Saturday Night Fever: Existentialism Disguised by Disco Music and Boogie Shoes
John Badham’s 1977 film Saturday Night Fever is one of the most important films from the New Hollywood Era that took place in the late sixties and seventies in the United States. Many New Hollywood Era films took inspiration from film movements such as French New Wave and Italian Neorealism from the decades prior. French New Wave rejected traditional filmmaking and storytelling practices and favored experimentation and auteurist filmmaking, while Italian Neorealism utilized on-location shooting, natural lighting, working-class characters, unobtrusive editing, contemporary subjects, and a mix of actors and non-actors.
Saturday Night Fever is a film that takes inspiration from both movements to create a unique piece representative of its era. “American New Wave” movies often had more complex themes like sex, drugs, and violence. In this new era of filmmaking, we see a rise in controversial themes and a growth in the antihero protagonist in popular films like main character Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever. While sex and violence are present darknesses in the film, the true evil lies within the existential questions that the characters ask themselves and others around them.
Saturday Night Fever takes place on the edge of society in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. The film follows 19-year-old Tony Manero (John Travolta), an Italian-American Brooklyn native. Tony spends his weekdays mundanely. He works for minimum wage at a paint shop, eats cheap pizza, and deals with the trials and tribulations of living under his dysfunctional family’s roof. Whereas on the weekends, Tony transforms into a disco dancing superstar. He and his friends are practically residents at a nearby discotheque, the 2001 Space Odyssey, where they spend all night drinking and dancing. Tony is an incredible dancer with raw, authentic talent but feels trapped in his dead-end, working-class neighborhood. He falls for another apt dancer at the club, Stephanie (Karen Lynn Gorney), whose new Manhattan job steers her to fantasize about getting out of Bay Ridge and living in a more well-to-do neighborhood. She repeatedly tells Tony about all the opportunities she now has and the notable people she’s met. As the two prepare for a dance competition, Stephanie brings Tony into her more cultured world that spans beyond the Verrazano Bridge.
While this movie is a dance-disco drama about lost souls in Brooklyn, one of the most prominent themes is existentialism. The film goes from comedic to dramatic over its course, and as it unfolds, so do the existential queries and pieces. Existentialism is a philosophical theory or approach that emphasizes a person’s existence as the determining agent of their free will and personal development. Saturday Night Fever is a male coming-of-age story, which is a genre that pairs well with an existential main character. Throughout the film, Tony struggles with his situation in life; he wants to break out of his repetitive cycle but doesn’t know if it’s possible due to a lack of money, education, and a moral support system. “Tony, the only way you're gonna survive is to do what you think is right, not what they keep trying to jam you into. You let them do that, and you're gonna be nothing but miserable.” Says Frank Jr to Tony.
Although Tony and those around him know that his talent for dancing could take him far in life, Tony’s emotional entrapment in his shortsighted community and physical remoteness in Bay Ridge is holding him back from a world with more prospects. He doesn’t have hope for himself, nor does he have any plan for his future. In a quick but meaningful scene, Fusco, Tony’s boss, says to Tony, “You can save a little, build a future.” Tony angrily responds with, “Oh, fuck the future!” While Tony’s attitude may sound unsophisticated and simple, he is revealing the traits of an existentialist. One of the most famous existentialists is the French playwright, novelist, and political advocate Jean-Paul Sartre, who claims in his book, Existentialism is a Humanism,
“There is no reality except in action. Man is nothing else than his plan; he exists only to the extent that he fulfills himself; he is, therefore, nothing else than the ensemble of his acts, nothing else than his life.”
Tony’s lack of a plan for his future affects his actions, making him question his purpose in this world and what he needs to do with his time and talent.
Tony is subconsciously an existentialist, which links to his status as a Nietzschean figure. Friedrich Nietzche was a German existentialist philosopher whose extensive work has heavily influenced modern-day philosophy and history. Some of Nietzche’s main philosophical ideas are simple yet complex when put into action: we are all responsible for what we do, who we are, and the world we live in. Nietzche has very stoic theories, and while Nietzche is not a pure stoic, there is an overlap between stoicism and Nietzschean philosophy. Tony struggles with attempting to be a stoic because his essential emotional needs, like a sense of purpose, autonomy, and connection to others, get in the way. What he thinks he wants and needs in life evolutions, creating great cinematic conflict and thought-provoking testaments. Tony is faced with the overwhelming question: is what I have and want right now what I will want for eternity? He realizes that his life has no real direction, and Bay Ridge is not where he will be satisfied for the rest of his life. Tony is a Nietzchean figure because he is transcendent of suffering in the short pure affirmation of life; Tony lives for the weekend where his life suddenly but temporarily switches; he knows his life will return to its utter prosaic state, and he continues in this unsatisfying cycle. In Nietzschean philosophy, the present should still be celebrated, even with something doomed. Nietzche writes in On the Genealogy of Morals,
“My formula for greatness in a human being is Amor Fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendacity in the face of what is necessary—but love it.”
The beauty of Hollywood and, notably, the New Hollywood Era is that it’s an escape from the tedious humdrum of the bona fide. Saturday Night Fever echoes this both in Tony and the film’s audience. Tony operates dually; as he dances through his fantastic weekends, the audience forgets the sad reality of Tony’s usual for a few scenes. The dancing, music, costuming, and editing of Tony in the club feel like a dream. Viewers sink into their seats as they enjoy fantastic choreography, incredible set design, and original disco tunes. By the end, existentialism has fully evolved as the tale’s central arc, leaving the audience with ideas that will follow them for the rest of their lives as they simultaneously wish they could experience the energy of the 2001 Space Oddyssey club in the 70s.
