Good, bad or just a shade Wacko? We'll never never know
The Age
Friday January 8, 2010
How wise was it to name a nightclub after a place inextricably linked with lost boys, cute fairies and the pursuit of eternal youth? By Simon Castles. ALL NAMES have associations €” they spark mental connections between ideas and things. Which is why it must be as hard to name a nightclub as it is to name a restaurant or rock band. Name a nightclub wrong and you're on your way to forfeiting piles of money. Just as rock band REM were on their way to doing when they planned to call themselves either "Cans of Piss" or "Negro Wives".Melbourne's newest nightclub €” the one Premier John Brumby wasn't happy to see get a licence, but which opened last week anyway €” has a name that throws up a range of associations, some good, others not so good. It's called Neverland.A mega-nightclub in South Melbourne that holds 1500 people, Neverland is seemingly named either after Peter Pan's eternal dwelling place or Michael Jackson's old one. Or both.Whatever the case, the obvious subtext is exactly the same: Neverland is where you never have to grow up. Which, as a motif for a nightclub, is just about perfect. It also neatly encapsulates why Brumby is so worried. After all, 1500 clubbers chasing eternal regression might do some damage, particularly when the promise of "forever young" proves illusory, and everyone starts trying to dull their deep existential pain with Vodka Cruisers.In general, though, the associations to Peter Pan work in the nightclub's favour. In J. M. Barrie's immortal tale, Neverland is the playground of lost boys and cute fairies. Just €” ahem €” as the nightclub no doubt hopes to be. In the original book, Barrie writes: "After a time [Peter Pan] fell asleep, and some unsteady fairies had to climb over him on their way home from an orgy." Well, if that doesn't just sum up a fine Saturday night . . .But for most of Melbourne's clubbers €” and for must of us, period €” the name Neverland is surely more associated with Wacko Jacko than Peter Pan. Which makes you wonder if the club's moniker is wise.The Neverland Ranch is where a grown man morphed into Diana Ross and then Cesar Romero's Joker, lost and gained a nose or two, co-habited with a nappy-wearing chimp, and shared his bed with young boys and pretty much the entire Culkin family. J. M. Barrie just imagined Neverland; Jackson created it and then had his own tribe of lost boys round for sleepovers.Maybe the nightclub's owners want us to make these unfortunate connections with their establishment's name. In which case, we should give them some credit. By naming their nightclub after Michael Jackson's home, aren't they at least sending a clear message that it's not a safe environment for minors?Running down the long and growing list of our city's nightspots, you get the sense that naming clubs and bars involves a risky series of negotiations. How to choose a name that sounds crushingly cool and exclusive and yet welcoming to every bogan in Melbourne? That hints all at once at escapism, hedonism, a touch of high life, a dash of low life, and at the outside chance you might get sex tonight?So in Melbourne we have nightspots such as La La Land (which sounds a bit Los Angeles, and suggestive of getting completely out of it); Clique (please let me in to yours); Syn Bar (ooh, sinful); Electric Ladyland (Jimi Hendrix cool mixed with intimation you might get a lap dance); Love Machine (for all who think they are one); Tongue & Groove (if you've got the latter, you just might get the former down your throat).Perhaps my favourite nightclub name, though, exists only in the fictitious world of the TV sitcom 30 Rock. At Aquarium, "all the women are in a glass room in the centre of the dance floor and all the guys just watch and feed them".But Neverland is fully real, even if those who are concerned about the inner city's increasingly boozy culture wish it wasn't. And even though its name is evocative of somewhere that doesn't exist, or exists only in a dream.In the earliest drafts of Barrie's original play, Peter Pan's magical home was called "Peter's Never Never Never Land". Which has led some to argue, with justification, that Barrie was influenced by the name given to a vast and remote area of the Australian outback €” "the Never Never". Henry Lawson wrote about such a place, as did Jeannie Gunn in her novel (later a film) We of the Never Never. In the novel, Gunn explains how the place was named: "Called the Never Never, the Maluka loved to say, because they, who have lived in it and loved it, Never Never voluntarily leave it."We can only hope South Melbourne's Neverland doesn't inspire such devotion to place. A nightclub that those who love never never voluntarily leave? Holy holy crap. We might have to consider a curfew.
© 2010 The Age
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