Queer Narratives in Disco Films: Saturday Night Fever, Xanadu, and Beyond

A thesis presented to

the faculty of

the College of Fine Arts of Ohio University

In partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree

Master of Arts

Erin R. Drake

August 2019

© 2019 Erin R. Drake. All Rights Reserved. 2

This thesis titled

Queer Narratives in Disco Films: Saturday Night Fever, Xanadu, and Beyond

by

ERIN R. DRAKE

has been approved for

the Film Division

and the College of Fine Arts by

Ofer Eliaz

Assistant Professor of Film Studies

Matthew R. Shaftel

Dean, College of Fine Arts 3

Abstract

DRAKE, ERIN R., M.A., August 2019, Film Studies

Queer Narratives in Disco Films: Saturday Night Fever, Xanadu, and Beyond

Director of Thesis: Ofer Eliaz

This thesis looks at the history of disco, specifically the significant role that films played in shaping our cultural understanding of the phenomenon. Through the use of queer theory and narratology, “Queer Narratives in Disco Films” argues that the reception of disco and disco films is shaped by heteronormative assumptions of how narratives

‘should’ be understood. Such assumptions can have homophobic implications. Apart from breaking down the narrative structure of disco films, this thesis also further explores disco’s relationship to cinema by examining disco films situated in various genres and the affect of disco in modern films. This project reveals how disco can always be read with a queer sensibility and that reading disco as queer is necessary for preserving an often- erased history.

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Acknowledgments

I am very proud of my thesis; it is an excellent representation of my passions as an individual and my strengths as an emerging film scholar. None of this work would have come to fruition if I did not have the support and guidance from many wonderful people over the past two years.

I would like to thank the faculty of the Ohio University Film Division for their financial support and top-notch instruction. Steven Ross, the director of the Film

Division, was incredibly helpful in making sure I had ample funding opportunities.

Professor Louis-Georges Schwartz introduced me to important, fundamental concepts within film studies through his insightful classes. Professor Erin Schlumpf also provided excellent instruction in her classes. I took an independent study with her where she helped me learn more about queer theory and queer cinema on an in-depth level. Her teachings created the foundation for what would become the crucial methodology for my thesis. I would also like to thank Melissa Ervin, the Film Division’s secretary. She has always helped me stay on track while navigating the stressful event that is completing a thesis. I don’t know what I would have done without her. Overall, I am incredibly grateful to have attended Ohio University. The faculty helped me reach all of my academic and personal goals while studying in the program. You made my graduate school experience genuinely amazing.

Along with the Film Division faculty, I would also like to thank some of my cohorts for their support as well. Qian Zhang and Julia Staben were in the class above me, and set an excellent example of academic success for me to look up to for inspiration. 5

These women provided me with guidance and encouragement to help me succeed in the program and to continue their legacy. I would also like to thank all of my classmates in my year and the year below me for creating a work environment that was productive and cordial. I am excited to see what future classes will achieve during their time in the program!

I would also like to thank my family—my parents Brenda and Terry and my sibling Rachel—for their love and support during this process.

Finally, I owe my biggest thanks to my thesis advisor, Professor Ofer Eliaz.

Initially, I was not sure how I could turn my niche interest into a fully-realized thesis, but

Ofer has always encouraged me to hone in on my passions. He always gave me the best advice to help me shape my ideas into a mature project. He also helped me come into my own as both a scholar and a writer. I am forever grateful for his instruction, guidance, and support at ever step in the process. As I said before, I am incredibly pleased and proud of my thesis. If I did not have such a wonderful advisor in my corner encouraging me and believing in my abilities, my attitude toward my final product could have ended up being completely different. Overall, my thesis turned out better than I could have imagined all thanks to Ofer.

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Table of Contents Page

Abstract ...... 3 Acknowledgments...... 4 List of Figures ...... 7 Introduction: Staying Alive...... 8 A Brief History of Disco: 1970-1979 ...... 13 Disco’s Special Potential ...... 17 Saturday Night Fever and the Beginning of the End ...... 23 Chapter Summaries ...... 28 Chapter One: Dominant and Queer Readings in Roller Boogie and Xanadu—It’s Not a Bad Film, You’re Just Reading It That Way ...... 32 Breaking Down Assumptions Regarding Narratology and Universal Desire ...... 35 Roller Boogie, or Saturday Night Fever on Wheels ...... 40 Xanadu: A Place Where Nobody Dared to Go ...... 49 “This Movie Doesn’t Make Sense (To Me)” ...... 57 Chapter Two: Prom Night and the Deaths of Disco...... 59 The Makeup of Horror Narratives ...... 60 Disco as an Irrational Zone ...... 64 A Brief History of Disco Continued: 1980-1983 ...... 75 No Future for Disco Films ...... 79 Chapter Three: The Affect of Disco ...... 80 Disco as a Zany Affect ...... 82 Voulez-Vous: The Affect of ABBA in Film...... 93 Forever Repenting for Our Sins ...... 107 Conclusion: Dead But Never Forgotten ...... 109 Bibliography ...... 113 Filmography ...... 117 7

List of Figures

Page

Figure 1. The character Jon Arbuckle posing in Garfield Gets a Life ...... 88 Figure 2. Film Poster for Saturday Night Fever, featuring John Travolta and Karen Gorney...... 88

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Introduction: Staying Alive

Asserting the true histories of queer folk is a crucial political move in our time.

The histories of marginalized folk in general are constantly under attack and reinterpreted to fit a dominant agenda. This agenda privileges dominant interpretations of history including heteronormative narratives. For the past few years during the month of June, or what has become known as “Pride Month” for members of the LGTBQ+ community, images of Marsha P. Johnson circulate in the popular corners of the internet. Johnson was a gay rights activist and is largely cited as the initiator of the famous Stonewall riots in

1969. While the accuracy of Johnson’s action has been debated, it is largely agreed upon that she was, in fact, one of the first activists to resist the police at the event. Johnson, a black trans woman, and fellow activist and trans woman of color, Sylvia Rivera, were important leaders in creating the modern-day gay rights movement.1 Until relatively recently, these women never received the credit that they deserved for making queer activism what it is today.

Unfortunately, most representations of queer history become completely misinterpreted for the sake of mutating this history into something tangible for mainstream audiences. A recent film adaptation of the Stonewall Riots, Stonewall

(Roland Emerich, 2015), completely erased Johnson and Rivera from the narrative, choosing to cast a fictional white, gay man as the instigator of the riots. This rhetorical

1 Gillian Brockell, “The Transgender Women at Stonewall were Pushed Out of the Gay Rights Movement. Now They are Getting a Statue in New York,” The Washington Post, 12 June. 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/06/12/transgender-women-heart-stonewall-riots-are-getting- statue-nw-york/?utm_term=.4e207e57daf8 9 move erases the true history of the event and gentrifies this history to the detriment of the queer community.2 Fortunately in the digital age, public outcry against the film was so vocal that the scathing critiques against its atrocities became as ubiquitous as the film itself. Unfortunately, the film still performed well at the box office. So long as films like

Stonewall continue to be produced and succeed financially, the state of queer representation in the popular consciousness will never be ideal and always stands the risk of becoming completely erased by heteronormative desire.

One history and form of queer representation that is often overlooked within

American history is that of the disco fad from the 1970s. Disco emerged as a popular musical and social activity that continues to fascinate the American imagination due to its iconic, potent imagery. Disco music, dancing, and all the accouterments associated with the phenomenon are now typically used as a shorthand to recall the hedonistic qualities of the later part of the decade. If the economic disparity of the early 1970s is represented by impossibly long lines at gas stations, then the decadence and opulence of LED dance floors, mirror balls, and thumping bass lines represent the full-blown escapist fantasies of the “Me” generation. Depending on the source, disco is either remembered as an embarrassing social activity accompanied by a gauche soundtrack, or a nostalgic relic from a time when a person’s sexuality could be expressed outside of the confines of political correctness. However, despite the many books and articles written on the various aspects of disco, the issue of disco’s uptake by mainstream cinema is rarely discussed.

2 Cáel M. Keegan, “History, Disrupted: The Aesthetic Gentrification of Queer and Trans Cinema,” Social Alternatives 35, no. 3 (2016): 56. 10

Emblematic of this cinematic mainstreaming of disco is the release of Saturday Night

Fever (John Badham) in 1977, which turned disco into a bonafide worldwide phenomenon almost overnight. The fact that disco was made popular by the LGBTQ+ community and by people of color—which was acknowledged in the 1970s as much as it is today—also rarely makes up our collective understanding of the phenomenon. As a part of a larger effort to reinstate the factual histories of queer folk in a time where such representation is so grossly discarded, fully understanding disco and what it represents to

America’s sense of self is a task of utmost importance.

This task is especially crucial to undertake under the umbrella of film studies because Saturday Night Fever has indisputably informed our current ideas and images of disco. Not to mention that the film’s images have become significant within America’s own historical iconography. A proper analysis beyond Fever is necessary in order to fully understand how disco’s queer history and sensibility should inform our understanding of these films. What this thesis intends to accomplish, then, is to not only to provide an in- depth history of disco, but to demonstrate how disco changes the readings of texts that borrow, co-opt, mutate, or otherwise exploit its essence. Disco was not just the dance du jour of the late 1970s and early 1980s; it was a very special space that demonstrated that parties could be more than just escapist leisure activities. The spaces of early discotheques were filled with radical potential and proposed that social dance spaces could engender a real sense of collectivism as well as a space where individuals could freely express and discover themselves. 11

This project will also argue for a queer interpretation of the disco phenomenon, showing how films that utilize disco can be fruitfully interpreted through a queer lens.

Because heteronormativity is a dominant ideology that usually takes precedence in most mainstream films, the queer readings available in disco films run counter to the dominant reading of the films present today. What is fascinating about disco films is that a queer reading is apparent within the text when it is understood how disco relates to queerness.

The fact that the dominant reading of these films becomes more resonant than a less- dominant reading within the cultural consciousness means that as a culture we privilege heternormative understandings of narrative above all others. Narrative analysis has a homophobic bias against which this thesis argues.

