One and Only Demolition Thread

[David Mantell]

On 7/21/2012 at 5:32 PM, S.L.L. said:

'Too gay" I admittedly can't think of any specific incidents to point to other than some guy recently saying. that watching Demolition matches was something he was especially ashamed of because of the S&M look, and he was afraid of people walking in on him watching them, but I don't remember where that was, and a cursory trip through the search engine isn't bringing it up. Either way, I've heard enough people deride them for the leather daddy look to know it's an issue with some people.

On 7/22/2012 at 12:49 AM, Cross Face Chicken Wing said:

I am extremely intoxicated right now. I'm going to watch some Demolition matches and see if they are any better drunk than sober. Because sober, they are pretty goddam terrible. And really gay. I like the masks, though.

The missing link in all this was NORMA MORICEAU 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norma_Moriceau

Norma Moriceau was the costume designer on Mad Max 2. Demolition, particularly with the masks on, were based on the character of Humongous.  The Road Warriors/Powers of Pain look was based on the character of Wez, Humongous' sadistic boyfriend.

Norma Moriceau was an Australian (where Mad Max 2 was filmed) but lived in London in the mid 1970s and was friends with Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood who ran the formative punk clothing shop SEX where the Sex Pistols got their start.  McLaren and Westwood's designs for the shop were largely based on ideas from the gay S&M underground such as the chest harnesses that ultimately inspired Humungous's and ultimately Demolition's look.  Malcolm and Vivienne took the chest harnesses and other ideas previously sold secretly from the back pages of porn magazines and made them into high street fashions worn by young people to provoke and upset their elders.  Soon, all of London was full of punk rockers in black spiked leather and chest harnesses.

Moriceau took the ideas her friends and all the cool kids in London were into and used it for the costumes for her wild post apocalyptic film.  By the time Mad Max 2 had gone mainstream and was being picked up on by wrestlers such as the Road Warriors and Demolition, chest harnesses and shiny black leather just meant futuristic and science fiction looks.

It's only years after the Demolition gimmick came and went that LBGT+ culture has gone mainstream and shops like Prowler selling REAL chest harnesses - in Leather not Cloth - have started popping up in respectable High Streets and us straight folk have looked in curiously through the window and thought  to ourselves "Hang about, that's DEMOLITION'S old costumes" and never thought the same way about the Demolition gimmick again!