Aida was out last week and wonders what shame is doing in the club – and why those who should be ashamed aren’t ashamed.
Last week I was really, really out. To the Berliner CTM Festival I spent a night in one of those mythical Berlin clubs where you have to cover your cell phone cameras with adhesive dots and where there are no mirrors to be found anywhere. After seven or eight hours of crazy loud music, hedonism and escapism, I stood in front of my bathroom mirror early in the morning and saw a happy face with deep circles under my eyes and smeared make-up: the supposedly kiss-proof lipstick had gone, my eyeliner was smudged, I looked like a watered-up poodle, but the coat I had received was a shower of happiness.
Because I didn’t have the opportunity to check my appearance for hours and didn’t have the time because I urgently had to hug all my friends, run into the mosh pit to the EBM/hardcore band Youth Code from LA and bust out all my best and worst dance moves at the same time to the Peruvian DJs Dengue Dengue Dengue, I simply didn’t care what I looked like for hours. And as I scrubbed away the sad remnants of my painted face, I thought to myself: How lucky to spend an evening without shame. The club as a space of liberation – from my own insecurities, from my shame, from demands.
Shame as a weapon
Why am I telling you this? Because a few days later, a friend held out her cell phone to me with the saddest text message I’ve read in all my years of music journalism and going out as a job: She had signed up for a not-so-secret secret concert and received confirmation of her spot on the list. So far, so normal. But the message from the organizers also said: “Don’t embarrass us”.
I’m sorry, what?
Shame is a powerful emotion. Shame causes people to do a whole lot of weird things. It’s an informal means of social control, and that’s not always a bad thing – I think a lot more people should be ashamed. But are the right people ashamed?
Shame is often associated with the feeling of feeling alien in a place, of feeling inferior; it is associated with poverty, with incompetence, as the sociologist Sighard Neckel writes. Shame was and, let’s be honest, still is used as a means of social pressure and is intended to stigmatize. But shame isn’t just a bad thing: it shows us boundaries, it warns us. The values that are enforced through shame may not always be a bad thing, at least if we were to evolve as a society.
Have we forgotten to have fun?
The thing is: Of course it is important for a party to be a reasonably safe space and of course a club or an organizer should do everything in its power to ensure that people treat each other with respect, respect boundaries and do not become invasive. Abusive people should definitely be ashamed of their behavior and hopefully change. But do people who violate boundaries feel addressed by “Don’t embarrass us”? Or does this more affect those who are unsure anyway? Who don’t dare to claim space for themselves? Who can’t let go because of sheer shame, who forget to embrace life and have fun because of sheer shame?
You don’t need video surveillance, no Palantir and no dictatorial big brother like Orwell today to be afraid of social surveillance: Instagram and Tiktok are completely sufficient. And I say that as someone who spends far too much time on these networks myself. But as pretentious as you may find the taping of cell phone cameras in Berlin clubs, they also make sense because that way no one has to worry about being filmed while having fun. Dance like no-one is watching isn’t so easy when we’re all each other’s big brothers, as Orwell describes it in 1984. I recently experienced this at another party, one where the cell phone was not taped off. The result: Nobody danced. Great artists performed – but no one seemed to dare to let go and embrace their own cringe.
The age of shamelessness
But at the same time, we live in a reality in which shamelessness is widespread, as the Epstein files published over the weekend and the discourse around them show. With the published papers we can see in black and white the relationships between influential billionaires and a convicted sex offender and human trafficker, while these same billionaires want to tell people on their own social platforms that what is there is not there at all. Or another example: the big round of apologies from Ye, formerly known as Kanye West. Have you noticed that the apology isn’t really an apology? Ye, who has now been radicalizing himself into the most disgusting anti-Semitism, hatred and racism for years, is now telling us that it was all due to an accident and not really his fault. Or let’s stick with ourselves here in Germany: Has anyone ever heard a serious apology or explanation from Xavier Naidoo as to why he aligned himself with right-wing radicals? Let alone an explanation for anti-Semitism, racism, queer hostility and the like? Everyone has the chance for a second chance, sure – but wasn’t that part of it that the first step was to show remorse? It’s probably gone out of fashion.
We live in a time when those who should be ashamed seem to have banished that feeling entirely. Instead, shame is becoming en vogue again in free space celebrations: just don’t let go! Just don’t shame the organizers! Just stay in performance mode even after work! Because without control, text messages like those from the organizers of the not-so-secret secret concert suggest, you can only be embarrassing.
Stay Cringe!
On the same evening of the secret concert, I also experienced a utopia: Peaches celebrated their first album in ten years in a record store in Berlin. The outfit: hairy nipple covers, skin-colored cycling shorts with pubic hair glued on, neon-colored sneakers, neon-colored make-up. The beats were pounding and the audience went crazy within minutes.
And Peaches’ new lyrics? Shame those who need to be shamed: “Not in your mouth, none of your business,” says one single, “orders won’t make us lie down and die/we will stop you fucking up our lives.” Those who cross boundaries, who are transgressive, who want to place themselves above others. Those who use shame as a weapon to advance their own interests.
Peaches upends the balance of power: shamelessly free and precisely shameful. So, stay embarrassed, stay cringe – and shame those who really should be ashamed.