As the true severity of this thesis comes to light, it should be made clear that queer interpretations of stories are not morally better than readings that focus on heterosexual perceptions of life. Homophobia leads to egregious acts that cause harm and suffering to marginalized groups. That being said, interpreting narratives and understanding all possible readings a narrative might offer does not call for passing judgement on which reading is ‘better,’ in the sense that it is more stylish, competent, or offers a more favorable story for readers of a certain persuasion. Personal preferences towards certain types of stories over others should not obscure the fact that narratives such as disco films present multiple readings—in this case, at least a dominant, heteronormative reading and a queer reading—and yet, the dominant reading maintains the most salience within popular culture. To work against these dominant, toxic modes of narrative interpretation, we must reject both the assumption that one dominant narrative 12 exists as well as the notion that some stories are somehow ‘better’ than others. Such moral and personal judgement should be left to individuals, though certainly it should always be seriously questioned why we prefer certain stories over others. Our preferences can absolutely point towards our own bigotry, which is more than a simple matter of taste.

For the sake of simplicity, this thesis will analyze disco films and the dominant and queer readings that lie within them. Unfortunately, such a move does not adequately analyze the possibilities for alternative narratives outside of just the binary of heternormativity and queerness. The history of disco just as much involves the LGBTQ+ community as it does the communities of people of color and working-class communities. This disclaimer is not meant to suggest that such histories are not worth the time of this project. It is simply an unfortunate situation given the limitations and constraints of this project. Whenever possible, the intersections between queerness and other marginalized lenses should always be utilized. This thesis will take all possible steps to do this work that is so often neglected within scholarship.

Finally, it should be noted that understanding the characteristics of disco film narratives will not work within the framework of reading against the grain. Reading these films as having a queer sensibility comes from the knowledge of understanding disco’s queer roots. Other than that, using a queer lens to interpret these narratives is not a task that is only available to an initiated few. Films like Saturday Night Fever have very clear homoerotic images when the viewer is prompted to look closer at these images. This thesis proposes an all-encompassing interpretation of narrative that lacks hierarchy in 13 order to answer the question: why homoerotic and otherwise queer themes are so evident in iconic films such as Saturday Night Fever, why are these themes never acknowledged within our cultural understanding, reception, and regurgitation of the film? To begin to answer these questions, a working framework of disco’s often ignored, but rich history will be provided.

A Brief History of Disco: 1970-1979

Often credited as the first true discotheque, David Mancuso opened his Manhattan night club, the Loft, in 1970. The club was Mancuso’s response the segregated night life in the city that resulted from the Civil Rights movement and the Stonewall Riots of

1969.3 He wanted to create an atmosphere that was racially inclusive and gay-friendly.4

Mancuso’s devotion to an ethical party space created the foundation for disco’s radical evolution. Tim Lawrence, argues that Mancuso consciously worked within a “framework that sought to bring social progress to the world, albeit on a local level.”5 Mancuso acted out on his guiding principles by co-founding the New York Record Pool which helped his peers and community at large receive free copies of records to play and promote at their leisure.6 The sound system used to play music in the Loft was also especially designed to promote a democratic atmosphere. Mancuso kept the sound levels no louder than 100dB in order not to damage his guest’s ear drums and introduced audiophile stereo

3 Hua Hsu, “The First Days of Disco,” The New Yorker, 29 Jan. 2019, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-first-days-of-disco 4 Ibid. 5 Tim Lawrence, “David Mancuso’s Art of Parties,” The Wire, Nov. 2016, https://www.thewire.co.uk/in- writing/essays/tim-lawrence-on-david-mancuso 6 Ibid. 14 components including Klipschorn speakers, Mark Levinson amplifiers and Koetsu cartridge, all with the intent of keeping the focus of the party, the music, and the people.7

Overall, Mancuso’s aspirations for his parties were entirely pure and set on revolutionizing the world by creating a space for people of all backgrounds to come together and share a common party space. New York City during the early 1970s was home to a high concentration of diverse minority groups such as gay men, people of color, and women, these groups were able to come together to, as Tim Lawrence describes it, “conquer, recalibrate, and properly ignite the withering discotheque scene during the early 1970s . . . because going out had become a way of life.”8 Party culture during this time and place was more than just a leisure activity; it was a radical stance towards true inclusivity.

Disco was first identified as a bona-fide cultural movement in 1973 upon the publication of Vince Aletti’s article, “Discotheque Rock” in Rolling Stone magazine.9 At that time, disco music was categorized as a combination of soul, funk, and rock sounds, and it was not until 1974 that disco could be identified as having a distinct musical personality.10 The ability for this musical genre to gather popular interest was not realized until the mid-1970s. It was not until 1977 and the indisputable box-office success of

Saturday Night Fever that disco solidified as a global phenomenon. Once disco records outsold rock in 1978, it was obvious that an “insidious form of commercialism

7 Ibid. 8 Tim Lawrence, Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016), 2. 9 Hsu, “The First Days of Disco.” 10 Ibid. 15 undermined disco from within” the music industry, which lead to over-saturation of cheaply made disco-themed products, including films.11 Just as quickly as it gained mass- appeal, disco ‘died’ in 1979 when a half-time event at Comiskey Park in Chicago,

Illinois, encouraged attendees to smash a pile of disco records in the middle of the stadium.12 The seething hatred toward disco from rock and roll fans materialized that night as the event erupted into a full-blown, mini-riot.13 Though this moment is mythologized as the official end for the fad, disco and the party culture it engendered continued to live on and evolve well into the early 1980s.

There are two generalizations about disco that existed both during the 1970s and in modern times. One is the assumption that the primary attendees of discotheques were either straight folk or gay men. Because of this association, many people wrongly associate disco as an activity primarily enjoyed by white, gay men with heterosexual participants on the sidelines, as opposed to a social dance involving a diverse range of queer and non-queer bodies from different racial, cultural, and economic backgrounds.

Insisting on a binary understanding of disco as an event that was enjoyed by either gay men or heterosexual subjects occludes the rich histories and people that made the movement popular in the first place. Such a gross overgeneralization and misidentification of who participated in disco detracts from the more radical applications of disco as an inclusive social practice. As Lawrence writes, “the reductionist focus on

11 Lawrence, Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor, 6. 12 Hsu, “The First Days of Disco.” 13 Ibid. 16 disco’s male gay constituency underestimates and even undermines the political thrust of early seventies dance culture, which attempted to create a democratic, cross-cultural community that was open-ended in its formation.”14 Associating disco so strictly with one image of the gay community has a strong political efficacy, one that would most certainly resonate in the AIDs era.

The second generalization associated with disco is that many critics would come to view the musical genre as one void of artistic integrity; disco anthems were received as easily digestible and mindless products created to capitalize on a trend. Richard Dyer’s essay “In Defense of Disco,” addresses these critiques by explaining how associating disco as a shallow, capitalist product is a moral judgement as opposed to an objective observation. Dyer’s reasoning is informed by the ways in which capitalism works on the level of the superstructure. Critics claim that the disco sound is void of depth in both its musical styling and production, and therefore must produce a pro-capitalist ideology that promotes wasteful materialism and consumption. However, making this connection between ideology and disco is inaccurate because “the fact that disco is produced by capitalism does not mean that it is automatically, necessarily, supportive of capitalism.

Capitalism constructs the disco experience, but it does not necessarily know what it is doing, apart from making money.”15 This idea that a product created under capitalism can also represent ideals directly opposed to capitalism will persist throughout this thesis, especially how this idea pertains to films as powerful tools for disseminating ideology.

14 Tim Lawrence, “Disco and the Queering of the Dance Floor,” Cultural Studies 25, no. 2 (2011): 233. 15 Richard Dyer, Only Entertainment: Second Edition, (London: Routledge, 2002), 153. 17

Disco’s Special Potential

Questioning these common, historical assumptions about disco reveal that disco was a much more special space than it is often made out to be. Disco was a nuanced, social practice centered on dance, music, and a collaborative spirit that created a space with radical, transformative potential. In a queer sense, disco music and the atmosphere created in discotheques encouraged subjects to explore their sexuality in relation to how their body moved to the music. Dyer notes that the musical elements that made this exploration possible were disco music’s attachments to eroticism, romanticism, and materialism.16 The erotic element of disco comes from its historical relationship to black music which uses more percussive instruments that create a wide range of sensual expressions. Rock music also has roots in black music yet it does not usually incorporate this range of expression in its stylings. As Dyer states, “rock confines sexuality to cock

(and this is why, no matter how progressive the lyrics and even when performed by women, rock remains indelibly phallocentric music). Disco music, on the other hand, hears the physicality in black music and its range.”17 Rock music limits the dancer to how they may express themselves. The freedom offered by disco music encourages the dancer to move their body in innovative ways, thus engendering a deeper connection to the body, and in turn, awakens a perhaps latent, erotic potential within the body.

Though the sound of disco music gave way to a sensual, full-body experience, the lyrics of many disco songs validated the emotions of the dancing subjects along with their

16 Ibid, 154. 17 Ibid, 155. 18 physical orientations. Dyer uses the example of a Diana Ross song that celebrates and reminisces a type of complicated relationship not typically represented in popular music.

He says that the lyrics can be interpreted as:

A straightforward lament for having been let down by a man, but more often [the

lyrics are] a celebration of a relationship and the almost willing recognition of its

passing and the exquisite pain of its passing. . . No wonder Ross is (was?) so

important in the gay male scene culture, for she both reflects what that culture

takes to be an inevitable reality (that relationships don’t last) and at the same time

celebrates it, validates it.18

The last part of Dyer’s comment regarding Ross’ status as a gay icon reflects that the unique relationships reflected in disco lyrics produced indelible queer representation.

Finally, what Dyer means by disco having materialist qualities is that disco allows its subjects to enjoy a sensual experience that is at once an accurate and fantastic representation of the subjects’ real conditions of existence. Everything about disco’s materialism that critics have lambasted is in some ways based on unfair observations, but in other ways reveals aspects of disco’s construction that are just as relevant and transformative as its erotic and romantic aspects. Dyer contends that we are of a material world and cannot fully escape these conditions. He is not saying that disco is an outright escape from the restrictive confines of our political climate.19 But because disco is a transformative space reflective of our real world, navigating disco spaces can allow us to

18 Ibid, 157. 19 Ibid, 159. 19 discover tangible answers that help up alchemize the material limits of our world. In summary, Dyer’s outline of disco’s characteristics describes a style of music and social dance that offers an opening of queer exploration for all participants. Disco also offers an escape from a constricted world of materialism and capitalism to one where materialism is more in-tune with the pure desires of the body and re-defined outside of capitalism.

