The irony of disco’s lifespan in America is that the culprit that might have actually killed disco is the very same cultural artifact that made disco a national sensation in the first place.

Saturday Night Fever, released in 1977, brought disco into mainstream culture and started a craze that heightened in America until disco’s ultimate “death.” Before Saturday Night Fever, bands like KC and the Sunshine Band were the hallmarks of disco with a clear soul and funk influence, but after film’s release, the Bee Gees became the new disco icons.[1]

However, the fact that disco suddenly became mainstream does not seem to historically be the real cause for anti-disco backlash, as much as the type of disco culture that Saturday Night Fever promoted, which in fact was based in fiction more than truth.

True, Saturday Night Fever was written to be a “timeless story” with “broad based appeal,[2] but the film was no more than a disco-themed movie made for a “non-disco” audience.[3] Even the music featured on the soundtrack for the film was, as author Peter Shapiro says, “ ‘disco’ only in quotation marks.”[4] Shapiro also describes that the music “had most of the hallmarks of disco–the bouncy bass lines, the cod-Latin percussion, [and] unmacho male singers”  but the overall effect was no more than pop music that was indistinct from any other era.[5] The combination of catchy music and John Travolta’s impressive dance moves and performance was the perfect mix for creating a commercial hit, but disco itself became so widespread in culture in effect that it was “unavoidable as a whole.”[6]

What’s more, the story of Saturday Night Live and the aesthetics that the movie presented were not authentic to the disco night life at all. The story was largely based off of an article, “Tribal Rites of a New Saturday Night” written by Nik Cohn, who had only just moved to New York from Northern Ireland at the time of writing the article.[7] As a result of his lack of true awareness with the American disco scene, the culture that Cohn portrayed came from his knowledge of Northern Soul dancing from Ireland, which was “all about individuality, with dancers performing athletic spins and leaps.”[8] This type of solo freestyle dancing contrasted the communal dancing scene that actually was happening at discotheques. However, even modern audiences familiar with Saturday Night Fever will immediately recognize and remember protagonist Tony Manero’s impressive solo dance sequences as one of the most memorable parts of the film.

Decades later, Cohn admitted that the story he wrote that became Saturday Night Fever was a lie, saying “’Far from being steeped in Brooklyn’s street life, I hardly knew the place. As for Vincent, my story’s hero, he was largely inspired by a Shepherd’s Bush mod whom I’d known in the Sixties, a one-time king of the Goldhawk Road.’”[9]

Richard Powers, dancer and instructor at Stanford University has also written about the changing disco aesthetics that arose out of the film Saturday Night Fever. Powers describes how there wasn’t “one definitive disco demographic” which is perhaps one of the greatest misconceptions of contemporary culture critics who neatly apply the rules of identity politics onto this time and overlook the complexity of the disco crowds.

Specifically, Powers outlines three waves of disco demographics:[10]

1. Young baby boomers who missed out on 1960s counterculture (hippies). They redefined the counterculture to be their own by emphasizing “sophistication” which Powers describes as being “upscale and classy” as well as a “glamorous urban version”
2. The suburban middle class and blue collar working class looking to attain upward mobility: dressing up and going out seemed to allow one to rise in class. Powers notes that disco music itself was created to be more sophisticated, with orchestral elements (string instruments and brass instruments) that completely differed from “small hard-hitting rock bands.” The idea of being able to move in class through disco is the basis of John Travolta’s character in Saturday Night Fever, who works at a hardware store by day and is a renowned, sophisticated dancer at night
3. Then, the people who were really involved at the beginning of the disco scene: the subculture of gays who were involved in the opening of clubs, New York Latinos who contributed their preservation of dance traditions–with their own influence–from 1950s rock n roll, and uniquely African rhythms specifically from Soul Makossa by Manu Dibango which imparted the repetitive, steady dance beat to disco music.

