Saturday Night Fever: The Power of Film
The disco era started in 1970. It was a liberation movement for people of color and homosexuals, it was a vibrant community — the era flourished for years. Well... For seven years to be exact. And it stayed pretty underground for that time. Then in 1977, Saturday Night Fever was released and disco experienced a new wave, which grew and grew and spiraled until it crashed and burned, literally.
On July 12th, 1979, the Chicago White Sox held an official Disco Demolition Night. The White Soxs, struggling to fill seats that year, tried to take advantage of the recent hate disco music was getting and put on a “I hate disco” event. They planned to offer discounted admission to folks who brought disco records, promising that they would collect and then burn them on the field in-between games, hoping this would bring a couple thousand people to the game.It was on this night that everyone realized how much disco was truly hated…an unexpected 50,000 people showed up — it was chaos. People frisbee-threw their disco discs from the stands and stormed the field, rioting, until the police broke them up. A genre of music has never gotten such strong, organized, hatred in all of history, and it was all because of Saturday Night Fever.
Let's back it up to see how we got there…
September 1977 : “How Deep is Your Love,” the long song of the film, is released to promote Saturday Night Fever. This is the song where Tony and his love interest, Stephanie Mangano (played by All My Children star, Karen Lynn Gorney) cement their chemistry as they dance their way to winning the 2001 Odyssey dance competition. Rob Stigwood, film producer and music entrepreneur, strategically released this song to promote the movie, a pioneer in using music for theatrical campaigns–I know we live in the age of Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2 and Kendrick’s Black Panther’s album, but people actually buying and listening to the soundtrack of a movie was unheard of at the time. Saturday Night Fever is where it all started. Robert Stigwood was The Bee Gees’ manager at the time. If you don’t know The Bee Gees, they’re a British rock group that became known in the late ‘60s. If you know the Bee Gees, you still might not know that before they found their iconic triple harmony sound, they sounded awfully like the much more successful British rock band: The Beatles. The Beatles success clouded their own; it seems there was only room for one British rock band to have international success. They had to find a new space. Stigwood dabbled in both music and movies and he came across a script. Stigwood bought the rights, attached Travolta to play the lead and The Bee Gees to do all the music. The Bee Gees started working on the soundtrack. They were trying out a new sound, and it was working. It didn’t take long before it was clear that The Bee Gees’ and what they were doing would be the essence of the film.
Once the movie came out and the entire soundtrack was released, it became the highest selling record since sound recording began. Movie theaters had to hire extra staff because they couldn’t stop people from dancing in the aisles. Between 1977 and 1980 Saturday Night Fever sold 25 million copies and to this day it has sold over 40 million. The album re-popularized disco music, or at least that's how it seemed. The Bee Gees’ new sound, embodied by Tony Manero turned into the new wave of disco. A more ‘mainstream’ idea of disco, no, a more white and heterosexual idea of disco.
As Tony Manero grooms himself, gets dressed in his flashy outfits, puts on his jewelry, and goes out dancing, all activities that would be considered as ‘gay’ at the time, he is simultaneously shown sexualizing women, throwing around slurs, and holding all the power. People idolized him. The cinematography in Saturday Night Fever gives power to homosexuality and femininity in a way that takes its agency and denies liberation. Allow me to explain myself: In Tony’s first getting ready scene, he brushes his hair with precision, excessive attention to personal grooming, then the camera cuts to the Rocky poster on his wall. Tony stares at his naked body in the mirror, FLEXES, he puts on his jewelry, the camera cuts to a half-naked woman on his wall. So I say once again, the cinematography in Saturday Night Fever gives attention and agency to gay and feminine acts in a way that took ownership of the liberation people had in their space~disco~and then burned its reputation to the ground, overshadowing the truth of where it all came from. That is the power of film.
After Saturday Night Fever was released in 1977, the disco scene became predominantly white and heterosexual. That is the power of film.
It stayed that way for the next two years. Countless (many white) artists joined the party to capitalize on the latest trend of ‘dance’ music. The ‘disco’ records people were churning out to fit commercial appeal started to gain great disrespect from the music industry. Until music fans couldn't take it anymore, Rock fans did something about it, and they killed disco, burned it to the ground. To this day The Bee Gees do their best to deny ownership over the title of disco. They were not trying to make disco music. But Stigwood's revolutionary capitalization of their music to promote the film gained so much traction that it basically fueled a whole two-year long marketing campaign. Now let me conclude here by saying that I am a huge fan of disco. I love Saturday Night Fever and I am a die hard Bee Gees fan. I do not invalidate the genius it had that made it so popular. The Bee Gees are some of the best song-writers to ever exist; they wrote for Dionne Warwick, Barbara Streissand, Dolly Parton, Franki Vali, the list goes on. I do not disrespect the art these people created, but I do think the art deserves the respect of context, the explanation of the true history and implications surrounding the film.