Lawrence’s description of disco also elaborates on its radical possibilities as a pro-queer, anti-capitalist social practice. He agrees with Dyer that disco music encouraged queered body movements. Lawrence also speaks of three other special aspects of the discotheque that maintained productive, revolutionary applications. The first aspect is the way in which disco dancing became one of the first popular modes of social dancing where participants danced on their own instead of in pairs. Lawrence notes that aspects of earlier social dances from the 1950s and 1960s were, at times, “patriarchal and heterosexist.”20 Although the first instances of solo dancing prioritized over couples dancing occurred at late 1960s music festivals, the aptitude for solo dancing in a collective space to break down old paradigms would not be fully realized until the advent of disco.21

A second aspect of disco dancing that imbued the leisure activity with revolutionary possibilities was the relationship between the DJ and the crowd. It was typical for disc jockeys prior to the 1970s to use the music to control party goers into working themselves up into a sweaty frenzy with a series of fast-paced songs, and then to

20 Lawrence, “Disco and the Queering of the Dance Floor,” 231. 21 Ibid, 233. 20 suddenly play a slower song to give the crowd a chance to catch their breath and head to the bar to quench their thirst. First and foremost, the DJ’s main job was working the crowd for the benefit of the bar.22 Party hosts like Mancuso revolutionized the role of the

DJ from a mere manipulator to a music maestro that worked collaboratively with the crowd. If the DJ played something that the crowd enjoyed, they would respond accordingly. The DJ would also respond to requests offered by the crowd. This symbiotic relationship imbued the disco world with a spirit of democracy.23 Mancuso did not even consider himself a DJ, but rather, a benevolent party host that had to attend to the multiple needs of the crowd beyond playing enjoyable music.24 Deconstructing hierarchies on the dance floor imbued the space with a sense of collaboration, unity, and an improvised freedom that did not exist outside of the dance floor.

The last element that Lawrence identities as being central to the disco experience is the ways in which the space of the discotheque created alternate temporalities. In the darkness of the club, caught up in the flurry of the heavy bass rhythms, participants could easily lose both their sense of self and their sense of time while dancing. The alternative experience of time at the discotheque could be aided through the use of recreational drugs such as LSD and by the DJ blending similar sounding songs together to provide the illusion that one, long, siren song was playing the entire night.25 Overall, this surreal

22 Lawrence, “David Mancuso’s Art of Parties.” 23 Lawrence, “Disco and the Queering of the Dance Floor,” 236. 24 Lawrence, “David Mancuso’s Art of Parties.” 25 Lawrence, “Disco and the Queering of the Dance Floor,” 239. 21 sense of time turned the disco space into an anti-capitalist space. Lawrence writes that the,

forward march of teleological time - the time of bourgeois domesticity and

capitalist productivity - was upset within the disco setting, where repetitive and

cyclical beat cycles created an alternative experience to temporality and the

absence of clocks enabled dancers to move into a realm in which work - the work

of the dance - was not required to be productive in a conventional or indeed

heterosexual sense.26

All of these defining characteristics that Lawrence and Dyer attribute to disco are not meant to suggest that disco dancing was a full-throttle, magical revolt against dominant institutions every single night and for every single participant. However, disco during the

1970s can be viewed as an especially potent revolutionary space and form of social dance based on how it was so different from the social dances that came before it.

Ultimately, the most politically effective aspect of disco was its ability to create community and to support the needs of the collective over the needs of the individual.

Privileging the power of community was an important concept during the 1970s, as the economic crisis began encouraging a more self-centered approach to navigating everyday life. The ways in which disco inspired a sense of collectivism can be seen most obviously in the musical motifs that would come to categorize the musical stylings of disco. Most notably, the ways in which disco music would come to incorporate the traditions of

26 Ibid, 239 22 classical music most aptly demonstrate how a form of art associated with the upper class was transformed into a form of music widely accepted by mainstream audiences. Ken

McLeod breaks down how disco artists incorporated classical music to create pluralistic tracks in his essay, “‘A Fifth of Beethoven’: Disco, Classical Music, and the Politics of

Inclusion.” Specifically, McLeod breaks down how the structure of disco tracks such as

“A Fifth of Beethoven” produce a spirit of collectivism in the way that disco music borrows the timbres and religious connotations found in classical music, and how these motifs are juxtaposed next to the use of electric guitars, drums, synthesizers, and an

“international and futuristic potpourri of sounds and percussion instruments” often associated with “low-brow” music.27 However, as much as this blending of high-brow and low-brow musical motifs found in disco songs can break down the hierarchy imposed by classical music, these motifs can also ascribe a hedonistic attribute to disco in that both disco and classical music represented forms of excessive wealth and leisure time.28

Although Dyer, Lawrence, and McLeod all successfully articulate how and why disco was a potentially radical space for creating a powerful collective, this does not totally diminish the fact that disco could also just as easily promote a sense of hedonistic elitism.

Although this thesis celebrates the progressive, transformative power of disco as a social practice and musical genre, it does not anoint this history of disco with moral superiority. Disco was simultaneously radical and conformist. To present an extended history of disco by suggesting that there was a ‘good’ history as opposed to a ‘bad’ one

27 McLeod, “‘A Fifth of Beethoven’: Disco, Classical Music, and the Politics of Inclusion,” American Music 24, no. 3 (2006): 358. 28 Ibid, 359. 23 distracts from the real and much more important aim of this project. It does not matter if disco was a secretly subversive form of music or to what extent it succeeded in creating radical change for certain groups of people. What matters is that because the hedonistic, capitalist history of disco is circulated more widely than the radical version of disco to the point where this queer history is entirely obliterated demonstrates how prevalent heteronormative and bourgeois attitudes affect our culture's perception of what matters in histories and fictional stories surrounding disco.

Saturday Night Fever and the Beginning of the End

Saturday Night Fever will be referenced throughout this thesis as a reflexive anchor. Not only because of its historical impact in elevating disco as a legitimate popular fixation, but also because disco films themselves continually refer back to it, in both their plot and style This being said, the intricacies of this film will not be belabored more than necessary. Fever has received a lot of attention since its release and it is not important to re-address these arguments within this project since they mainly focus on whether or not Fever was a vapid cash-grab or something slightly more significant. In other words, critical discussion surrounding Fever revolves around personal judgements, a direction that this project actively diminishes and refutes. A more productive analysis of the film should focus on how disco was at once both a widely popular commercial fad and a potentially revolutionary phenomenon born from marginalized communities, and to what extent does the film represent these poles. Fever was both a successful effort to create money from a phenomenon by incorporating disco into a conventional movie 24 musical, as well a film with some depth that illustrated real anxieties relating to class and sexuality.

The ways in which the film’s conventional narrative structure attempts to subjugate these anxieties is explained in Derek Nystrom’s essay, “Saturday Night Fever and the Queering of the White, Working-Class Male Body.” The essay explains how

Fever was based on a 1976 New York article by Nik Cohn about the disco scene in Bay

Ridge, New York. This account turned out to be an entirely fabricated piece that was loosely based off of the author’s limited interactions with lavishly dressed disco attendees from Britain.29 Even though the source material for the film was fabricated, that is not to say that the film completely misinterprets the New York City disco scene in the late

1970s. The fact that the article was heavily fictionalized, however, does emphasize a sense of distance between the reality of 1970s discotheques and how outsiders wanted to perceive this world. This preferred version of what disco was and what it represented about the 1970s as a decade correlates to how our culture privileges heteronormative narratives. Nystrom even concludes that the film assumes that the intended viewer of the film is a middle-class subject and receives pleasure from a middle-class spectatorial position that provides “a sense of epistemological superiority over (the film’s) working- class characters, thus replicating the knowledge relations of the capitalist workplace.”30

Fever also assumes a heterosexual viewer as well, meaning that disco and its known association with gay culture at the time of the film’s release also insists upon an assumed

29 Derek Nystrom, Hard Hats, Rednecks, and Macho Men: Class in 1970s American Cinema, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 116-117. 30 Ibid, 128. 25 straight viewer. Thus, the film in many ways simulates the practice of straight voyeurism that would take place on the sidelines at real discotheques.31 Although the film assumes a privileged spectorial position in the way that it structures its narrative, it ultimately is unable to deliver a product that fully subjugates the anxieties present in the film. This is because disco and its ties to marginalized groups cannot be completely divorced, especially in 1977.

Part of the reason that this divorce was impossible was in the way that Fever is structured as a traditional movie musical. Rick Altman’s work on the musical movie genre demonstrates that one of the primary genre conventions of the American musical is to reinforce the cultural desire to see differences between two people or groups of people become resolved, namely in the form of a heterosexual union.32 He defines this reconciliation process within the film’s narrative as indicative of the movie musical’s

“dual-focus structure.” As Altman describes it:

the American film musical has a dual-focus, built around parallel stars of

opposite sex and radically divergent values. The dual-focus structure requires the

viewer to be sensitive not so much to chronology or progression (within the

narrative). . . but to simultaneity and comparison.33

Fever is constructed around the main character, Tony Manero (John Travolta), a nineteen-year-old, blue collar Italian-American, and his budding relationship with an

31 Ibid, 114 32 Rick Altman, The American Film Musical, (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989), 51. 33 Ibid, 19. 26 older woman, Stephanie (Karen Gorney), as they work together to win a disco dancing competition. Stephanie shares Tony’s working-class background, yet the film presents her as mature enough to realize she needs to rise above her class station. By the end of the film, Tony’s love for Stephanie convinces him that he, too, needs to start taking his career seriously and to stop wasting time disco dancing. Both individuals come to share the same dreams and ambitions, namely, that they will rise above their working-class background and create more substantial, bourgeois lives for themselves. Perhaps even together as a couple, as the film implies that their relationship will continue to grow and evolve.

Although the more musical portions of the film are heavily supplemented by a

Bee Gee’s soundtrack as opposed to songs performed by the film’s characters, it is still clear that the film attempts to relay the disco scene through the lens of the movie musical and its conservative genre conventions. However, as Nystrom points out, because disco was so strongly identified with gay men and other marginalized sub-cultures, it is unable to offer a truly convincing heterosexual romance.34 The obvious associations to gay culture are further enforced by the homoeroticization and overall objectification of

Travolta’s body throughout the film, a move that is also used to conflate working class men as individuals stuck in arrested development akin to gay men being unable to mature out of their homosexual phase.35 In summation, “the hurdles that the film must clear, and the tactics it must use, in order to [craft a convincing heterosexual romance] end up

34 Nystrom,113. 35 Ibid, 121. 27 telling us a great deal about the surprising centrality of class to the articulation of gender and sexual identity.”36 Friction within the narrative of Fever is inevitable, causing moments of narrative displeasure as the film is unable to either be shallow, escapist, entertainment as well as a visual-blueprint for how disco might offer progressive opportunities in regards to thinking about class and sexuality.

