MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

On June 12, 2016, Omar Mateen shot and killed 49 people and critically wounded more than 50 others at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, FL. While controversially labeled “the deadliest shooting in modern American history,” it was not the first instance of deadly violence targeting the LGBTQ community. Indeed, the history of Queer culture in America could be described as a history of conflict, violence and struggle to overcome widely accepted cultural stigmas attached to sexual and gender differences. This was true long before the birth of the modern gay rights movement at the Stonewall Inn uprising of 1969. Gay bars and nightclubs historically have been the loci of Queer communal life, acting as sanctuaries for social activism, festive gathering and open sexual expression. At the same time, they’ve been battlegrounds in the war against queer social exclusion and oppression. This paper examines gay establishments and the development of their architectural typologies with specific focus on how certain design tactics of openness and closure have worked to attract desirable guests, repel the unwanted and control the flow of each group. The deployment of varying design moves reflects challenges posed by diverse regional cultural conditions, historically affecting perceptions of the fear/liberation dichotomy across an assortment of times and locations. While in the immediate aftermath of the Pulse shooting many vigorously supported bans on various types of firearms, going so far as to declare war on the NRA, arson and other methods have proven equally useful tools in the gay-bashing arsenal, with nearly as deadly results. This paper examines Pulse as a case study of gay establishments, with special focus on the negotiation between security and celebration, questioning the value of examining successful design strategies from the past in order to create safer queer spaces in the future.