Saturday Night Fever and the Death of Disco

Rehash Podcast:

Rehash Patreon:

Follow and support this channel!

“The Untold History of Disco” Polyphonic:

Intro song (More Than a Woman cover arrangement - Orsay Music):

Thumbnail by Hannah Raine:

SOURCES

Nick Cohn, “Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night” New York Mag (1976).

Richard Dyer, "In Defence of Disco" Gay Left, no.8 (1979).

Alice Echols, Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture, W.W. Norton (2010).

Nadine Hubbs, “'I Will Survive': Musical Mappings of Queer Social Space in a Disco Anthem” Popular Music Vol. 26, No. 2 (May, 2007).

Margherita Heyer-Caput, “Italian-American Urban Hyphens in Saturday Night Fever” Italian Americana Vol. 29, No. 1 (Winter 2011).

Tavia Nyong'o, “I Feel Love: Disco and its Discontents” Criticism Vol. 50, No. 1, Special Issue: Disco (Winter 2008).

Lisa Robinson, “Boogie Nights” Vanity Fair (2010).

John Rockwell, “POP VIEW;   Rock vs. Disco: Who Really Won the War?” The New York Times (1990).

Ioana Stamatescu, “Le freak, c’est chic! Disco Culture and Whit Stillman’s The Last Days of Disco” Synergy, vol. 13, no. 1 (2017).

Joshua Williams, “The Death of Disco Did Not Take Place: Disco Demolition Night and The Rhetorical Destruction of Disco” The Macksey Journal, Vol. 2. (2021).

Paul Williams, “too black, too gay: the disco inferno” Duke University Press (2003).

[MaggieMaeFish]

"Disco is NOT Dead! Disco is ALIVE!" - Eddie Izzard, Mystery Men

[danderson]

My Dad loves this movie, and he introduced it to me when I was very young. I was surprised at how dark it was. There was racism, and talk of sexual assault, and self offing…I was expecting a fun dance movie, and got something MUCH more complex. It blew my mind.

[nostromofidanza]

It's so astounding how you manage to produce so many great quality videos in such a short time period. I think remembering the "Death of Disco" as a not so subtle backlash against queer and black is all too more important in times when we have to fear for our lives just going to the club and the spaces where disco originated. Love your podcast btw. I don't want to fan girl too much, but I hope there will be many future seasons.

[LegendsP]

Vaporwave, lofi, and Future Funk also have there roots in disco. The biggest tracks are remixes of Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, and Japanese City Pop that has a lot of disco roots too. Disco will always be cool. Watching clips of Soul Train; I'm still blown away with just how many of those dances are still around to this day. Plus Black Joy. Love to see that 😍 ❤️!

[unerevuese]

What happened to Disco reminds me so much of what has occured to the reggaeton genre in Latin America. It used to be the underground music of poor neighborhoods in the carribean. At one point it was even criminalized in Puerto Rico. Now its one of the most popular genre but its a shadow of its former self with white latines at the forefront.

[Jaspertine]

The story I'd heard was that when John Travolta got the role, the studio offered to soften the character for him, so as not to hurt his image, and Travolta declined. So they probably didn't use the term "toxic masculinity" at the time, but they were nonetheless aware of what kind of character they were portraying.

[joemaldonado]

Disco never died, it just went back underground.

And lots of spots in North America have been able to authentically recreate the unbridled ecstasy of 70s discotheque. You just had to look for them.

[memorian]

No matter what I always love hearing about the history of disco. Maybe because growing up I wasn't fully aware of it's origins. It was always that genre that people seemed to make fun and find cheesy. People would talk about it in a way completely removing it's origins of being deep in black and queer culture and now that it's being talked about so much more I have such a love for the sound, that time and what it's done for the culture.

[MyssBlewm]

As someone who has never and will never experience the 1970s, I love hearing about disco. As a kid, disco was a shorthand insult to people/things that are dated and tacky. But growing up, hearing how much US subculture and queer culture are/were part of disco, I am loving that so many writers/journalists are sharing their findings on such a big part of the 1970s. 🥰💕

[thamirestorres]

I'm one of those people who would be able to answer what the plot of Saturday Night Fever is, mostly because I watched it when I was (probably) too young to. It's one of my mother's favorite movies and I wanted to see what it was about, and it really surprised me to see how dark it was. I was only expecting it to be a fluffy dance movie when, in reality, it was closer in tone to a character study in the vein of Taxi Driver, as you've said, and I feel that it should be remembered as such. The fact that it's only known for it's glamorous disco aesthetic alone, completely removed of the contents of the movie, makes actually watching it a very dissonant experience for most and it feels a bit unfair to the movie's legacy.

[keiththorpe]

"Disco Sucks" was dominated by douchebag, fashion-crippled, cishet white guys who had no rhythm, and couldn't dance.
I'm a cishet white guy myself. I started hitting the dance clubs in DC in the late 80s (my late teens), long after the fall of disco, but during the ascendance of what came to be known as EDM. I think back on those days as transformative for me, as it introduced me to people I never would have met in my safe (largely white) bland, suburban neighborhood. I learned so much about how to relate to people who were quite different from me, yet wanting all the same things I wanted: Acceptance, community, love, and a good time. It opened my eyes, allowing me to see the world in a much broader context, and I'm now (at the age of 50) a much better man for it.