Altman’s dual-focus narrative concept works well to illustrate how Fever’s narrative fails to produce a pure, heteronormative story. Thinking about disco films within this framework helps locate the heteronormative desire that runs through these films. That being said, such a framework is not usable for the larger aims of this thesis that demonstrate how disco themes unequivocally offer multiple interpretations that, like a dual-focus narrative, can run into each other to create a singular narrative. However, there are moments within these films were the alternative readings do not coincide with one another that explain why the homoerotic themes of Fever are often forgotten in cultural re-hashings of the film. Also, this thesis will explore how films and other visual texts apply disco into the narrative outside of including scenes at a discotheque within the story itself. The final result of this thesis will be to provide a blueprint for how to read disco in film and other visual texts. Disco always offers a reading with queer sensibilities that may or may not run course how a film’s narrative is largely understood by popular audiences.

36 Ibid, 114.

28

Chapter Summaries

Chapter one will elaborate the study of narrative theory and the history of this study. This elaboration will provide a stronger foundation for how disco films and films that incorporate disco can be understood. As previously stated, these types of films offer a dominant and alternative queer reading. Although these readings can cause friction at certain points throughout the film, ultimately one reading prevails over the other. Roller

Boogie (Mark L. Lester, 1979) follows the same pattern as Fever in that it traces the summer romance between two young teens and their attempt to win a “roller boogie,” roller skating disco competition. The location and music used in the film clearly associates the film to disco’s queer fans, yet the film as a whole is sublimated by the dominant narrative and thus remains a story fully transfixed on re-hashing heterosexual romance narratives that are not explore or critique the characteristics of this romance.

Xanadu (Robert Greenwald, 1980), a film with similar roller skating motifs, works markedly differently than Roller Boogie. This film incorporates an obvious camp aesthetic which elevates the film’s intervention with the disco scene. Thus, the queer reading of Xanadu takes much more precedence over the dominant reading that ignores such sensibilities. This is also the reason why the film has been so notoriously lambasted since its release. Using these two disco films that work under similar conditions demonstrates that the queer reading offered by disco does not necessarily become completely sublimated by the dominant reading within the text itself. However, the dominant reading is the reading most viewers tend to validate, and when films do not clearly support a heteronormative reading, audiences and critics often deem these films as 29 objectively bad. Xanadu is not a ‘bad’ film and the notoriety surrounding the film is not a matter of taste, but indicative of America’s homophobic preferences.

The extent to which the dominant reading of a disco film is successful at retaining its dominance usually depends on context. However, as chapter two reveals, disco films fitted to the format of horror narratives tend to always kowtow to the queer reading.

Horror narratives function by establishing two distinct worlds, one that is governed by rationale and one that is irrational. What constitutes are ‘rationale’ in horror narratives depends on the socio-political context on when the text was produced. Prom Night (Paul

Lynch, 1980) was released at a time when disco was beginning to wane in mainstream popularity and the teen slasher film was becoming a lucrative genre. This film heavily incorporates a disco space within the story that allows for a queer reading. Another horror film, Don’t Go in the House (Joseph Ellison, 1980), also includes a prominent scene at a disco and works in similar ways to Prom Night, but to a lesser extent. The rational world in these films is marked as heteronormative, thus making the disco space apart of the irrational world. When disco is incorporated within these horror films, it allows for a critique of heterosexuality and how queerness threatens the tenants of this ideology.

Disco horror films indisputably allow the queer reading of the film to subvert the dominant reading, as the true horror contained within the plot cannot be understood without acknowledging the implications of heteronormativity—namely our culture’s obsession and fetishization of children—that queerness exposes.

The final chapter will look at a group of modern films including Muriel’s

Wedding (P. J. Hogan, 1994), Mamma Mia! (Phyllida Lloyd, 2008), and Mamma Mia! 30

Here We Go Again (Ol Parker, 2018). All of these films heavily incorporate the music of

Swedish pop group ABBA, who produced successful disco songs in the late 1970s. None of these films explicitly incorporate a disco space within the story, yet the heavy incorporation of musical group often associated with the disco scene illustrates how films with disco elements can still be read in the same way as more obvious disco films. That being said, the third chapter will explore disco’s affective applications especially as exists within a modern context. The cultural limitations imposed on this affect will also be illustrated in order to define these affective properties. When used affectively, disco becomes a reference point for America’s relationship to itself in the 1970s and the 1980s.

The 70s are labeled as a decade of sexual liberation as well as embarrassing hedonism.

This childish hedonism must be accounted for in the present in the form of some kind of flagellation. When disco is presented in modern references, it still acknowledges its queer roots, but as an affect, it produces an almost zany affect that attempts to overcome the sins of the 70s by creating a surplus of meaningful labor. There are some exceptions to this use, but by and large, referencing disco in popular, modern media is meant as a joke, a nostalgic indulgence, and a form of almost impossible repentance. Such use not only limits the ways disco can influence a narrative, but also leads to the further erosion of disco’s real history within the cultural consciousness.

No matter what extent disco is incorporated in film, it still maintains a queer sensibility because of its history. Mainstream disco films and films that incorporate disco attempt to repurpose disco to relate a narrative that privileges heteronormativity. The extent to which disco films either cause mild friction due to the queer elements or are 31 able to completely subvert the dominant reading is largely determined on a case-by-case basis. Although there is no hard and fast rule for interpreting disco’s presence in cinema, it always suggests that more than one reading is possible when coming to understand a film. To suggest that alternate readings were not intended by the film’s creator, aren’t somehow feasible, or for whatever reason just simply aren’t ideal understandings of the text is homophobic. These ideas regarding narrative permeate our culture and allow us to foreground and justify our bigotry. When we reuse to engage with the possibility that texts can be understood in multiple ways given the nature of their content, we are also refusing to engage with marginalized histories and people, as well as their unique ways of seeing and understanding our world.

32

Chapter One: Dominant and Queer Readings in Roller Boogie and Xanadu—It’s

Not a Bad Film, You’re Just Reading It That Way

Saturday Night Fever’s incredible box-office success ushered in a series of films attempting to cash-in on the award-winning formula. Namely, by crafting a musical movie narrative around the up-and-coming disco scene. Films such as Thank God It’s

Friday (Robert Klane, 1978), Roller Boogie (Mark L. Lester, 1979) and You Can’t Stop the Music (Nancy Walker, 1980) revolved around the music of popular acts at the time such as Donna Summer, Cher, and the Village People. Summers herself was cast in a starring role in Thank God It’s Friday to further advertise her current star-power at the time. None of these movies would capture the same success as Fever despite following a similar formula. Some of these films would even go on to be remembered as notoriously

‘bad’ in terms of the construction of their story and their gaudy presentation. Xanadu

(Robert Greenwald, 1980) is particularly infamous for its plot structure, with one 1980 film review from Variety stating that, “(the actors start) singing and zipping hither and yon, apparently looking for a script that will never be found.”37 Though the ludicrous nature of Xanadu’s story has garnered a cult following in recent years, it is still by and large remembered as bad movie because its narrative does not adhere to ‘normal’ conventions. Of course, what is considered a ‘normal’ narrative is actually an arbitrary assessment situated within a history of narratology that has favored certain types of narrative structures and subjective positions over others. Writing these films off as

37 “Xanadu.” Variety Movie Reviews, January 1980, 117. 33 nothing more than poorly-made cash-ins only further endorses the assumption that there is only one correct way to read a film’s narrative. Asserting that Xanadu is bad because it does not appear to have a cohesive script closes the possibility that other narratives might be found within the film that adhere to different forms of organizational logic.

Disco films in particular attend to two types of narratives; one that enforces a dominant, heteronormative reading and a queer reading. For example, closely analyzing

Saturday Night Fever reveals two distinctly different narratives that exists simultaneously within the film. The first focuses on Tony Manero, a young, blue-collar, Italian-American who enjoys dancing at the local disco more than he does working at his day job as a clerk in a hardware store. He is treated like a celebrity at the disco because of his superb, unmatched dancing skills. One night, he meets a woman at the disco and asks if she would like to be his partner for an upcoming disco dancing contest. She agrees, and eventually the two fall in love. The couple win the dance contest and the film ends with

Tony promising his love interest that he is going to start taking his career more seriously.

This means spending less time at the disco and spending more time on getting a full-time job and, in short, becoming a real adult. Of course, these are not the only events that take place in the film, but these are the events that are most often remembered within our current zeitgeist.

A second narrative emerges when other events in the film are acknowledged:

Tony Manero is a young, blue collar, Italian-American who enjoys dancing at the local disco more than he does working at his day job. When he is not working, he is either at home fighting with his parents or he is hanging out with his male friends who sometimes 34 get involved in some form of delinquency. His friends are mostly interested in hooking up with women and terrorizing minorities that they come in contact with. In one scene,

Tony and his friends encounter a gay couple on the city streets. His friends immediately begin to harass the couple by calling them homophobic slurs. Tony does not participate in the harassment, but because he is a bystander to this bigotry, he is participating by proxy.

The film is filled with multiple instances xenophobia, including the disco dancing competition. Although Tony and his partner win, Tony recognizes that a Puerto Rican couple danced much more proficiently, and that his win was not rightfully earned. This and other events that take place that night—including a rape and an accidental suicide— force Tony to snap out of his dream world and to seriously consider what he should do with his life, forcing him to relegate his hobby to the world of childish pastimes

Both narratives are truthful retellings of Fever with different points of focus. It is not that one narrative is a more effective or a ‘better’ narrative, but the prevalence of the first narrative in modern culture, and the ultimate erasure of the second, allows the film to circulate as a disco-infused romance and Travolta star vehicle, de-emphasizing the gender and racial tensions present in the film.38 The idea that one narrative reading has more influence within a culture due to its ideological prescience within text as a whole occurs more frequently than we are taught to believe. In Fever, the narrative reading that focuses

38 I taught this film to a group of undergraduate media production students. Virtually all of them were unaware of the film’s violent content. All of them had heard about the film and assumed that it was about dancing and dancing alone. One student revealed that he had seen a version of the film on VHS, but that this version had seriously edited out much of the film’s graphic content, including the rape scene. This is but one real life example demonstrating how Saturday Night Fever is almost intentionally remembered in a very specific way within our culture despite the actual content of the film. 35 on class, racial, and sexual relations and the xenophobia found in these relations is overshadowed by the dominant narrative. This popular narrative reading focuses on the spectacle of disco dancing and disco music, and especially on the union of the heterosexual couple. Attending to the second and more confrontational narrative reveals how the film is engaged with real political issues that surrounded disco in the late 1970s.