Powers also notes that disco arose from Latin roots in New York in communities that kept a tradition of partner and communal dancing; after Saturday Night Fever came out, solo freestyle dancing became popular which required club-goers to not be as sober, and as a result increased the wild lifestyle at notable disco clubs like Studio 54 in New York City.[11]

The image of disco that Saturday Night Fever created stuck with audiences. As a result of becoming more mainstream and losing its soul, disco came to be heavily criticized. Judy Kutulas, in her article “’You Probably Think This Song is About You:’ 1970s Women’s Music from Carole King to the Disco Divas” mentions that disco started becoming a fad after Saturday Night Fever, to the point where it seemed “inauthentic”[12] because it was increasingly marketed by record producers and pushed by club owners who appreciated the ease and affordability of a DJ over the clunkiness of a band.[13]

In the context of Disco Demolition to come, it’s significant to note that disco at the climax of its backlash was no longer underground and associated with subculture, but had become extremely mainstream and even stripped of its initial underground cultural roots. There really was a sense in popular culture that disco was taking over, however, popular disco was a different kind of genre uniquely born out of the film. The image that Saturday Night Fever exaggerated the disco scene and greatly contrasted it with other American cultures such as the Midwest, where the story of Tony Manero seemed especially unrealistic and displeasing.

Steve Dahl, the radio host-become poster boy for Disco Demolition unsurprisingly did not go for the image that Saturday Night Fever was selling to young people. In his book with Dave Hoekstra, Dahl writes:

“The principle of crossing from being a nobody to a somebody, as pictured in the film, seemed to demand a repudiation of all things rough–like rock’n’roll and bar nights. Chicago kids liked their Saturday nights just as they had been experiencing them. Dress up? No. Dance lessons? No. Cover charge? Hell no. The Bee Gees had popped out a bouncy album, and the girls were ready to dress up, twirl, and be twirled. The storyline seemed to demean the ordinary life that kids inhabited in favor of Manhattan glitz. No.”[14]

The aesthetics of Saturday Night Fever were exactly what Dahl came to critique in the anthem of anti-disco, his parody song “Do You Think I’m Disco” based off of Rod Stewart’s disco single, “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?” Looking at the lyrics of Dahl’s parody reveals a complete absence of critique related to race or gay culture—which were the actual roots of disco culture—and instead a list of references and criticisms of the disco culture that Saturday Night Fever promoted. The song also aligns with Powers assertion that disco became a way for people to “pretend” that they were of a different class or a different person altogether that wasn’t who they were in reality, like Tony Manero. This class-moving seemed fake and undesirable to some critics of disco like Dahl. The many masses who weren’t sold by the film and the mainstream culture that arose out of it, then, may not have been hatefully motivated as some critics and scholars claim as much as they were frustrated by the music and culture that arose out of the film.

 

 

 

[1] Shapiro, Peter. Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco. 1st ed., Faber and Faber, 2005. 198.

[2] Shapiro, Peter. Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco. 1st ed., Faber and Faber, 2005. 203.

[3] Shapiro, Peter. Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco. 1st ed., Faber and Faber, 2005. 203.

[4] Shapiro, Peter. Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco. 1st ed., Faber and Faber, 2005. 203.

[5] Shapiro, Peter. Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco. 1st ed., Faber and Faber, 2005. 203.

[6] Shapiro, Peter. Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco. 1st ed., Faber and Faber, 2005. 203.

[7] Shapiro, Peter. Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco. 1st ed., Faber and Faber, 2005. 203.

[8] Shapiro, Peter. Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco. 1st ed., Faber and Faber, 2005. 203.

[9] Shapiro, Peter. Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco. 1st ed., Faber and Faber, 2005. 204.

[10] Powers, Richard. “Historic Social Dance.” Richard Powers, 2014. http://richardpowers.com/.          Accessed 6 Dec. 2018.

[11] Powers, Richard. “Historic Social Dance.” Richard Powers, 2014. http://richardpowers.com/.   Accessed 6 Dec. 2018.

[12] Inness, Sherrie A. Disco Divas: Women and Popular Culture in the 1970s. University of           Pennsylvania Press, 2003. 187.

[13] Dahl, Steve, et al. Disco Demolition : The Night Disco Died. Chicago, Illinois : Curbside Splendor Publishing, 2016. 68.

[14] Dahl, Steve, et al. Disco Demolition : The Night Disco Died. Chicago, Illinois : Curbside Splendor Publishing, 2016. 15.