TOO MUCH MISGUIDED RANTING AND RAVING

Every year around this time as summer spins over and rave techno party
culture shifts into full swing, the media predictably get on their high
horses about the drugs that are said to circulate at these parties,
specifically ecstasy.

Last Saturday's Age carried the somewhat sensational headline "On the pills
with Generation E". Monday's Age followed it up with a report from a Sydney
party where one person had died, apparently from an ecstasy-related condition.

I'm an avid rave party-goer who enjoys the sport and creativity of these
events and, to me, the tone of the stories describing my culture comes
across as, at best, cynical, at worst, patronising and false.

It would be possible to pick almost any nightlife-oriented culture and
extract stories showing the damaging consequences of that culture. How many
people end up in hospital or in abusive domestic situations after driving
home drunk from the pub? How many heart-attack patients could attribute
their condition to one too many restaurant meals with their colleagues
after work?

Surely it is ecstasy's newness that makes it newsworthy. But it is
transparently serving a vitriolic anti-rave/anti-young-people agenda to
simply isolate incidents of trauma resulting from the use of ecstasy, in
order to denigrate rave culture or to pigeon-hole an entire generation as
"Generation E".

John Fitzgerald from Melbourne University's department of criminology has
done extensive research into raves. This is what he says: "Raves are
generally portrayed in the media as being about huge ecstasy consumption.
This is not necessarily the case. Although some people are using ecstasy
and other drugs at these events, I think they are very safe environments
compared to most hotels where alcohol is being served."

In the recent Triple-J hottest 100 countdown, techno, electronic, or "rave"
music was seen to be gradually taking over from pop/rock music as young
people's preferred musical genre.

At a rave party called "psy-coroberee" that I attended last weekend in a
disused warehouse in Brunswick, about 500 ravers were given a visual and
aural industrial-techno feast incorporating live performance, film,
multi-media presentations, circus acrobatics, physical theatre, impressive
lighting and robust amplified music. All of this was the creative and
enterprising work of young people creating their own subculture - a
subculture for which Melbourne is becoming famous internationally.

Pip Darvall is one of the organisers of the Earthcore parties that have
attracted around 10,000 people over this summer. This is what she says:
"Overall, the arts aspect of raves is just about everything - it's why
people attend. We put a lot of effort into general logistics like power,
safety and water, but that's not what people come for. They come for the
show."

While no one would deny that ecstasy is often present at these parties,
there's a whole lot of people, like myself, who simply don't need the drugs
to enjoy the rave experience. I danced for six hours straight at the
weekend - rave dancing becomes like sport and the party space like a wildly
imaginative arena.

The Australian media are often criticised as being anti-youth, or obsessed
with casting negative stereotypes of the lifestyles of young people. In
this context, The Age might take stock of the messages it is sending out -
and it might look for a more balanced approach.

James Norman is a freelance journalist and a student at RMIT
University.E-mail: jamesnorman@hotmail.com