Cocaine, shenanigans and murders! Welcome to Chippendalesavailable since Wednesday on Disney+, tells how Somen “Steve” Banerjee, played by Kumail Nanjiani (Silicon Valley), an Indian immigrant who arrived in the United States in the 1970s, developed the concept of the world’s largest male striptease empire by the turn of the 1980s, which became a global socio-cultural phenomenon. Why is the unflattering undies of the Chippendales creation worth a look?
In the late 1970s in Los Angeles, Somen “Steve” Banerjee, manager of a gas station, has only one goal: to become rich, whatever the cost. After years of tightening his belt, he puts all his savings into buying a bankrupt nightclub and turning it into a backgammon club. Alas, his club remains deserted.
A true crime is revealed under the success story
He joins forces with Paul Snider, camped by Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey, Gaslit), a promoter, crook and pimp in his spare time. The duo tries to organize women’s wrestling shows in the mud to bail out the coffers, but without much success. Fortune smiled on him when Paul Snider, and his wife, Dorothy Strattenplaymate of the August 1979 issue of Playboy, drag him to a gay bar in Los Angeles where they attend a male stripping. The idea of the Chippendales was born, under the symbolic patronage of one of its role models, Hugh Hefner.
The duo enlists the services of choreographer Nick De Noia, played by Murray Bartlett (the brilliant interpreter of the hotel manager from the first season of The White Lotus). The beginning of the success story, but also trouble. On August 14, 1980, Paul Snider raped and killed his wife before killing himself.
A first murder that punctuates the sordid backstage of the famous dance troupe, unlike the perfect and smooth plasticity of the strippers. Obsessed with numbers, profitability, money, power and the outward signs of wealth, Somen “Steve” Banerjee, the perfect embodiment of the American self-made-man, will make a fortune, thanks in particular to the know-how of Irène, an outstanding accountant, camped by Annaleigh Ashford (American Crime Story) that he ends up going to marry.
But behind the scenes, he is ready to eliminate anyone who stands in his way, to satisfy his ambition. Shenanigans, murders, arson, Welcome to Chippendales turns to true crime over the episodes.
A feminist explanation of the Chippendales phenomenon
While the Chippendales are cheesy and even downright awkward at bachelorette parties today, the original troupe enabled “the reversal of male and female power dynamics” in the 1980s, as Denise, the costume designer of the troupe, played by Juliette Lewis (Yellowjackets) Does this reversal of roles, however, authorize the exploitation of the bodies of men as well as those of women? Star Chippendale Otis (Quentin Plair) is uncomfortable being kissed and touched by customers, and is told that “it’s part of the job”. At that time, the question of consent had not yet been raised…
Welcome to Chippendales also questions racism and discrimination. Black dancer Otis is thus omitted from the first Chippendales calendar because Steve Banerjee is convinced that a photo of a naked black man will deter female customers. Is racism more acceptable because it comes from a business decision of a man who, as he sees himself, is a victim of it on a daily basis?
Beyond the muscular and hairless bodies, almost anecdotal, this supercharged reconstitution of the eighties in eight episodes, created by Robert Siegel, to whom we owe Pam & Tommythus undermines the American dream and questions the power relations in our society.