In historical context, did the writers/directors of “Saturday Night Fever” intend for the movie to make disco seem fun, cool, hip, or cutting edge OR were they intending to make disco seem creepy, dirty, lower class, and gross? It appears that they want to make Tony Manero a working class sympathetic chararacter, but was their intention to make movie goers accross the country go “I have to get an outfit like that and get into this disco thing” or was their intention to have people think “Geez, what a seedy little world that disco lifestyle is- that is some gross New York thing that I don’t want to be a part of.”
All I know, that watching it within a 2007 frame of mind, I feel the need to take a shower to wash that 1970’s stuff off of me (Note: I do remember the 70’s and I did own a pair of high waisted maroon polyester pants).
Yes, to rockers, the mantra was “Disco sucks!” But in popular culture, it was all the rage. I think the BeeGees had several hits in the top 10 at once from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack.
It has always interested me that John Travolta was at the center of two movies which inspired or mirrored popular culture of their time: Saturday Night Fever and Urban Cowboy. The latter inspired or confirmed a new cowboy mystique; think how many bars installed those mechanical bulls, even bars without a cowboy theme.
But in the vein of the OP, go back and watch Urban Cowboy critically. John and Debra Winger are lower working class people that live to go to Gilley’s every night to get drunk and party. Debra Winger sinks even lower when she cuts and runs at the first sign of trouble and moves in with the skanky bouncer in his unbelievable skanky trailer out back of the bar. And he starts smacking her around at the earliest opportunity.
The whole disco culture was also all about one-night stands and cruising the bars for action in an era of new-found open sexuality. But that doesn’t mean everyone who liked the music and liked to dance bought into that aspect of it.
Disco was, well, not quite analogous to hip-hop today, but the comparison isn’t totally off base. Start the right kind of music thread here on the Dope and you’ll have rock fans coming along to say that hip hop (or dance pop, or rap, or American Idol-style pop, or some other style that’s currently all the rage in popular culture) sucks.
Disco was trendy, “in”, popular and practically unavoidable. That doesn’t meet my own personal definition of “cool”, but it probably did for a lot of people.
It wasn’t so much that it was trying to make disco anything as much as it was a logical response to what was at the time a very popular style. Garish, in retrospect, but popular nevertheless.
It’s been a long time since I saw the film, and I’m not even sure I ever saw the whole thing, but I think the writers and directors wanted to make a film about people from a depressed socio-economic background who are trying to claw their way up, despite obstacles such as a lack of self-awareness, a lack of money, and a lack of general life experience. The disco stuff gives them something – status, self-esteem, freedom, whatever (I really don’t remember many details…). The film also intended to cash in on the disco craze that was already happening. Ultimately, it accelerated the craze, so I guess a lot of people thought it made disco seem cool. Pretty depressing film, however. Doesn’t one guy get beaten to within an inch of his life? Doesn’t another commit suicide? Or am I inventing stuff here?
yes, you summarized the plot of SNF rather nicely. the hero (Tony) works at a dead-end job (a small hardware store), and lives at home (where his neurotic mother constantly berates him, because he "isn’t like his brother’-a catholic priest). Going to the disco is the high point of his life-Tony becomes an excellent dancer.
yeah, blue-collar life is often gritty and hard-wasn’t that always true?Disco came about because large numbers of “baby boomers” were entering their early 20’s, and had money. So disco dance bars sprang up-which were emulated by the uper classes- (See Studio 54, XENON, etc.)
So, it was a case of the upper classes imitating the working classes.
Wouldn’t this be just a higher profile “fad” movie?
Like movies that were made about Skateboarding, Snowboarding, Rollerblading, Break Dancing, and any other fad that got a movie made about it (often a few years too late!)?
OT, but yeah, I got that impression from the movie Detroit Rock City too. Seems like disco kids were seen by rock-n’-rollers kinda the same way as the popped-collar fratboys and sorostitutes of today… obnoxious spoiled brats with no taste.
I always think that’s funny, because if I had lived at that time, I would have been caught right in the middle of the two cultures… I ADORE disco and that whole scene, but man, I love me some rock too. I probably would have been bouncing back and forth between KISS concerts and disco dancehalls.
Yeah, but SNF was more than just a cash-in movie. Sure, it featured disco prominently, but the movie wasn’t about disco, it was about a guy who loved disco because it was the only thing he was good at. It may have been sold to the studios (or the audience) as a disco fad movie, but it was a lot more. Take a look at some of the other disco-craze movies of the time, they are all forgettable crap. But Saturday Night Fever is a good movie, even if you hate disco music and don’t care about it. What matters is that TONY cares about it.
