Saturday Night Fever

From ArticleWorld

Saturday Night Fever is a 1977 movie that starred John Travolta as Tony Manero, a troubled Brooklyn youth whose regular weekend activities are dominated by visits to a New York discotheque.

While in the disco club, Tony was the king, and the visits helped him to temporarily forget and escape the reality of his life: the dead-end job, clashes with his unsupportive and arguing parents, the racial tensions in the community, and his associations with a dead-beat group of friends.

Impact

The movie significantly helped to popularise disco music and Euro disco music around the world, it also made John Travolta a household name. The Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, featured disco songs by the Bee Gees, who would become a worldwide sensation.

This movie also sensationalize the common Joe and brought the characters into a new light.

The film also showcased aspects of the music, dancing, and the subculture of the disco era: fast-paced and upbeat melodies, haute-couture styles of clothing, and gracefully fluid choreography.

Background

The story is based upon a 1976 New York magazine article written by British writer Nik Cohn, the Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night. In the late-1990s, Cohn acknowledged that the article had been fictional.

A newcomer to the United States and a total stranger to the disco subculture and lifestyle, Cohn was unable to make any sense of the topic he had been assigned to write about. The characters who were to become Tony Manero and his gang of friends sprang almost completely from his own imagination.

Saturday night fever was such a hit that it soon had a sequel called Staying Alive.