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Manan Ahmed passes along this request for help from Richard Hughes at Illinois State University:"Why Did Disco Suck?" You can go there to offer your thoughts, though Manan comments that"some questions are too easy to answer, no?"
But I've got a query of my own: When did"suck" become a legitimate verb of historical analysis and why does it have negative connotation? I admit to being a prude of the first order and am enough beyond the generational divide from most of my colleagues here that I still wince at the S word. I've been doing a lot of wincing in the last twenty years or so. But, seriously, how did"suck" become the word of choice for what is deeply or even banally awful? It hasn't made it into most of the on-line dictionaries to that effect yet. Do we have bad memories of life at mother's breast? Is there an implicit homophobia in the language of people who wouldn't want to think themselves homophobic? Why isn't"to suck" or"it sucks" a good thing? Update: So, am I to understand that to know that"to suck" is bad and"to blow" is good signals that one knows the difference between authentic music, i.e., jazz, and inauthentic music, i.e., disco?
The explanation is homophobia and/or misogyny. "Suck" and "blow" both refer to oral sex on males, and the implicit insult involved is that oral sex on a man is degrading, hence can only performed by those who are degraded and low. To "suck" in the relevant sense is to be degraded, applied paradigmatically to persons but by implication to other things.
I suppose--in mitigtaion--that "suck" has now become something of a dead metaphor, and not necessarily connected to that original use, but the provenance does at some level lurk in the background.
Irfan Khawaja -
8/4/2006
Sorry, my explanation was in answer to the second half of Ralph's question, not the first, namely, why does "suck" have a negative connotation?
Jonathan Dresner -
6/23/2005
I thought that was an explosive reference, not a sexual one.
And that's the only thing I have to say on this entire subject....
David Lion Salmanson -
6/23/2005
Sorry, I don't buy the derivation of blow as a negative term being connected to oral sex. If something "blows" it is bad, but if it "blows chunks" it is really bad. To blow chunks is, of course, to vomit. To blow one away seems also tenuously connected to oral sex. A saxophonist literally blows one away with a good performance. Sometimes a cigar....
Ralph E. Luker -
6/22/2005
So, Evan, are you telling me that "to blow" and "to suck" are interchangeable? If that's the case, then the usage hasn't passed over to us even loosely from commentary on jazz. Right? Or, at least "to blow" has been reversed in its meaning. I think that I'll avoid the expressions, in any case, if they rely on homophobia for their expressive power.
Ed Schmitt -
6/22/2005
Fair enough! Though any genre has its weak links...
Evan Garcia -
6/22/2005
Hm, I hadn't thought of that. I was thinking of how "blow" is used interchangably with "suck". So when you say something blows, it's a bit different than the two examples you give.
Sharon Howard -
6/22/2005
Ok, I prefer funk for my 70s black music fix, but I agree: disco isn't (all) rubbish. (But perhaps you folks in the States never saw some of the really dire British disco acts of the late 70s...)
Now, prog rock - that does suck.
Ralph E. Luker -
6/22/2005
Yah, Evan, is that where we get a phrase like "I blew the exam"? Doesn't that mean that I failed it? But when something "blew me away," that's a good thing, isn't it?
Evan Garcia -
6/22/2005
Ralph, just to clarify Irfan Khawaja's comment above--"blow" is also used negatively. "Suck" and "blow" can be used interchangably, though I think "suck" has become more mainstream and isn't seen as graphic as "blow" is.
And like others, I think it's undeniable that both come from a homophobic perspective.
Ralph E. Luker -
6/22/2005
No problem, Ed. It was many years ago, now. Still, it's a black hole.
Ed Schmitt -
6/22/2005
Sorry.
Ralph E. Luker -
6/22/2005
Ed, You'll have to excuse the black hole that is my memory of the summer of 1979. I had just been denied tenure at Allegheny College, was on my last paycheck, had a wife and two little children to support, and the good folks at Allegheny were blacklisting me. Needless to say, baseball and disco weren't on my mind.
Manan Ahmed -
6/22/2005
I have been amiss in not recommending Whit Stillman's Last Days of Disco. He gets it.
Ed Schmitt -
6/22/2005
Ralph - That conflagration at Comiskey Park was a big deal at the time - you don't remember it?
Ralph E. Luker -
6/22/2005
Rob, I started to ask you where you find such remarkable information, but then you had already told me where you found it, right? Still, how on point can you be?! Impressive.
Rob MacDougall -
6/22/2005
Another data point, for those who like to be rigorous about such things: "Disco Sucks" became a national media phenomenon in July 12, 1979, when Chicago radio DJ Steve Dahl (who had recently switched stations when his former employer went to a disco format) led a "Disco Demolition" at Comiskey Park between games at a White Sox doubleheader. Dressed in military garb, Dahl blew up an enormous pile of disco records at center field - but then thousands of fans stormed the field, chanting "disco sucks". They tore up the sod, knocked over batting cages, etc.; the second game had to be cancelled. [Mark Coleman, _Playback_, 132-133.]
Sharon Howard -
6/22/2005
The OED online doesn't help on the question why, but it does date the first written usage of suck in this sense at 1971.
shiralee saul -
6/22/2005
From this end of the world, 'sucking' has little or nothing to do with oral sex and far more to do with 'brown-nosing' and 'sucking arse' -- crawling, grovelling and sychophancy.... But it does lead to interesting cross-cultural questions that bring into grave doubt our Prime Miniature's (suck-up) definition of Aust. as 'America's deputy' -- we don't even speak the same language....
Ed Schmitt -
6/22/2005
I'm not sure about the term's use for historical analysis, but it first emerged in the early 80s, with my first memory of it being Bill Murray's invocation in the classic film "Stripes." And as to disco sucking, I think its one of our culture's easy testosterone-induced shibboleths that is about thirty years past being cutting edge. I personally don't think disco sucks, as I was raised on the Bee Gees. And I'm not ashamed to admit it.
Rob MacDougall -
6/21/2005
And (if my history books haven't lied to me) there was considerable homophobia wrapped up in the "disco sucks" backlash of the late 1970s early 80s. So Ralph's questions and Richard Hughes' go hand in hand. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if "disco sucks" promotions by early 80s rock DJs and others were part of the answer to Ralph's first question, about when and how "x sucks" entered widespread popular use.
The autobiographical part of Tom Frank's What's The Matter With Kansas has a memorable chapter title (based on some late 70s graffiti that struck young Tom as particularly profound truth), "Russia Iran Disco Suck."
Jonathan Dresner -
6/21/2005
With all due respect to my colleague Manan, I'd like to beg the question. Here's what I wrote
It was new, and lots of people don't like new stuff (the waltz was considered oversexed and undignified when it was invented; we got over it). It wasn't cutting edge by the late '70s, and auteurs always hate the not-quite-new. It was popular and accessible, and nobody with pretensions likes that. It was pop music, dance music, and it was very good at that, and that left lots of room to criticize it; most of the same criticisms could be leveled at square dance music, or Strauss, but now we consider that a cultural treasure.
In other words, it was perfectly good commercial dance-oriented music and like all cultural consumables, it had its day and was replaced by newcomers who foisted their own pretensions to greatness (or at least, adequacy) and fresher but no less disposable cultural products on the market.
Ralph E. Luker -
6/21/2005
Thanks, Manan! That's really helpful. I guess I've got a double query now about "blowing" and "sucking".
Manan Ahmed -
6/21/2005
While I don't know the answer to "suck" becoming a legitimate verb of historical analysis [maybe this is my cue for The History of Suck], the answer to the latter question can be found here. Perhaps Caleb can help us here [ahem. with the jazz history, of course].
