Okylie Minogue’s present Tension tour is a glorious spectacle. Dancers prowl round geometric staircases in bizarre hats, which feels delightfully Pet Store Boys. There’s a disco ball sufficiently big to completely dazzle each viewers member. One visible reveals a noirish movie of Ms Minogue as a form of heartbreak-vanquishing detective; a billboard in her wet road scene incorporates the placement of every tour date to ask: “Feeling lonely in Sheffield? Name Kylie …” And there she is in the midst of all of it, resplendent in blue PVC; a spangly crimson jumpsuit; a kaftan-ish factor sewn collectively from what seems to be like neon police tape, emblazoned with the traditional jagged Kylie heartbeat monitor brand.
Kylie is one in every of our most beneficiant performers: not above including The Loco-Movement to the setlist following viewers demand, its youthful silliness contrasted with Dancing, a stunning disco-country tune about mortality. The expansiveness of the present made it all of the extra galling to be pressured to partially witness it by the digital digital camera of the person sitting subsequent to me, who spent your complete gig – and I imply each single second of it – coaching his priapic lens on Kylie by wobbly 10x zoom.
Everybody has their cellphone out at gigs now, notably massive pop reveals: it’s an unavoidable truth of dwell music. To look down from our side-stalls seats at any level in the course of the present was to see a glittering of little rectangles, and that’s superb. Youngsters usually get the blame for this, however Kylie’s is a reasonably middle-aged crowd. I’m not immune both – I often restrict myself to a single gig pic, simply so the occasion lives in my digital camera roll, however I took perhaps a dozen of all of the thrilling set items.
However there’s something profoundly creepy about Digital Digital camera Man, a fixture of most gigs that function a feminine performer. I’ve stood subsequent to this – at all times middle-aged or older – man dozens of occasions, watching him preserve a shakily tight give attention to the ladies on stage together with his historic silver Olympus, and questioning what on earth he’s going to do with these images and pictures later. Whether or not his intentions are sleazy or just trainspottery, his ceaseless scrutiny feels unsettling for feminine and gender-nonconforming viewers members and musicians.
As performers in a paid-for, public setting, they’re clearly there to be checked out, however there’s a distinction between a reciprocal trade with an understanding and respectful viewers, and feeling monitored. The inference is that ladies solely exist right here to be surveilled, perceived as visible stimuli at finest, intercourse objects at worst. It’s unhealthy sufficient realising that somebody is looking at you creepily in public – behaviour that has been prohibited on London’s public transport community since 2022 – not to mention, I think about, noticing your self being watched so intently whenever you’re making an attempt to stage a present by yourself phrases. On this dynamic, it’s the performer who usually instructions the room, however the perpetually invasive lens undermines that energy, reminding them that they’re nothing however an object to be captured.
I’ve spoken to loads of feminine performers, a few of them distressingly younger, who hate the sight of DCG however really feel they will’t converse out about him for concern of alienating paying followers or being perceived as ungrateful, uppity bitches. I’ve additionally spoken to a number of of my very own male buddies of their 40s and 50s who fear about being tarred with the identical brush, who concern going to gigs alone or standing anyplace close to the entrance in case they’re perceived as pervs who haven’t come to hearken to the music. In case you assume I’m overstating this, a kind of buddies texted me saying he’d stood subsequent to a DCG at Wet Leg in London this weekend, and watched in horror as the person saved unabashedly zooming in on the band’s legs and bums.
I’m certain most DCGs will not be taking images to get off to later (you’d have a job, by all of the pixels). However both method, the dearth of self-awareness makes so many different folks within the crowd profoundly uncomfortable, main them to query their fully equal place on this atmosphere. I felt icky each time I unintentionally brushed the man sitting subsequent to me on Friday. I’ve had Kylie’s rapturous encore nearer Love at First Sight as an earworm since then, however that feeling of unease is the factor I actually can’t get out of my head. DCG: I urge you, cease it.