Not Missing a Beat / SHE

A woman, the protagonist of my own story, the lynchpin in my memories and the way that I remember this music and this time. It misses out key if mundane places, like the ladies’ toilet; a place to sort ourselves out, cool down, to salvage makeup or hair. It misses out the concerted level of care that women (and queer folks) develop for each other, particularly in a risky environment, making sure that it stays a messy but ‘good’ night. Have you had some water? Don’t drink too much. Do you need to cool down? Are you having a good night? Like so many other retrospective films that recreate the emotions and moments of a music movement, we discover the world of Beats (dir. Welsh, 2018) through the eyes and friendship of two male teenage boys. And it’s not that their experience doesn’t invoke any of my own. We are not that different, after all. But once the nostalgia has peaked and ebbed away a question remains: where are all the women? I mean, I can see them. They are the girlfriends (potential or actual), the cousins and friends of our two ravers, and they are part of the surging crowd in the rave scene that so grabbed me. But they are peripheral narratives. We are not supposed to care about them or ask questions about their lives or their futures. They are fleeting flashes of female ‘others’.