From Subculture To Mass Culture...Hip Parties In Changing Mode...

Having just returned from Dinner with my friend Julia at "Jaeger's Restaurant" (btw manifique french restaurant) in Heidelberg, I would like to summarize some thaughts of our discussion on subculture, hip parties and what happens when the promoters become famous. On my train back to Germany, I read an article on the party promoters of Misshapes in the german issue of the Park Avenue Magazine written by Jessica Joffe. I was really wondering that the Misshapes project became that famous now, even that famous that a magazine like Park Avenue writes about them.

Most of the really cool parties are first a kind of "subculture thing" of a selected group of people and after some time, when more and more people join the group to party with them it changes. The changing point when it's getting a mass culture phenomenon is when famous people join the parties. It is normal because the parties getting published in magazine and then everybody want to have a piece of this glamorous unique cake - even when they just go twice they can say "Hey I was in NYC and I attended the same party Madonna did a while ago". But what I ask myself then is "When a subculture becomes famous can you still declare it as subculture?" I don't think so...with this changes it looses its exclusivity, which is worse for the group of people who first attended that it is for the promoters theirselves. Wasn't it exactly the same in the 60's with Andy Warhol's factory and their parties: A group of extraordinary people standing outside the crowd get together and should bring some glamour in the lives of the ordinary ones not having the chance (or maybe not really committing) to the free spirited livestyle they live.

It is a chance to escape from normal live and join the glamorous part of live without really doing anything for it. This means that the creative people are just used as entertainers, which is somehow a sad thing. How can this be avoided? I think it can only be avoided if parties are being kept secret and exclusive (which doesn't refer to money but the people visiting) so the success would go on. If this is not being done all this will turn from exitement to boredom because everybody knows it and is talking about that. The Misshapes stated in the interview that this is so big right now that the have to continue with this fast way of living. Let's see what time brings and if continues quality can be delivered if you have to "party under pressure"...