Michael Alig: My Problematic Fav
How do you mourn the loss of someone who maybe wasn't great in life but a genius contributer to the larger cultural project? Michael Alig did some horrible things; top of the list is the murder and dismemberment of a friend. Someone and chopped them up, but how do we measure the cultural impact and remember him that way? Alig served 17 years in prison. Six years after he was released, he died of a heroin overdose.
What he did before 1997 is what most people care about. He was considered one of the founders of the club kids scene in New York City in the late eighties. Pearl-clutching about drugs and partying shadowed the political campiness of it: kids sleeping all day and partying all night in grotesquely beautiful costumes was the antithesis of the Wall Street and excess of the 80s. I’m confident in claiming that Lady Gaga and Rupaul’s Drag Race would not be what they are without Club Kids (RuPaul was an active member of the scene.)
Club Kids were unabashedly queer in a time when “homosexuality” was the root of all evil and amidst the AIDS crisis of the 80s. I use queer in the totality sense; many of the people involved were with others of all genders, but the general queering of regular life was significant. Not only ignoring the natural working order of working 9-5, but the Club Kids also queered beauty standards by making themselves grotesque facsimiles of beauty, outdoing each other with the most outlandish costumes. The more people decreed them the brats of society, the more they embraced it, judging by the numerous appearances on 80s talk shows, the arbiters of morality at the time.
Michael Alig supposedly died alone on Christmas Day. Before prison, he was a difficult person to like. He was good for partying and drugs but had various conflicts. He struggled with addiction, and being in prison did not help that. This does not excuse his crime, but a tragic end to someone who peaked very young.
Thanks to streaming media, the Club Kids' legacy has only recently become available to look back on. Many people are familiar with Alig from the film Party Monster, which is deeply flawed and a grotesque version of a biopic. A better source is the documentary Glory Daze. I personally love the Instagram account Club Kids official, which does a great job of posting lesser-known photos from the media and personal collections.
This subculture was my third choice for a dissertation choice. There’s not a lot of new takes on it, but it will remain an ancestor of culture going forward.
What is this? A semi-regular newsletter about culture and academia and academic culture with occasional creative essays.
What is this? A semi-regular newsletter about culture and academia and academic culture with occasional creative essays. To quote Taking Back Sunday, “Tell all your friends!”