, armed with academic capital, dance culture participants’ self-analysis of their readings was similar to my analyses of the readings of dance culture participants without access to cultural theory. The session with Lorna and Karen also showed that a period of two months between broadcast and viewing session did not alter an interviewees’ reading of BPM.

Throughout the readings above interviewees showed a ready willingness to use their knowledge of dance culture to ‘unlock’ the meanings created at the interface between text and reader. It was often the case that the deeper the knowledge that the interviewee had of dance culture, the more negative was their appraisal of BPM. The more the interviewee knew about dance culture, the more likely they were to reject the idea that BPM was a ‘true’ representation of their lives. Part of the reason for this is the impossibility of the television industry, a "slow dinosaur" in the words of BPM’s director, ever capturing and transmitting a culture that is in a perpetual state of change. By the time a track is featured in BPM’s video chart, then it has already been rejected by dance culture. If a white label is played as the audio track to a dance floor sequence, then by the time of broadcast it might well have been commercially released and, in the words of BPM’s Director, "played out" by dance culture. If it had not achieved a commercial release then it would be considered as a long forgotten component of one DJs’ set in a particular club that, by the time of broadcast, is now a footnote in the history of dance culture.

Dance culture participants did cite with approval certain elements of BPM, such as an emphasis on the role of the DJ, and the ability to hear two records mixed together whilst watching the dialectic between DJ and dance floor. In general though, the belief of those immersed in dance culture was that BPM would never be able to capture the fleeting ephemerality of dance culture. BPM would never be able to catch the lights, the sweat, the drugs, the volume, the sex and the feeling of being part of something quite special; everything that makes dance culture reminiscent of a ‘Bakhtinian’ carnival.

Having said this, dance culture participants without a full and in-depth knowledge of the scene often found BPM ‘informative’ in that it allowed them to listen to DJs and musicians that they might not have previously heard. Perhaps during its period of broadcast BPM served dance culture by providing it with new members, intrigued and interested by brief glimpses of dance floor anarchy, albeit filtered and distorted by televisual representation. This was most likely to have occurred when the discourse of post-Reithian public service came to the fore under the able directorship of Simon Potter, and happened less when Potter was implicitly coerced by his employers to pander to the discourse of commercialism.

1.‘Fridays’ is a club in the basement of Liverpool’s famous Adelphi hotel (a hotel that received a great deal of publicity during and after its depiction in the 1996 BBC ‘soapumentary’ Hotel). Contemporary dance culture appears to have almost entirely passed its clientele by, both in their musical and other lifestyle preferences. Nick refers to its clientele as ‘townies’, a phrase used to characterise and stereotype working-class blue and white-collar workers in their twenties and early thirties, whose weekend rituals invariably consist of alcoholic inebriation, the desperate search for a sexual partner as the nightclub or pub closes, and a visit to a take-away restaurant on the way home. In fact there is little difference between Mungham’s description of the clientele of dance halls in the mid-1970s and the clientele of Fridays (see Mungham, 1976).

2.As suggested in the opening chapter of this thesis, Cream is itself a good example of how a specific club can move between the categories of ‘underground’ and ‘mainstream’ over a period of years. Cream started off as a well-respected ‘underground’ club. However, its ever-increasing popularity led to dozens of coaches arriving at Cream every Saturday night from as far afield as Scotland and London, with queues that on occasion snaked for up to half a mile, which resulted in clubbers waiting for as long as two hours to gain entry. Cream had spawned a mini-empire, consisting of the sale of T-shirts, bags, jackets, top ten records and compact discs. Cream also featured artists such as Kylie Minogue and M-People (winners of the 1994 Mercury music award), and, at the time of interview, were organising a club ‘tour’ where the Cream resident DJs were to play in nightclubs in other towns under the Cream banner, culminating in a summer residency at an Ibizan nightclub.

In the summer of 1995, ‘underground’ culture in Liverpool held Cream in disdain for its ‘mainstream’ music policy, and for its pandering to commercial forces. In particular Robert (viewing session 2) suggested that, despite the fact that Cream regularly employed highly respected American DJs such as Roger Sanchez and Frankie Knuckles, the regulars at Cream didn’t have the necessary respect for dance music, they didn’t have the kind of relationship with dance music that Robert and his friends had.

During the twelve month period after this particular interview Cream went some way to answering the criticisms that were being voiced by members of the Liverpool ‘underground’. Cream gradually phased out their policy of booking DJs who pandered to the dance floor, and started to book DJs who, in a move that echoes BPM’s post-Reithian ethos, would educate what might be termed ‘mainstream dancers’ in ‘underground’ music. This also led to the opening of a jungle room where ‘underground’ dance culture participants could listen to the latest ‘underground’ DJs such LTJ Bukem, the most respected jungle DJ of 1996.

