The Narrative Nightclub

Abstract

This chapter brings together expertise in film and cultural studies to analyse representations of nightclub dancefloors in British cinema. Our focus is on club culture films: Human Traffic (Justin Kerrigan, 1999), Sorted (Alexander Jovy, 2000), Soul Boy (Shimmy Marcus, 2010), Everywhere and Nowhere (Menhaj Huda, 2011), Northern Soul (Elaine Constantine, 2014) and Eden (Mia Hansen-Løve, 2015), a contrasting example from France. We propose that British film tends to use the dancefloor as a narrative device that occludes or disturbs notions of youth culture, turning it into a problem to be solved. We perform our analysis by linking academic writing on dance music and nightclub cultures with textual interpretation of the films. In doing so the chapter captures a sense of the wider discourse surrounding nightclubs and especially the dancefloors that often form their focus, on- and off-screen.