Discussions regarding Fever tend to revolve around whether or not the film itself is an accurate portrayal of disco to begin with. However, the circulation of the ideologically favorable narrative over the more politically productive narrative is the more crucial issue at hand. When critics and scholars belabor on how the film functions as a capitalist byproduct of the mainstreaming of disco, the larger point of how our culture is taught to read narratives in a certain way is completely ignored.

To further explore the dynamics between dominant and queer readings of disco films, this chapter will focus on two films with similar content—Roller Boogie and

Xanadu. The success to which the queer narrative subverts the dominant reading depends on the context of the film as a whole. In the case of Xanadu, the film’s overall camp aesthetic cultivates a visual layout that makes it easier for the queer reading to shine through whereas a queer reading of Roller Boogie is subjugated by the film’s hyper focus on a heterosexual couple’s summer fling.

Breaking Down Assumptions Regarding Narratology and Universal Desire

Narratology studies the ways in which events within a story are organized and how meaning is derived from this organization. There is nothing inherent about understanding a narrative in a particular way. In other words, there is not one correct or 36 pure way to interpret the organization of events within a story. Each reading of a narrative is influenced by the preferences of the interpreter. That being said, some theorists have thought about the ways in which reading narratives can be seen as a practice instinctual to human nature. In Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in

Narrative, Peter Brooks analyzes narrative desire—the force that compels readers to continue and eventually finish reading a book or watching a movie—through psychoanalytic terms. He compares the desire to finish a story to Freud’s notion of the death drive, which states that individuals are largely motivated by tensions resulting from their conscious instincts clashing with their subconscious desires.39 For example, most people are driven to finish consuming a story featuring a romantic relationship, not only as a means to receive closure at the end of the story, but so that the consumer may vicariously fill out their own subconscious desires for romance by seeing the unification of the fictitious couple. Many Hollywood narratives are interpreted through this type of narrative desire, specifically a desire that focuses on heterosexual relationships. As the introduction noted, Hollywood musicals rely on this form of narrative desire almost exclusively. When a heterosexual couple do not form a union at the end of a story, the desire goes unfulfilled. The narrative as a whole is experienced as a failure on both the part of the text itself and the consumer of the text. The desire to see a heterosexual union at the end of a story is not a universal desire, especially for a queer or not-straight

39 Peter Brooks, Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), 55. 37 consumer who may favor the formation of a queer relationship or even oppose the formation of a couple altogether.

It is important to note that classical narrative theory assumes a very specific ideological position, that of a heteronormative masculine subject, as the only position from which to read a narrative correctly. For Brooks and others who follow in his footsteps, narrative desire is a universal concept that can be applied to all readers. Outside of research, teaching the concept that narratives can only be understood in one correct way is often reinforced in higher learning institutions. Connie Monson and Jacqueline

Rhodes write about this destructive practice in their essay, “Risking Queer: Pedagogy,

Performativity, and Desire in the Classroom.” Their writing mainly focuses on how rhetoric and composition instructors specifically should be mindful of how they teach students to insert their own desires in their written work. They nonetheless touch on an important point regarding how students are often discouraged from writing from a particular subjectivity:

The classroom, far from being an ivory tower separate or separable from power

relations at large, necessarily inherits and refracts them. Students emerge as docile

bodies whose desire is mediated and shaped by language and ergo by pedagogical

prescriptives on discourse. This desire is directed through "acceptable" channels

(for knowledge, nominally), masking other workings of desire (the professor's, the

institution's, libidinal investments) and in effect colonizing those bodies.40

40 Connie Monson and Jacqueline Rhodes, “Risking Queer: Pedagogy, Performativity, and Desire in the Classroom,” JAC 24, no. 1 (2004): 85. 38

Specifically, Monson and Rhodes highlight that students with queer libidinal desires are often taught to defer these desires or erase them all together in their writing. It is not even so much that we are culturally taught to read texts straight, but to write straight as well at the cost of forsaking a part of our identity. The concept of the universal narrative runs insidious in many facets of our culture beyond reception alone. Hence why it is so important to challenge this notion of universal narrative desire by suggesting that alternate readings are not only possible, but readily available within particular texts.

In her essay, “Sexing the Narrative: Propriety, Desire, and the Engendering of

Narratology,” Susan S. Lanser challenges the notion of universal narrative desire, specifically a heterosexual desire. She puts herself in direct conversation with the work done on narrative theory by Gerald Prince, who has suggested that considering features such as “sex, race, class, religion, age, ethnicity, and sexual preference” are “trivializing features” that obstruct an analyst’s task of getting to the heart of a narrative and analyzing its essential structure.41 Lanser argues that such considerations are not trivial and that

“gender, sexuality, and sex constitute narratologically significant elements” when considering the structure of a narrative, such as determining the reliability of a narrator.42

To prove the usefulness of what she calls “poetical categories” for interpreting narratives,

Lanser draws upon the narrative structure of the book, Written on the Body, by lesbian author Jeanette Winterson. The book is written in first person and features a narrator whose gender is purposefully made ambiguous. The protagonist falls in love with a

41 Susan S. Lanser, “Sexing the Narrative: Propriety, Desire, and the Engendering of Narratology,” Narrative 3, no. 1 (Jan., 1995): 86. 42 Ibid, 91. 39 married woman and, because of their ambiguous gender identity, creates two narrative readings within the text; one based on a privileged, heterosexual assumption and another based on a queer assumption. The narrative of the book as a whole “opens questions about the relationship between sex and gender in ways that allow the reader to test his or her own assumptions repeatedly.”43 Lanser agrees with Brooks’ remarks that narratology is both a science that aims to break apart and analyze the structure of a narrative as well as the study of an analyst’s desire and how desire changes the meaning of the narrative.44

She concludes her essay by expressing a need for alternative, poetic readings of narrative that might be considered improper because “to ‘expand’ narratology too far is to end up

‘queering’ it—taking it from the straight and narrow path of structuralism’s binaries or trinaries into a more dauntingly indeterminate terrain.”45 To venture forth into this terrain is to shed light on why we are culturally taught to understand narratives in a particular way for the sake of propriety, and why sex and gender are seen as irrelevant aspects in the reading of narratives.

Using Lanser’s idea of accepting two readings of a narrative simultaneously shows how traditional narratives can embed other possible readings within them that challenge their position as the one and only correct reading. When disco films in particular are cast aside as failures on a structural level, what film critics are really saying is that these films failed to fulfill the desire of the straight, bourgeois subject, without

43 Ibid, 89. 44 Ibid, 93. 45 Ibid, 93. 40 considering that another form of narrative desire might be fulfilled in an alternative reading of the film. Neither Roller Boogie nor Xanadu end with the traditional heterosexual couple. However, taking into consideration disco's centrality in each film— along with the late 1970s fad of roller skating—a second narrative emerges where the ending reveals the possibility for a different type of desire to be fulfilled. It is not a reach to say that the element of disco inherently offers an alternative reading with queer and otherwise progressive possibilities. Given the historical roots of disco and given the close proximities these films shared to disco’s heyday, it is ignorant not to recognize how much of the culture that created disco is being incorporated into these films that are, essentially, aiming to profit off of the creative labor of marginalized cultures. Reading disco films without connecting the queer roots of disco to the film is akin to reading rap music without connecting the black roots of the musical genre to whatever text incorporates this genre of music. Similarly, the history of roller skating and its historical ties to black communities also allows us to read Roller Boogie and Xanadu in ways that reveal narratives that try to minimize the significance of intersectional marginalized communities and their contributions to making disco the profitable fad that it became for

Hollywood.

Roller Boogie, or Saturday Night Fever on Wheels

Roller skating as a cultural phenomenon reached peak popularity in the 1950s.

Romy Poletti traces this racialized history of roller skating in her master’s thesis,

“Residual Culture of Roller Skating Rinks: Media, the Music and Nostalgia of Roller

Skating.” Roller rinks were segregated in the 50s and black skaters found ways to interact 41 with the space in different ways from their white counterparts. One of the primary differences in technique came in the form of “jamming,” which is a style of skating that used roller skates as tap shoes.46 Jamming can be seen in both Roller Boogie and Xanadu as part of the larger dancing spectacle within each musical. Techniques borrowed from other sports such as traditional dancing and figure skating are also incorporated into the choreography of each film. All of these techniques blend together to create a homogenized attempt to turn the simplistic act of skating around a circular rink into a cinematic spectacle able to engage with the audience’s desire to see larger-than-life acrobatic feats.

This homogenization also dismisses the racial history of jamming and roller skating, not to mention the fact that black communities brought disco music into roller skating rinks and helped increase the resurgence of both activities’ popularity in the late

1970s.47 It is important to note that roller rinks would traditionally only play one type of music that heavily relied on an organ to generate beats for skating participants. Carousels play a similar type of music. When roller skating became a largely black past time, it was this community that introduced less-conventional music into the space. Disco fit well within the skating rink because the classically orchestral qualities and bass rhythms of the sound complimented the traditional bandstand music.48 When disco music became more popular in general, roller skating rinks that played this music became popular as well.

46 Poletti, Romy. “Residual Culture of Roller Rinks: Media, the Music and Nostalgia of Roller Skating.” Master’s thesis, McGill University Press, 2009, 49. 47 Ibid, 45. 48 Ibid, 47. 42

The popularity of both disco music and roller skating in the late 1970s is due to the black communities from which they emerged. If not for this community and other marginalized folk, roller skating and disco would not have amounted to such a lucrative combination.

This history is never acknowledged in either Roller Boogie or Xanadu and is thus actively erased. In Roller Boogie, the white owner of the popular roller skating rink is named

“Jammers,” which is also the name of the establishment. The film suggests that his namesake come from his past as a competitive roller skating performer, and not from a style of roller skating. Xanadu takes less egregious aims at erasing this history, yet its apolitical stance still contributes to the erasure. The occluded roots of roller skating along with those of disco further contribute to a double reading of Roller Boogie and Xanadu where other types of narrative desires are denied in the more prescient reading of each film.

Roller Boogie focuses on a summer romance between a teenage couple. Terry

(Linda Blair) comes from a wealthy background and is poised to study flute at Julliard in the fall. Bobby (Jim Bray) works odd jobs around Venice Beach and aspires to become a roller skating Olympic champion. Terry often travels to the beach and the local roller rink in order to escape her stuffy life and her neglectful parents. Bobby develops a crush on

Terry the first time he sees her and his friends make fun of him for falling in love with a rich girl. Eventually, Bobby manages to impress Terry with his skating prowess. She offers to pay him to teach her how to roller skate better. As the two become closer, the nature of their relationship changes from capitalist-laborer to girlfriend-boyfriend.