Just as an aside: I've seen several interviews with the actors who portrayed Tony's friends and the actress who played Annette, talking about that SA scene. I've found it very interesting how actors, when confronted with depicting something so dark and horrific, go about coping with the situation. The actors spoke of how difficult it was to perform that scene, as this sequence was filmed very late in the production, and they had all become very close friends with Donna Pescow (Annette). She actually had to comfort them in between takes, because it was so upsetting for them to be doing this to a young woman that they had grown very fond of, and whom they deeply respected as both a fellow artist and human being. She talked about how one of them started to cry in the middle of a take, and she had to calm him down. It just gutted them. I found that very compelling.

Another interesting aside: John Badham (The director of SNF) was under contract to direct the movie adaption of "The Wiz", starring Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Nipsey Russel, and Lena Horne. However, upon reading the script for "SNF", he wanted to direct it instead. So, in order to get out of his contract, he had to get himself fired from the production of "The Wiz". He accomplished this very adroitly by going to the producers with his "unique vision" for how he would film "The Wiz". Essentially, he wanted all of it to be filmed as a POV shot from Dorothy's perspective. All the audience would see of Diana Ross would be her arms and hands, legs and feet. He was fired immediately, and made his availability to direct "SNF" known to Robert Stigwood. And the rest, as they say, is history.

[drdreidel]

Phenomenal work! If anyone wants to dig a little deeper into this subject I highly recommend the work of Tim Lawrence. "Love Saves the Day" and "Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor" are superbly written accounts of NYC during the 70s and 80s. His podcast with Jeremy Gilbert, "Love is the Message", is also a phenomenal listen if you're at all interested in the intersection of music, politics, economics, and culture at large.

[neonvisuals]

i'm brazilian and i find my experience in clubs very insteresting. as a woman, i never felt comfortable and safe at what i call "straight parties", because the gender performance was so strict and i was harassed all the time, i just couldn't let loose and have fun. is like guys were not able to do it, so they wouldn't let women do it lol. so i always hung out at lgbt parties, i always felt more safe, accepted and the songs were much better. but when i started clubbing, i noticed that some of the straight guys my age were going to lgbt clubs to get the "good girls" (whatever that means), so they had to coexist with lgbt people and even get harassed by them - i also noticed that those guys were more open to be lgbt friendly and also experiment with their sexuality as well. so maybe things are getting better?

[Nikole_Raven]

I was hired to work a NYE Disco event and I've been submerging myself in Disco culture, so this could not have come out at a better time.

[corbinmarkey]

I just watched Saturday Night Fever a few months ago for the first time and am still absolutely in love with it. It's a fun, exuberant but also tough, dark film about a young man learning that he has to get his shit together. Let's say I highly related to that and needed it.

[katy]

This video couldn't have come at a better time. I only just watched this film for the first time, on Christmas day no less, because my family and I thought it would be a fun disco film. Needless to say I was quite shocked and confused. I wasn't sure how much I had a misunderstanding of disco culture or whether the film wanted me to find it ironic that someone who hates latinos and black people and gays would love disco. I also had that classic issue of watching an old film and not being sure what of Tony and his friend's behaviour I was meant to find off-putting. It was obvious that the film was meant to show Tony's disillusionment with what he once considered to be the most important of status symbols (winning dance competitions, winning fights with latinos, and having sex with as many women as possible). Yet there was something about the whole affair that made it stick in my throat slightly...

[prestely]

Great video and a take on SNF i never thought about, but extremely compelling. My mom is a huge Travolta fan so I grew up watching this movie (along with the Stayin' Alive sequel) and as far as I'm concerned, Annette's rape scene has Always been a massive trauma for me, to the point where i can't bring myself to watching the film. So thanks for the insight, i really appreciated it!

[richcharvel]

Hands down, this is one of the best docs about "SNF" (and the disco movement) that I've watched on YT. Another great "character study" film to see (obliviously influenced by "SNF") is called "Tony Manero". It's set in war torn South America in the late 70's and focuses on a middle aged sociopathic male who's obsessed with the "SNF" film. There's a televised dance contest that he wants to enter and it shows the brutal path he takes to get there. Thank you for posting your fantastic video.

[PongoXBongo]

I may be a metalhead to the core, but I can still get down to some classic disco or funk. There's just something alluring about losing yourself to the beat and vibing out. Sometimes you need to balance out the angst with some boogie. And it will never get old watching KISS trying do dance music, lol.

[miz_logo_lee]

Fantastic video. I was 13 when Saturday Night Fever came out, and my mom took us to see it (though she was upset with the violence of it) I loved disco dancing and recall practicing The Hustle and The Bump in the girls locker room with other kids.

There was definitely a factor of the rock kids coming down hard on disco, but there was also a factor of the popular kids (who weren’t the dedicated hard rock kids, they were considered “burnouts”) turning disco into their own power play (who had the most expensive gold jewelry or Quiana shirt).

It became over-saturated and commercial, with one disco radio station in San Francisco airing an especially cringey ad featuring wacky grandparents gyrating on the dance floor. At some point the average person “moved on”.

Thankfully there has been a strong movement to reclaim what disco signified to begin with.