Showing posts with label Saturday Night Fever. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Saturday Night Fever. Show all posts

Saturday, 22 July 2023

Various Artists - Saturday Night Fever

Disco's most popular document was, at the time of its release, also one of its least representative: Saturday Night Fever is disco for straight, white males. A phenomenon 30 years ago, John Badham's B-movie and its accompanying 2xLP soundtrack not only made John Travolta a star, but escorted the music out of gay discotheques and black nightclubs and into the glare of the mainstream. However, it did so by diluting disco's more extreme elements to create a safer, more marketable package. Even then, conservative audiences saw disco culture as a Sodom and Gomorrah rather than an alternative Eden. The recent surge of interest in the era-- specifically in Peter Shapiro's excellent history Turn the Beat Around, but also demonstrated by groups like Scissor Sisters and Franz Ferdinand-- only sets disco's outsider nature, as well as this collection's shortcomings, in sharper relief.