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Saturday Night Fever (John Badham, 1977)

In December 1977, the film Saturday Night Fever was released. It was a huge success and its soundtrack became one of the best-selling albums of all time. The idea for the film was sparked by a 1976 New York magazine article titled " Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night " which supposedly chronicled the disco culture in mid-1970s New York City, but was later revealed to have been fabricated. Some critics said the film "mainstreamed" disco, making it more acceptable to heterosexual white males. Many music historians believe the success of the movie and soundtrack extended the life of the disco era by several years.

Organized around the culture of suburban discotheques and the character of Tony Manero, portrayed by John Travolta, Saturday Night Fever became a cultural phenomenon that recast the dance floor as a site for patriarchal masculinity and heterosexual courtship. This transformation aligned disco with the interests of the perceived mass market, specifically targeting suburban and Middle American audiences.

The portrayal of the dance floor in Saturday Night Fever marked a reappropriation by straight male culture, turning it into a space for men to showcase their prowess and pursue partners of the opposite sex. The film popularized the hustle, a Latin social dance, reinforcing the centrality of the straight-dancing couple in the disco exchange. Notably, the soundtrack, dominated by the Bee Gees, risked presenting disco as a new incarnation of shrill white pop, deviating from its diverse and inclusive origins. The success of Saturday Night Fever was unprecedented, breaking box office and album sale records. Unfortunately, its impact went beyond mere popularity. The film established a template for disco that was easily reproducible, yet thoroughly de-queered in its outlook. By narrowing the narrative to fit into the conventional ideals of suburban heterosexual culture, the film contributed to a distorted and commodified version of disco.