"Welcome to Chippendales" or the sordid underside of male striptease

• The Welcome to Chippendales

  miniseries

  has been available since Wednesday on Disney+.

• She tells how an Indian immigrant developed the concept of the world's largest male stripper empire at the turn of the 1980s.

• Behind the disco ball and the muscular bodies, a true crime and a social phenomenon that questions power relations.

Cocaine, shenanigans and murders!

, available from this Wednesday on Disney +, tells how Somen "Steve" Banerjee, played by Kumail Nanjiani (

), an Indian immigrant who arrived in the United States in the 1970s, developed the concept of the greatest empire of male striptease of the world at the turn of the 1980s, which has become a planetary socio-cultural phenomenon.

Why is the unflattering undies of the Chippendales creation worth a look?

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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 (

), 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 Stratten, playmate of the August 1979 issue of

, dragged him to a gay bar in Los Angeles where they attended 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 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 (

) whom 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,

turns into 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, embodied by Juliette Lewis (

) 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 reconstruction of the

in eight episodes, created by Robert Siegel, to whom we owe

, thus erodes the American dream and questions the power relations in our society. .

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