Apart from their developing romance, the secondary plot in the film concerns a 43 roller boogie couples skating competition and a group of real estate agents who threaten to burn the rink down if the owner does not willingly sign the property over to them.

Terry, Bobby and their friend stumble upon the agents threatening Jammer in his office.

They immediately set out to enlist Terry’s father, a lawyer, to help them protect the property. Conveniently, Terry and Bobby’s friend carries a boom-box with him everywhere, and accidentally recorded the agents’ threat onto a cassette tape. This proves to be enough evidence to protect the rink from harm so that the competition can continue without a hitch. The film ends with Terry and Bobby winning the grand prize.

Unfortunately, Terry’s parents force her to attend Julliard at the end of summer. She says goodbye to Bobby in the final scene, effectively ending their relationship. The romance and competition aspect mirror the plot beats of Saturday Night Fever almost exactly. The only real difference between these to films are their locales and the extent to which extreme violence is or is not utilized.

The opening scene of the film establishes how the film intends to exploit aspects of disco that ultimately best serve the goals of its heteronormative story. It begins with extreme close-up shots of a roller skate being tightened and cleaned. A hand gently inserts a wheel onto the spoke before screwing it tightly. Then a small hose can be seen cleaning the wheels even more. In total, these opening sequences create a highly sensual experience but under an explicitly heterosexual context. As the title for the film spins onto the screen, the choir sings a reprise of the chorus of “Hell on Wheels” by Cher. It is revealed that the skate belongs to Bobby who is preparing for a morning roll. A crane shot is used as Bobby is seen exiting his apartment. The camera slowly reveals the street 44 next to Bobby’s apartment that is completely empty save for a few cars. This creates an airy atmosphere without borders, highlighting the joys and freedoms that come along with idyllic, youthful summers. Bobby runs into his friends as they begin to skate along

Venice Beach. As the opening of “Hell on Wheels” begins to play, the first acrobatic spectacle of the film begins.

It is interesting to note that many of the songs featured in the film were either performed or written by Bob Etsy, including “Hell on Wheels.” Around the time of the film’s release, a music video for “Hell on Wheels” was also produced. The music video featured Cher with long, crimped hair, donning a zebra print body suit covered in rhinestones. She rolls into a tiny gas station and manages to catch the eye of all of the men in the area, who follow her down the road on her roller-skating odyssey. The fast- paced, montage editing sequences in the video create a much more erotic, frenzied atmosphere than the opening sequence in Roller Boogie. Another notable difference is the much more distinctly homo-erotic atmosphere of the mise-en-scène. This is constructed through the use of muscular men in revealing clothing, shots of beer bottles ejaculating foam, two drag queens resembling Bette Midler and Diana Ross—who were notable disco queens at the time—and of course Cher, who was also a prominent gay icon in the late 1970s. Discussing this music video is important in contrast to Roller Boogie because despite both texts being released around the same time, “Hell on Wheels” offers a far less tame and heteronormative image of disco than Roller Boogie does. Anyone familiar with

“Hell on Wheels” and its complementary music video would also have been familiar with the gay overtones associated with the song. Thus already from the film’s beginning, two 45 forms of narrative desire emerge: one connected to the heterosexualized imagery of the roller skate, the other connected to the gay culture embedded in Cher’s star persona and the disco music with which she was associated.

The rest of the scene continues as Bobby and his pals skate down the boulevard, running into more and more friends. Some are balancing on benches, while others dance in circles. A cut to a medium-long shot shows two people talking at payphones. The troupe of roller boogiers run into them and quickly encourage them to drop their calls to join the parade. As they are pulled away from the booths, the camera pans down to focus on the phones dangling off their hooks. Nothing is more important to these youths than skating; this activity is presented as the pinnacle of summertime frivolity, especially for youths who have little to no other obligations to society. Juxtaposing disco with frivolous, hedonistic youth activities is a common theme throughout disco films. In order for Tony Manero to become a self-actualized adult that takes his career and relationships seriously, he first has to abandon his infatuation with discos and dancing at discotheques.

Creating this association allows this film to celebrate and exploit disco culture while simultaneously treating it in a condescending manner.

This feeling of freedom and vitality is enhanced in this scene through the rotating use of aerial shots and long-shots that fully capture the expressive movements of the roller skating dancers and the views of beach. The film also continues to explicitly reinforces that this youthful daydream is foregrounded in the desires of not only a heterosexual viewer, but a male one as well. A motif is used throughout the film featuring close-up shots of young women’s hips and bottoms in revealing bathing suits. The film 46 also continually sexualizes Terry, who frequently wears outfits that display her cleavage and legs. Another moment in the first scene that foregrounds the male gaze features a straight couple furiously making out in plain sight on a dumpster as the parade of skaters maneuver around them. Again, the parade encourages them to stop their activity to join them. The woman readily joins the parade, leaving her reluctant lover to pound his fist on the dumpster in disappointment, only to give in and follow after his partner.

Conveniently, the couple were already dressed in skates. The further reinforcement of heterosexual dominance within the film alongside a queerly-coded sound track illustrates how, of the two narratives forming within the film, one is positioned as the dominant narrative. Specifically, this dominant narrative is one that reinforces not only the preference toward heterosexual love, but a love restrained to the confines of conservative courtship rituals. Hence the inclusion of the dumpster couple, whose love-making is deemed unimportant in comparison to the roller skating spectacle.

Indeed, the spectacle nature of the opening picks up, as the now all-encompassing parade engage in trickier acrobatic feats, such as maneuvering around cans and jumping over a lineup of trash cans. Bobby remains the initiator and leader of this pack for the entirety of the sequence. The sequence ends as one performer, characterized by his over- the-top bad skating, crashes into a lineup of trash cans. His clumsiness brings the pumping momentum of the scene to a halt. No other moment in the film manages to match the expression of freedom represented in the opening scene, in part because of the scenery and choice of song employed. The rest of the spectacles featured in the film take 47 place within the confines of the local roller rink, save for a chase sequence that relies more on the thrills of the gimmick than the talent of the performers.

Apart from the contrived theatrics inserted throughout the film, traditional narrative pleasure is disrupted when Terry and Bobby do not end up together with their romance is written off as a casual love affair not meant to last. This is indicated by the non-diegetic use of the song “Summer Love,” by Bob Etsy that plays while the couple breaks up. Winning the competition as well as ending up together despite the wishes of

Terry’s parents would fulfill a normative desire to see the young, heterosexual couple succeed in more than one way. When pleasure for normative desire is denied in films, a common response is to question the structure of the film and its objective elements to determine ‘what went wrong.’ This type of response assumes that all films should follow one type of logic that, in actuality, condones to a particular form of narrative desire.

Instead of thinking of other forms of desire that are either being offered closure or denial by the narrative, film audiences and critics refuse to engage in other possibilities because this would require them to reconcile that not all movies are made to entertain them and their particular frame of reference.

Specifically, the friction from this final scene comes from the fact that the unification of the heterosexual couple is sacrificed in order to tame the desire to see the couple unify in an unconventional fashion. In this way, no form of narrative desire is granted closure in terms of how traditional movie musicals end with the unification of at least one heterosexual couple. Refusing to grant closure to any form of narrative desire and the total narrative of the film as a whole does not point to a lack of logic within the 48 film’s structure. Asserting that all films should be subjected to an objectivity litmus test only further perpetuates dominant ideologies but from the reception end of the filmmaking process as opposed to the production. This dialogue between popular films and popular critics is an important piece in understanding how heteronormativity and capitalism fit into this ‘objective’ evaluation of cinema.

Other possibilities for alternate types of narrative desire that arise are brought up at the beginning of Terry and Bobby’s relationship. Because of her class status, Terry is easily able to not only ask but conceive of paying Bobby for his labor. Initially, the purpose of this payment is to compensate for Bobby teaching Terry how to incorporate dance and figure skating techniques into her roller skating. Soon it becomes clear that

Terry has no qualms paying Bobby for his emotional labor as well, running to him and his romantic company when her parents are absent. This exchange briefly explores the idea of paying for emotional labor and, we can infer, sexual labor. Paying for Terry’s services acknowledges that the labor produced by couples in a relationship—especially women—is strenuousness and ideally should be compensated. Emotional and sexual labor are valuable products in our culture, and for a brief moment the film critically explores these types of exchanges and breaks down the unnecessary taboos placed on them. Unfortunately, when Terry attempts to pay Bobby again for his company, he denies and says, “If I teach you how to skate, it’s because I want to.” The couple then begin to engage in a more traditional romance where they are able to successfully woo their partner and succeed in heterosexual courtship rituals. This return to a more traditional romance is problematic because it continues to enforce the idea that only people with 49 valuable assets and skills are worthy of emotional and sexual labor. Those who chose to pay for this labor are often represented as failures by society's standards, as if paying for this labor is something they are forced to do as opposed to a well-informed, valid choice.

Though Terry is forced by her parents to leave the west coast to attend Julliard, the film has established that she has plenty of money at her disposal in proportion to

Bobby. She could have offered to continue paying for his labor as she did in the beginning of the film and they could have remained together in New York with Terry acting as Bobby’s benefactor. The film dismisses this possibility in order to reinforce the associations between the working class and disco. Though disco emerged from working class spaces, one of the things disco spaces did was erase the illusion of class differences and in effect created an environment where plurality and equality were incredibly present. The narrative desire encouraged by disco’s queer sensibilities is one that wishes to see class barriers dissolve, or at least where such disparities in class differences are acknowledged and alleviated. These queer sensibilities also acknowledge an economy where the only way for some people to fully explore facets of their sexuality is through paying for someone’s physical, emotional, and sexual labor. Terry and Bobby’s romance was always meant to be fleeting and insignificant, which is how the film wants us to view the fad of disco and roller skating as a whole.