However disagreements between Cream and LTJ Bukem led to the severing of their relationship, and, towards the end of 1996, Cream announced a new DJ policy for 1997. Paul Oakenfold was to become resident in the back room, the second dance floor, of Cream. Part of this arrangement was that Oakenfold would not be allowed to play anywhere else that night, and that he would play for three hours every week without fail. The same deal was struck with the DJ collective known as XPress 2 (DJs Rocky, Diesel, and Ashley Beadle), who were booked as weekly residents on the main dance floor of Cream. The aim was to introduce ‘underground’ music to the perceived ‘mainstream’ audience at Cream, with XPress 2 and Oakenfold renowned for their commitment to ‘underground’ musical styles.

The move was only partially successful, and the nature of this partial success validates Robert’s view that ‘mainstream’ audiences have a different relationship to music than dance culture. Oakenfold’s back room went from strength to strength, with a great deal of Liverpool’s dance culture participants flocking to the back room of Cream every weekend. However, XPress 2’s residency in the main room was a failure. The traditionally ‘mainstream’ audience in the main room of Cream simply could not understand XPress 2’s more ‘underground’ style of house music, preferring a more commercial style known as ‘handbag’ (see glossary), a style that, at the time, littered the upper reaches of the national sales charts, and a style that XPress 2 were not willing to play. Robert’s (viewing session 2) view, and in holding this view he is typical of Liverpudlian dance culture as a whole, was that the dance floor crowd in the main room of Cream were more interested in clothes, fashion, sex and drugs than in music. A deep love and knowledge of music was the true mark of a member of Liverpool’s ‘underground’ dance culture.

The ‘mainstream’ Cream audience rejected the idea that they were to be musically educated at Cream, and, with dwindling entrance numbers, Cream capitulated and booked the more commercially successful Nick Warren, who was more accessible to those Cream clubbers not immersed in contemporary dance culture and dance music. In a sense, as a big corporation, Cream straddles two discourses of post-Reithianism and free-market commercialism in much the same way as BPM.

3.Hardfloor are German duo Ramon Zenker and Oliver Bondzio. Hardfloor are famed for the release of the track Acperience, a track that, although it took nearly two years to reach a wide audience, almost single-handedly kick-started an acid house revival in Britain in 1994. For brief details see Harrison, 1995.

4.A monthly magazine dedicated to dance culture.

5.Dance culture’s usage of the word ‘handbag’ started life as a derogatory term for ‘mainstream’ discotheques, derived from the perceived practice of women dancing round their handbags. I choose my words carefully here, by ‘perceived practice’ I am referring to the fact that, in my considerable experience of both contemporary dance culture and ‘mainstream’ discotheques, I have never once seen this actually take place, and would suggest that this practice is what might be termed an ‘urban myth’. Sarah Thornton noticed its usage in her research in 1988 (see Thornton, 1993, p.128), and the term has remained a staple part of dance culture’s argot ever since. However, since 1993 it has been used to describe a musical sub-genre, a form of relatively fast 4/4 house music with prominent female vocals, ‘break downs’ (where the kick drum stops, and the track ‘breaks down’, only to be built up again), and a proliferation of piano ‘stabs’. Initially its usage to describe this sub-genre was critical, but since then, in much the same way that the word ‘jungle’ was reappropriated to have positive connotations, handbag is used within the gay scene to describe a lighter ‘happier’ variant of vocal house music. Within the context of this interview however, Sarah, who is not a fan of handbag, is combining both negative connotation with its sub-generic meaning.

6.This is connected to Fiske’s suggestion that

8.As Sandra has gradually stopped frequenting clubs, her knowledge of contemporary dance culture leads her to misrecognise elements within, in this case, jungle culture. At the time of interview the clothing worn at jungle clubs was a mixture of expensive designer labels, with, in particular, clothes by Moschino, Versace and Dolce and Gabbana worn by many jungle clubbers. Whilst jungle emphasises the poverty traps in which many participants find themselves, it offers a temporary release from poverty through, amongst other elements, the wearing of expensive and well-designed clothes.

9.This is particularly the case with those who frequent Black Magic, which, at the time of interview, was held in an old drinking club that had obviously seen better days. Paint was peeling away from the walls, lighting was minimal, and the general appearance of the club was less than salubrious. This did not matter to those regulars whose primary concern was dancing to the music on offer, although visitors to the club who were not regular dance culture participants frequently voiced their disapproval of the state at the venue.

10.Here Alan is referring to the continuing segregation of techno and jungle within the music policies of most nightclubs. This particular topic arose in a pre-interview discussion on the latest issue of the dance culture magazine Muzik. The editorial of the magazine suggested that Andy Weatherall and Justin Robertson, two ‘underground’ techno DJs, had been ordered not to play jungle by a particular techno club (see editorial Muzik, No.2, July 1995). Alan considered that this was a form of racism in that jungle is often perceived to be a black sub-genre. Alan went on to suggest that this racism is only held by certain promoters and not dance culture participants themselves. Alan’s DJing style is itself testament to this. Although known as a techno DJ, Andy often mixes in jungle records in his DJ sets at Black Magic, and they are well received by the (predominantly white) Black Magic dance floor.