# Did "Saturday Night Fever" Intend to Make Disco Seem Cool? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 20, 2007, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-saturday-night-fever-intend-to-make-disco-seem-cool/408686 "2007-06-20T05:40:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-saturday-night-fever-intend-to-make-disco-seem-cool/408686/21 "2007-06-20T19:43:18Z")
[QUOTE=twickster] IIRC, the starting point was an article in “New York” magazine (or somewhere similar) that was basically a semi-sociological study of the subculture. [/QUOTE] British journalist Nik Cohn’s “Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night”, though he’s admitted since that [it was largely fictional](http://nymag.com/arts/all/process/17386/). ---
**Author:** ![twickster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ec9cab/32.png) [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-saturday-night-fever-intend-to-make-disco-seem-cool/408686/22 "2007-06-20T19:46:46Z")
[QUOTE=bonzer] British journalist Nik Cohn’s “Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night”, though he’s admitted since that [it was largely fictional](http://nymag.com/arts/all/process/17386/). [/QUOTE] Interesting! I did not know that. ---
**Author:** ![Spoons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spoons/32/3141_2.png) [@Spoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoons)\ **Post date:** [June 21, 2007, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-saturday-night-fever-intend-to-make-disco-seem-cool/408686/23 "2007-06-21T01:22:08Z")
[QUOTE=nevermore] 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. [/QUOTE] I remember those days, and I’m not sure if the “disco kids” and “rock-'n-rollers” were as cut and dried as _Detroit Rock City_ made them out to be. What there were, were a bunch of awkward high school kids trying to be cool any way they could. (Yep, I was one.) Kiss is playing the Gardens? Better get tickets. KC and the Sunshine Band are having an outdoor concert? Let’s go! Not going (or trying to go) to either would be decidely uncool. As long as you made the effort, you were OK. There were those who definitely lived for one style of music–heck, if you look at my 1979 high school yearbook, you’d think we all listened to nothing but Fleetwood Mac’s _Rumours_ (the cliquey and snotnosed yearbook committee made sure of that, and no, I’m not bitter)–but for the most part, we listened to everything. Top 40 AM radio, with its mix of genres, made sure we did. There was a lot more tolerance of disco (and rock and country and light pop and so on) in the mid-70s than you might think. What _Saturday Night Fever_ did, IMHO, was to turn disco from a musical genre into a lifestyle. There had been “disco” music earlier in the 1970s: the Hues Corporation’s “Rock the Boat,” the Love Unlimited Orchestra’s “Love’s Theme,” and Van McCoy’s “Do the Hustle,” but they were just danceable songs in the midst of so many other kinds of music: Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain,” Harry Chapin’s “Cat’s in the Cradle,” Glenn Campbell’s “Rhinestone Cowboy,” and the Captain and Tennille’s “Love Will Keep Us Together” were all on the charts in the early-to-mid 70s also. But when _Saturday Night Fever_ came out, you had to be like Travolta. You had to have the hair, the clothes, the cars, and so on. At the risk of sounding trite, it stopped being about the music, and started being about the lifestyle. A disco was no longer a fun place to go to meet girls and drink beer; it became a place you were looked down upon if you didn’t measure up to the standard Travolta set. Many of us said, “Screw this,” and returned to rock: I’m not surprised Meat Loaf’s _Bat out of Hell_ was as successful as it was; it represented a guitar-fuelled rock that was as far from disco as you could get. The only dancing you’d do to Meat Loaf was in the back seat of your car. 😉 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-saturday-night-fever-intend-to-make-disco-seem-cool/408686.md?page=1)