Sunday morning hangover

Rating: Null/10 (30 March 2004)

Last night, I saw "Saturday Night Fever" on TV. It brought back memories of my own disco days in the mid- to late 1970s. Sad to say, the film perfectly captures the emptiness and superficiality of that era, and its negative impact on people's lives, then and since.
Back then, it was all about how you looked and how you dressed, how you danced and whether you scored. Who knew that the slim, sleek, svelte Travolta would balloon like Elvis Presley - just as all of us were fated to age, lose our hair and expand our waists. The disco culture of the 70s was youth-oriented, but in a brain-dead way, unlike the politically aware late 1960s anti-war youth culture.
"Saturday Night Fever" sends mixed messages. Its soundtrack of BeeGees hits is a siren song of longing and romance, yet the screenplay tells a different story. Tony Manero (John Travolta) rejects poor Annette (Donna Pescow) because she's short and dumpy and not good enough for him. Upwardly mobile Stephanie (Karen Lynn Gorney) spurns him in turn, offering only the possibility of platonic friendship. Tony's friend Bobby gets his girlfriend pregnant, but is too young and immature to assume his responsibilities. And all Tony's other friends care about is humping virtual strangers for ten minutes in the back seat of a car.
Saturday night fever gives them nothing but Sunday morning hangover - without any Sunday morning spirituality to fill the void in their lives. Religion gets short shrift in this film. Tony's brother Frank leaves the priesthood, not because he struggles with his faith, but because he can't live up to his vow of celibacy. Even he has sex on the brain.
Sex was the be-all and end-all of disco culture - witness the soft-core shots of Travolta in nothing but low-rise briefs - and we have inherited its legacy. I say "we" because I too am a child of the 70s. For the next 25 years, I lived according to the values I had learned on the dance floor. I worshipped at the shrine of youth and beauty and sex - and it left me as empty as the characters in the film. Like Tony Manero, I found that the only cure for "Saturday Night Fever" was to escape that world and that life, and leave all the "beautiful losers" behind.