"saturday night fever" & coming of age

so, yes, i do live under a rock, thanks for asking.

last night i watched "Saturday Night Fever", for the first time.  it was very strange -- i didn't expect to love it as much as i did.  i totally expected it to be a polyester-clad velveeta cheezfest, and was pleasantly surprised at the darkness of tone, the complexity of character, and the raw semi-violent energy that permeated it.  this all was juxtaposed rather incongruously to the music -- the sountrack that was a ubiqutous  backdrop to that difficult time in life known as puberty.

i was 10 years old when the movie was released.  in keeping with life in the small remote town in northeast montana where i was born & raised, it took a couple of years for us to learn of its existence.  so it works out that the SNF soundtrack constituted the majority of the music played at our 7th grade dances.

watching this film was, in part, an exercise in nostalgia -- remembering my own awkward young girl self, socially inept, unpopular with the boys, trying too hard to fit in, attempting to learn the thing called "disco dancing" that we had heard was the cool thing out in the real world, the grown-up world, the world that was not a small town in the middle of nowhere.

of course i had no idea what the movie was about!  it was R-rated and it goes without saying that my ultra-strict roman catholic parents did not allow me to see R-rated movies.  and i'm glad i didn't see it until now, to be honest.  had i seen it when it was released, i wouldn't have understood it.  it was too dark, too strange, too alien of a world.  i wouldn't have understood the class issues -- the difference between bayridge brooklyn & manhattan.  it would have all been New York City, from my very distant perspective.  all exciting, all sophisticated, all exotic.  and the coming-of-age issues addressed -- the rape of Annette, the senseless death of Bobby, the drugs, the hopelessness, the driving energy beating up against the brick wall of class limitations ~ i would have been too young to comprehend.

and had i watched the film during my own coming-of-age period, college age or early twenties, when i could have understood the processes the characters were going through, i would have been too caught up with worrying about how dated the clothes and the music were, how much cooler we were 10 years later in the 80's, how dorky they all looked with their hair and their polyester, to be able to see the point.

i guess what i'm saying is that it's nice to have some distance, because it really allowed this movie to touch my heart.  because it is, at its heart, a bittersweet coming-of-age story.  and now i can look back at the folly of youth, the disaffectedness, and, oh, the boundless energy looking for an outlet, with sad, fond reminiscence.  it was helpful to learn that john travolta was 23 years old when he made the film, and suffered through the death of his girlfriend at that time.  i think that goes along way towards informing his character, providing him with the vulnerability & slight tinge of desparation that makes tony manero ultimately a likeable character.  it calls to mind my own coming-of-age in NYC, which also occurred in my early twenties.  the most painful events in my life all happened within a 6month period when i was 23 years old, and living in NYC.  i think that SNF managed to tap into some of that old grief.

one word about the music, because how can one talk about SNF and not go into the music?  it was a strange revelation to learn that, until the release of this movie, disco was an underground, edgy, countercultural scene.  but this movie did an excellent job of portraying that, and how music is always part of the youth energy scene.  there was of course the rock & roll scene in the 60's, the raves in the 90's, and, i suppose though i don't know, that hip hop is the thing today. 

but what about the 80's?  a friend and i discussed this the other day.  how 80's music was such an incredible wasteland of pop drivel, punctuated by isolated examples of genius.  (stevie ray vaughn, talking heads, i'm looking at you.)  but by & large, it really wasn't there the way that it had been in previous decades.  well, except for punk.  i think punk in the early-mid eighties was where it was all happening, for my generation.  the place where young people gathered to hear new, exciting, raw, innovative live music & find a rhythm to drive their own collision with the brick wall of adulthood.

the only problem with that is -- i never liked punk.  i tried really hard, went to some shows by what were considered top punk bands, at least by people who cared.  i went because it was the thing to do, because all my friends were going.  i went to party.  but i never liked the music.

so maybe that is part of the bittersweetness that i experienced watching "SNF".  a sincere honest regret that my own coming-of-age wasn't accompanied by a better soundtrack.

Comments

[fiat lux]

You and I are within 3 years of each other, age-wise, but I actually grew up in New York City. I saw "SNF" as a teenager and was too young to get it. I certainly understood the Brooklyn / Manhattan schism; it was a part of our daily life, but the rest, I needed to be a little older to appreciate.

Got to disagree about the 80s soundtrack. There was definitely a lot of crap, but there was also Paul Simon's "Graceland", the Eurythmics, Springsteen's "Born in the USA", Sting, U2 and a bunch more besides.

There are plenty of artists from the 80s that I find un-listenable these days, but all of the above still get airtime in my current music collection.