"seems like cultural cowardice is largely history of (mostly) white people choosing to exercise their cultural capital, or not, and/or consumers deciding to buy the resulting cultural output, or not"
"i.e. people of color, queer people, etc have always de facto made art from outside those structures, they usually haven't had the choice of embrace or no embrace"
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i don't know if it's a zero sum game though
the mainstream (however you define it) embracing disco ideas doesn't - in the long run - damage the underground gay disco culture, which continues to evolve, mutate, regenerate, leading to house
the mainstream's embrace of disco ideas changes mainstream pop music, which is a/ definitely a net enrichment of mainstream pop on a musical level, and b/
possibly an enrichment of it attitudinally and politically
and what's the alternative, the better way of going about it?
to truly fully engage with disco as a subculture, as a outsider, would mean moving to NYC, becoming gay, and living in that microworld
that's not going happen, so the partial engagements with the music or aspects of it, are what results
it's fine to prefer the unadulterated pure form of it as culture (albeit as kind of time travel style projection towards an era), rather than say Blondie's "heart of glass"
but i don't think "Heart of Glass" detracted from disco in its pure form by existing
and within the context of punk and its prejudices (all the Legs McNeil anti-disco crap) it was a non-cowardly move for Blondie
although i'm sure they were just responding as musicians, like ooh this sound is cool.
another beneficial side effect of this process: the mainstream's embrace of the underground's idea forces the underground to come up with new shit, and that causes music to keep moving forward