Xanadu: A Place Where Nobody Dared to Go

Xanadu shares many similarities with Roller Boogie, including its setting—

Venice Beach—and its repurposing of roller skating in more cinematically appealing ways by mixing the sport with acrobatic and dance techniques. Xanadu, however, is 50 presented as a much more traditional musical film with fantasy elements. Along with roller skating, the film features traditional chorus-line numbers and a Don Bluth animation sequence. The story focuses on the struggling painter Sonny Malone (Michael

Beck) and his interaction with one of the Greek Muses, Terpsichore (Olivia Newton-

John), who goes by Kira in the film. Sonny paints large reproductions of album covers for a living and yearns for a day when he can make a real career out of selling his own artwork in a way that respects his artistic integrity. When Sonny first runs into Kira, she makes it hard for him to track her down again, becoming an elusive love interest with unclear motivations. These motivations and the ambiguous romance that develops between the two characters has been the cause of relentless criticism from viewers. In other words, the dominant narrative in the film does not clearly identify the intended viewer of the film as clearly as Roller Boogie, allowing the queer narrative reading to maintain more prescience. Because of this, the film is rife with narrative displeasure for any viewer seeking a traditional, heteronormative story.

Besides the central romance, Xanadu also has a subplot involving the character of

Danny McGuire (Gene Kelly), an aging former professional musician who dreams of opening his own nightclub. Sonny and Danny eventually spark a friendship together and decide to make Danny’s dream a reality by investing in the club as business partners.

Like the purpose of the muses or the central romance, it is not clear what Danny’s intentions are for creating a club or how this club advances Sonny’s personal aims. The film also suggests that Kira, being a mythical creature, was once Danny’s muse in his youth, though he doesn’t remember her when Sonny introduces Kira later in the film as 51 his girlfriend. The ambiguous nature of Kira’s identity is reaffirmed at the very end of the film. Sonny and Danny celebrate the opening night of their club, Xanadu. Sonny is forlorn because before the grand opening, Kira broke up with him because her parents,

Zeus and Hera, disapproved of their relationship. Despite this rejection, Kira shows arrives at Xanadu to give a last-minute performance. Stranger still, the last shot of the film sets up Kira as a waitress in the club who Sonny inevitably ends up flirting with but does not recognize.

Writing off the film as bad from a structuralist perspective runs into the same problems as employing these strategies to a film like Roller Boogie. Though not as obviously disco-themed as Roller Boogie, Xanadu’s primary reliance on songs created and performed by the band Electric Light Orchestra still allows for a reading of the film in relation to disco to emerge given how common disco motifs are used in ELO’s work such as the use of string instruments and other over-the-top orchestral gestures. Also, the final scene of the film takes place in a club with accouterments still relevant to discotheques, such as an LED light dance floor. This all being said, Xanadu was released just when disco was starting to fall from popularity. As stated earlier, the film does not strongly foreground which of the two narratives is the dominant one, which creates friction in regards to seeking normative narrative pleasure. In Roller Boogie, the only moment of displeasure occurs at the very end of the film where the desire that drives the dominant narrative is denied closure in order to ensure that the desire found within the queer narrative is denied closure as well. Defining a specific moment of displeasure within Xanadu proves difficult because at no point does the narrative, along with mise- 52 en-scène, ever successfully foreground a dominant ideology. Most of this is attributed to the fact that much of mise-en-scène creates a camp aesthetic.

Here, I am relying on Richard Dyer’s definition of camp as marked by an irreverence towards iconic symbols otherwise given reverence by the dominating culture.

This definition is laid out in his essay, “It’s Being So Camp That Keeps Us Going.” Dyer makes the distinction between gay and straight camp in order to help illustrate this idea.

The specific example he uses is the reverence straight audiences show to John Wayne’s persona, which is in many ways an exaggerated caricature of masculinity. Instead of poking fun at this caricature, straight audiences view Wayne’s portrayal of masculinity as a representation of gender that should be taken seriously. This is opposed to gay camp, which is able to poke fun at iconography in a way that might show appreciation, but ultimately aims to deconstruct the fallacy of importance given to highly regarded images.49 For example, drag performers who impersonate celebrities might do so out of fondness for said celebrity, but are ultimately revealing the fallacy of gender roles and expectations. Drag performers also criticize the ridiculous amount of power often granted to celebrities just for being famous.

Elements of camp can be seen throughout Xanadu. From the depiction of the

Greek gods to the over-stylized musical numbers, the film questions the salience of disco iconography while simultaneously reveling in it. Perhaps Xanadu’s most remarkable critique is the way in which it deconstructs the composition of the traditional movie

49 Richard Dyer, “It’s Being So Camp That Keeps Us Going,” in Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader, ed. Fabio Cleto, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 112-113.

53 musical. This is accomplished through the narrative’s focus on Classic Hollywood musicals and the inclusion of Gene Kelly, and breaking down the reverence held for each.

There is something almost sacrilegious in the way that the film features an aging Kelly; despite his classic charisma shining through, it is evident that Kelly is unable to muster up the stamina in his performances as he was once able to do. In one uncomfortable moment, Kelly looks at himself in a mirror and pulls at his now-wrinkled face. He does this with a sense of amusement which nonetheless forces the viewer to reconcile with the mortality of the beloved icon. Viewers must also reconcile the status of the Classical

Hollywood musical and how elements of this genre will be unable to stand the test of time, in terms of upholding certain ideologies regarding heteronormativity.

These are the two narratives that can be located within the film: one is a typical

Hollywood musical that fails to follow the correct format, the other an effective parody of the Hollywood musical that aims to dismantle the foundational tenets of the genre, up to and including the almost arbitrary unification of heterosexual couples. Again, it must be stressed that these two narratives were not created intentionally by the filmmakers. They exist because engaging with disco leads to an engagement with anti-heteronormative practices that disrupt the dominant ideology most present in the film, in this case heteronormativity. For the most part, it is in Hollywood’s best interest to adhere to dominant ideology, especially in the case of musicals where their entire construction relies on these ideologies. An undesirable ending occurs in these films because the dominant ideology cannot successfully incorporate the progressive elements that accompany disco. In the case of Xanadu, this leads to an almost ‘non-ending,’ where the 54 main plot line is not successfully resolved. One musical number does a particularly good job at deconstructing the fantasy of Classical Hollywood by highlighting the ridiculous motifs of the genre that are often regarded with an unreasonable amount of severity.

Sonny and Danny are in their newly purchased club and begin discussing how they want to renovate the building. Danny suggests that they turn the club into and old- fashioned swing-joint. He points to an off-screen space, where the camera cuts to a blurry vision of a 1940s-style grandstand orchestra on the right side of a black void. The camera cuts back to the men as Sonny points to an off-screen space in the opposite direction.

“Over there, a great rock-n-roll band. This is the 80s!” Again, the camera cuts the void space to reveal a rock stage on the right side of the screen. Thus begins the “Dancin’” number, which involves musical acts set in two different temporalities merging together.

The 1940s section features dancers in cartoonish representations of outfits that would have been worn during that time period. These outfits are cartoonish because the colors are vibrant and there is a lack of uniformity between performers as a wide-range of 1940s

Hollywood archetypes are trying to be represented all at once. This ranges from caricatures of general character types such as gangsters, sailors, and army men and women, to representations of specific performers such as Carmen Miranda, Cyd Charisse, and the Andrew Sisters. In contrast, the 1980s section presents a much more unified collection of performers, though the vibrant saturation of colors remains the same. Here, the dancers are all wearing skin-tight, latex outfits, and a band performs wearing all orange attire. Most of the dancers are also imbued with either a disco or punk vibe according to the style of their hair and makeup. The performers in the 1980s section act 55 in overtly sensual ways. However, this performance accentuates the sensuality found in the 1940s section, exposing the not always tame nature of Classical Hollywood, which is how it is often mythologized by conservative fans.

“Dancin’” is a duet between Newton-John and a band known as The Tubes, who appear in the 1980s section of the number. While The Tubes are shown singing their part of the duet, Newton-John is absent from the number and the Andrew Sisters caricatures are seen lip-syncing to her lyrics. Eventually, performers from each side of the void stumble upon each other, as the void turns into a stage where the two temporalities can merge into one. The performers start to mingle with one another and the two stages representing each time period begin to physically merge together, creating a singular temporal stage. What this fusion of historical moments suggests is that the club, Xanadu, is being conceptualized as a place outside of space and time.

The fluid nature of the club is reinforced at the film’s end, as the final musical number takes place at the club and features Kira performing in various outfits, such as a skin-tight rock-n’-roll outfit, a cowboy outfit, and a futuristic, space-inspired look. All of these outfits feature over-the-top details and are similar to the outfits featured in

“Dancin.’” They are campy in that they are irreverent representations of outfits and are clearly not intended to be fashionable. Even the outfit Kira wears for the majority of the film—a tattered, off-the-shoulder dress with leg warmers and roller skates —is a parody of popular fashion trends at the time. Xanadu, then, exists a campy space the defies temporal identification and aims to parody popular culture at the time, including disco. 56

The temporal aspect of the club is significant in relation to presenting queer sensibilities because queer folk often experience time different than there heterosexual counterparts. Jack Halberstam details the ways in which queer folk navigate within a postmodern world extensively in their book, In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender

Bodies, Subcultural Lives. Their definition of queer temporalities and spaces is that it

“refers to nonnormative logics and organizations of community, sexual identity, embodiment, and activity in space and time.” Queer time emerges for postmodern subjects when they leave behind the “temporal frames of bourgeois reproduction and family, longevity, risk/safety, and inheritance.” In a similar turn, queer spaces refer to places where queer folk can reinterpret understandings of space as it relates to their desires and the desires of their associated communities.50 Xanadu, as it is depicted in the film, does not fully demonstrate the time and space in the radical way that Halberstam speaks to in their book. This does not negate the fact that Xanadu challenges normative interpretations of time and space in relation to narrative structures. These normative aspects play a huge part in answering why the film was and continues to be so poorly received. Xanadu may not present a queer paradise, but it does effectively disrupt normative understandings of time that creates the foundations for our society, as

Halberstam further argues.51 The film is only a failure in that it does not conform to traditional narrative structures. It succeeds immensely when graded under a set of queer criteria.

50 Judith Halberstam, In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives, (New York: New York University Press, 2005), 6. 51 Ibid, 152. 57

Xanadu embraced all that disco represented in its past while also what it had evolved into by 1980. The film also successfully points out the ludicrous nature of the traditional Hollywood musical for always insisting on the union of straight couples, while still admiring the glamour and spectacle of this genre. The reason that this film is so hard to make sense of is because it is an unapologetic display of affection for Classical

Hollywood that also attempts to provide pleasure for a queer desire in a queer way.

