This Monday, the Village People will perform as part of Donald Trump’s inauguration at the White House. “We know that this will make people unhappy, but we believe that music must live without political considerations,” the group’s co-founder, Victor Willis, said last week via his Facebook page.
If the one who appears dressed as a police officer within the Village People decrees that the music would be apolitical, the fact remains that the participation of the disco group, which built its success by using gay codes and imagery, raises questions about time when many American LGBT people are worried about seeing their rights called into question by the new president.
In December, Donald Trump announced that he wanted to stop “the transgender madness” upon his inauguration. “I will sign decrees to end child sexual mutilation, exclude transgender people from the army and exclude them from primary, middle and high schools,” he said. In a context where moral panics targeting the LGBT community are intensifying and where Meta has just explained that it is now possible to say on Facebook, Instagram and Threads, without being worried by US legislation, that “homosexuals are mentally ill”, gay, lesbian, bi and trans people fear the worst.
“YMCA” punctuated Trump’s rallies
May the Village People be there to sing at the inauguration YMCA this Monday is therefore not anecdotal. Their 1978 hit was widely used at Donald Trump rallies, so there is a certain logic to their presence. Especially since this troubled mix of styles clearly illustrates the ambiguous destiny of the perception of the song.
When it was released in the late 1970s, it became an instant gay anthem. The group, whose name alludes to Greenwich Village, the gay neighborhood of New York, successfully reaches out to as many people as possible. But he doesn’t hide or save his nods to the gay community.
Policeman, sailor, cowboy… The members of the group each embody a stereotype of masculinity and a figure of the erotic, not to say pornographic, imagination of homosexuals. Under the disco balls then appears a gallery of fetishized characters who until then only revealed themselves as such in the confidentiality of the counterculture, starting with the works of Tom of Finland…
The album on which appears YMCA is titled Cruisin’in other words “flirting” in homo slang, but also “taking a cruise”, according to its original meaning. Who could be fooled that the record wasn’t about boat travel?
« You can hang out with all the boys »
Victor Willis, maybe. In December, on Facebook, he claimed that YMCA was not a gay anthem. “As I said before, this is a false assumption that comes from the fact that my co-author was gay, as were some (but not all) members of the Village People.”
-The song talks about the Young Men’s Christian Association, a movement allowing young men who were members to share, among other things, sporting activities, but also meals or find inexpensive accommodation. Victor Willis claims to have simply spoken about his own experience when writing the text. And he apparently did not understand the double meaning of the words that was certainly obvious to Jacques Morali, his gay co-author.
“It’s fun to stay at the YMCA, they have everything for men to enjoy, you can hang out with all the boys”. have a good time, you can spend some time in the company of all the guys”…
Victor Willis assured that he was unaware that the YMCAs were also a place for homosexual meetings… And he also warned that, “from January 2015”, he would sue “all press outlets […] presenting YMCA like a gay anthem. Oops…
Jacket reversal
At the same time, he clarified that he was not “disturbed” by the fact that “gays consider this song as their anthem”. A sign of irritation of varying degree. Or a poorly adjusted ideological compass. After all, in his Facebook post last week, Victor Willis said he hoped that YMCA can “bring the country together after a tumultuous and divided campaign during which our favorite candidate lost.” After voting for Democrat Kamala Harris, the Village People will sing for Republican Donald Trump. This is what we call versatility or reversal.
Our file on Donald Trump
Moreover, in 2020, Victor Willis demanded to ban the use of YMCAs in Trump rallies and finally dropped the lawsuit, realizing that there was a profit to be made from it. “Since then, it is estimated that the song has generated several million dollars,” he himself revealed.
