It takes The Village People to raise a child

If there's one thing that I like about Donald Trump it has to be his enthusiasm for The Village People

I expect he also responds to the upbeat energy in their music which, aside from tempo, often uses composition tricks like minor key verses to make those major key choruses really pop.

It reminds me how 'Gloria' by Laura Branigan was used by Alan Jones, the conservative radio "personality" who opened his show with the song but defined himself as a disgrace for agitating for violence in the lead up to the Cronulla race riot of 2005.

Anyway, before we get into that sort of ugliness behind the tunes, who can't help but be moved by the Village People's well-crafted hits? 

The sight of him dancing to their gay disco music something that I find myself enjoying about the recently re-elected US President.

I am of the option that it takes cultural forces like the Village People to raise a child and will share my own here.

When The Empire Strikes Back arrived at cinemas in 1980 (or maybe 1981 in Australia), I was seven years old.

That film doesn't remain in my memory for reasons that I'll explain, but it was impossible to avoid the impact of George Lucas' franchise through my childhood.

Many, many hours were played with figurines in the likeness of characters from the Star Wars universe.

In fact, I recall getting my first lesson about sex from watching my cousin acting it out with a Princess Leia figurine.

Before getting to the disco, I remember the triumphant feeling of leaving the first Star Wars movie about three years earlier.

While I would've been four I remember ascending the stairs from Canberra's Civic cinema with a feeling of excitement.

It was the same screen where I saw the original James Bond movie Dr No around the same time.

Maybe I'd had a birthday, because I came into possession of a Han Solo hand-blaster that I put into my little orange lunchbox and remember pretending to be the famed British spy while being babysat.

So when the sequel to Star Wars arrived a few years later I was enthusiastic to see it.

However, I wasn't alone.

The first opportunity to watch the Empire film came while I was being babysat by my aunt, who lived in Sydney.

All through my youth the movies released would be staggered and it wasn't something I really understood until I was writing film reviews while at university.

There was a limit on how many screens could show a new release film that was determined by the number of physical copies of the movie.

So films would arrive in Australia and screen in the state capitals, like Sydney, before moving on to the regional centres, like my hometown of Canberra.

The new Star Wars movie was hugely anticipated and, when my aunt asked about seeing a film, quickly became the focus of our plans.

I think we might've gone to the cinemas in George Street and joined the queue leading toward the box office.

At the point of buying tickets where we learned there was only one available and three of us needed seats.

The next screening was going to be too late for a seven- or eight-year old.

Since we had travelled into the city and didn't want the trip to be wasted, my aunt and her friend asked what else was showing.

I don't know what the options were but they bought tickets for Can't Stop The Music.

Although I've seen the film a number of times now, I still remember how quickly my disappointment shifted as Steve Guttenberg roller-skated through New York streets singing along to 'The Sound of the City'.

It would be a couple of years later that I gravitated toward the Police Academy movies from that familiarity with Guttenberg, but it's interesting now to see his resemblance to Jacques Morali.

Morali was the producer who developed The Village People concept and shaped their material:

While in New York, Morali attended a costume ball at "Les Mouches", a gay disco in Greenwich Village. Seeing the types of costumes and some common ensembles worn by the party guests, the idea came to him to put together a group of singers and dancers, each one playing a different gay fantasy figure.

The film somehow manages to make the story quite wholesome and Americanising the role of Morali by making him Jack Morell, as well as heteronormative with the addition of a love interest played by Valerie Perrine, who I recognised from Superman.

While Princess Leia might've acted out those early lessons in sex education, it was the pneumatic way Perrine's breasts appeared to float in a hot tub in The Village People movie that might have been the moment that I knew I was straight.

It seems ironic in hindsight that a camp movie celebrating gay subculture gave me this personal insight.

Now that I read about Perrine I can appreciate her figure has played an influential role in the representation of American sexuality.

She is credited as the first actress to appear nude on American network television by intentionally exposing her breasts during a PBS broadcast in 1973.

Can't Stop The Music is a musical biopic that reflects a version of history through the lens of what was considered palatable for a mainstream audience at the time it was produced.

This is to describe that the film fails to capture accuracy, but as a musical shows the kind of fantasy where characters burst into song and sets change to show desires beyond the scope of reality.

It's the kind of energy and representation that offers relief for those who are unhappy and reflects a kind of delirious enthusiasm totally in line with the crowds I see surrounding Trump.

Even though there's a dissonance between the increasingly overt homosexuality that a contemporary audience recognises in The Village People and the conservative Christian ideology that's defined the US Republican movement since around the time that the film was released.

It's that dissonance which defines our post-truth and "fake news" era, where so much doesn't make sense while explosions of colour (or colourful rhetoric) provide distractions.

Just as the film Can't Stop The Music glossed over the details that defined its origins to sell more records for The Village People, we're seeing their music continuing to be used by businessmen to dazzle audiences.