“This Movie Doesn’t Make Sense (To Me)”

This chapter explained how a narrative can be read from multiple perspectives in an attempt to please more than one narrative desire. My point is that an alternative reading of disco films is not an attempt to find hidden details in the films that can offer a queer reading that might be more “correct” than a non-queer reading. Rather, the very presence of disco elements in these films create multiple narratives where one narrative often supersedes the other. Determining which narrative reading maintains the most salience depends on other factors within the text. Understanding why certain narratives supersede others points to the ways in which ideologies such as homophobia deeply impact our cultural understanding of the proper way to read stories. When film reviewers say that a film “didn’t make sense to them,” sometimes this comment reveals a refusal to engage with other forms of desire and subjectivity. To suggest that a correct reading of a film’s narrative must exists stems from a patriarchal, heteronormative, white, bourgeois perspective. When this privileged understanding of narrative is taught and reinforced as the one and only correct way, it invalidates other perspectives and the types of desires that stem from these narratives. Such a position is toxic not only in the realm of film 58 evaluation. Failing to embrace alternative readings of narratives also tends to suggest a failure to empathize with those that lead lives different from our own.

59

Chapter Two: Prom Night and the Deaths of Disco

A point made in the previous chapter that a disco film’s ability to successfully subvert a dominant reading largely came down to other elements within the film.

Xanadu’s queer narrative is able to undermine the dominant narrative in an obvious way because of how a camp aesthetic is used to celebrate and ridicule the Classical

Hollywood musical. That being said, the way that disco is often packaged within the context of a movie musical limits how disco can be utilized in fruitful ways due to the limitations of the genre. This chapter sets out to illustrate how disco’s potential to subvert and aptly confront a dominant reading of a film changes based on the genre of the film.

Specifically, this chapter will focus on disco’s influence over the horror film, Prom

Night, and how the queer sensibilities that disco imparts on the film play a role in the film’s horrific elements. The inclusion of disco in this film also illustrates how horror narratives combined with disco can reveal the threat that queerness poses to heteronormativity. Specifically, the incorporation of disco in Prom Night exposes our culture’s fetishistic fascination with children and the limitations of the family unit’s influence. To help elaborate how disco functions within horror narratives, the film Don’t

Go in the House will also be discussed to a minor extent. Both Prom Night and Don’t Go in the House use disco in similar ways. However, disco plays a more significant role in the plot to Prom Night, hence why this film will be used as a primary example.

My readings of these films will show that disco in the early 1980s is not associated with liberation, but with a threat to the breakdown of American culture and values. The way that disco is presented in these horror films heightens the queerness 60 latent in disco and how this queerness could potentially destroy traditional ways of

American life revolving around children and the family. Prom Night and Don’t Go in the

House both focus on characters who were unable, for one reason or another, to mature into adulthood. The true horror from these films comes not from macabre acts of murder but from a sense of knowing that these acts were engendered from at least one character’s inability to become an adult capable of reproducing children. When disco scenes are apparent in each of these films, this site of queer possibilities only heightens the importance of the Child and how much salience this character holds within our culture.

Disco proposes a space and time where procreation is not the end goal, and that a stage of

“arrested development” might hold a sense of successful longevity. The real reason for disco’s death, then, had little to do with changing music tastes but had everything to do with keeping the heteronormative status quo at bay.

The Makeup of Horror Narratives

It is worth examining two horror films from 1980 that feature prominent moments at a disco because 1980 marks an important transition year for both disco and horror films. As Tim Lawrence notes in his book Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor

1980 promised a burgeoning era of hope that would see disco evolve into a site of

“mutation, convergence, and freedom” that was open to exciting artistic and social possibilities before Reagan took office.52 The formula for horror films changed drastically in 1980 as well. Richard Nowell explains in his essay, “‘There’s More Than One Way to

52 Lawrence, Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor, 7-8. 61

Lose Your Heart’: The American Film Industry, Early Teen Slasher Films, and Female

Youth,” since there was a dwindling audience for horror films in the late 1970s, very few high-budget horror films were being produced.53 Instead, very low-budget films were pumped out quickly by filmmakers from studios with very little influence in hopes that the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) would secure their film and distribute it to a wide audience.54 The MPAA was more aware of what tastes were popular with film goers at the time and therefore could select horror films to release that they believed met these tastes.55 Because these films were made cheaply and quickly, it was also easy for filmmakers to cater their films to current trends—like disco—to increase their chances of a wide release. Horror films started targeting a teenage demographic, specifically teenage girls. as movie trends of the 1970s showed that date night films like Saturday Night Fever reaped the most financial rewards and were the most popular with this demographic. It makes sense then that horror films would inevitably incorporate the popular, youthful trend of disco dancing into their narratives.

Although teenagers were shown to the most lucrative movie-going demographic to market towards, horror movies were catered to teenage girls specifically so that they would be inclined to bring their assumed male partners with them for date night.56

Targeting towards teenage girls meant positioning teenage girls or young women as

53 Richard Nowell, “‘There’s More Than One Way to Lose Your Heart’: The American Film Industry, Early Teen Slasher Films, and Female Youth,” Cinema Journal 51, no. 1 (2011): 128. 54 Ibid, 120. 55 Ibid, 119. 56 Ibid, 120-121. 62 passive protagonists of many horror films.57 This move also followed the success of other female-led hits such as Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976) and Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979).

Trailers for these films would showcase female characters engaged in acts that were intended to fascinate the target demographic. Female characters would be shown primping themselves for a date or bonding with others in a group setting. Also, the relationship that these characters had to traditional female roles would be made explicit.

For example, Jamie Lee Curtis’ character in Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978) is a babysitter, a role that could act as a prelude to that of a child-rearing mother.58 By having female characters appeal to traditional gender conventions, horror films in the early

1980s promoted a traditional, heteronormative ideology. The fact that young women were likely seeing these movies with their male partners, who they could latch onto for protection during intense scenes, meant that horror films facilitated heterosexual intimacy both within and outside of the world of the film.59 Because the relationship between horror, teen films, and female youth proved to be so lucrative, cashing in on all of these factors and their many intersections was a move that the film industry “could ignore only at its peril.”60 Despite the dominant ideology at the heart of all of these horror films, the inclusion of the popular fad of disco asks for an investigation of the queer reading.

57 A great deal of research has been conducted regarding female protagonists in horror films and their relationship to female spectators. This work is incredibly vital when understanding the history of horror films. Unfortunately, the scope of this thesis is unable to properly incorporate this research. Ideally, an expanded version of this thesis would focus on a feminist understanding of horror narratives in relation to disco instead of just focusing on horror narratives. 58 Ibid, 129. 59 Ibid, 121. 60 Ibid, 139. 63

The added element of horror makes queerness in Prom Night and Don’t Go in the

House especially potent and harder to ignore. This is due to the structure of horror narratives in general. Roger B. Salomon breaks down the characteristics of the horror narrative in his book, The Mazes of the Serpent: An Anatomy of Horror Narrative.

According to Salomon, Horror narratives always involve protagonists transitioning across a threshold from one world into another.61 The world from which they start from is coded as rational.62 To determine what constitutes as “rational” within the narrative, historically contextualizing the story is imperative.63 In the case of Prom Night, the foundation for the rational world sits upon heteronormative ideologies. When protagonists transition from the rational zone to the irrational zone, the terror comes from the impossibility of this irrational zone that challenges the stability of the rational zone.64 If heteronormativity structures the rational zone within the narrative, than the supposed safety of this zone can only be understood if the terror of the second zone is marked by queerness and not just simply scrupulous individuals with ghastly weapons and agendas.

It is not so much that the irrational zone represents a polar opposite to the rational zone. As Salomon explains, this second zone is a “mirror space” that reflects something pre-existing within the rational world.65 As protagonists in horror narratives continue their journey into the irrational zone, they feel more and more alienated, and “alienation

61 Roger B. Salomon, Mazes of the Serpent: An Anatomy of a Horror Narrative (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002), 9. 62 Ibid, 10. 63 Ibid, 12. 64 Ibid, 8. 65 Ibid, 14. 64 and increasing horror go hand in hand.”66 I would extend this comment from Salomon to argue that it is this realization of alienation that is the primary source of terror in horror narratives, as opposed to the journey itself. If one can only be understood by acknowledging the other, then the alienation experienced in the irrational zone always had potential in the rational world. The crossing of thresholds reveals that this potential for alienation and undoing always existed and that the idea that they two worlds exists separately of each other is a fallacy. Queerness always threatens to undo the propriety of heteronormativity, especially in these early disco films. The addition of horror to these types of films reveals that disco not only imbues the narrative with queer sensibilities, but exposes how disco might actively undo the heteronormativity that is heavily utilized within these horror films from the early 1980s. Specifically, disco threatens the assumption within heteronormative ideology that procreation and children are the only ways in which temporality and defining oneself can be structured. This is especially true in that Prom Night focuses on a teenager avenging the accidental child death of his twin sister, and Don’t Go in the House focuses on a young man that was abused as a child

Disco as an Irrational Zone

Prom Night begins with a small group of children playing in a dilapidated building. The game that they are playing is a macabre version of hide-and-seek, where they chase each other around screaming “the killers are coming!” A young girl their age tries to join them, but the other children do not readily accept her into their friend group.

66 Ibid, 12. 65

The group gangs up on the girl and chase her to the second story of the building. As they corner her against a window, the girl is accidentally pushed outside of the building and falls to her death. Instead of alerting an authority figure, the kids vow to keep the accident to themselves to avoid getting in trouble. The story then jumps six years into the future where the group of children have grown into young adults and are preparing to celebrate their senior prom. Prom night—which is disco themed, complete with an LED light dance floor—coincides with the anniversary of the young girl’s death. Over the course of the day and night, the teenagers are stalked by a killer in a black ski mask who kills them off around the school, one by one. At the end of the film, the killer is revealed to be the twin brother of the murdered child.

Director Paul Lynch knew that centering his film on prom night would rightly appeal to young women, who he claimed would fondly remember their prom night as they would their wedding day.67 It is obvious to see how the tradition of prom reinstates heteronormative courtship rituals and in many ways is a glamorous precursor to marriage.

The older sister of the murdered child, Kim (Jamie Lee Curtis), who is also the film’s main protagonist, is even awarded the title of prom queen. Although the film’s killer is motivated by his desire for revenge, it can be argued that he is avenging his sister not so much out of love, but because she will never have the chance to mature, date, and procreate, let alone be crowned prom queen like their sister. Suggesting this motivation is

67 Nowell, 134. 66 not a reach, per se, given our culture’s motivation in general to protect political interests centered on ensuring futurity.

Lee Edelman’s book, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, speaks directly to the threat that queerness poses to the idea of reproductive futurity embedded in discourses surrounding the Child68. Part of his main contention is that the negative aspects of queerness, in a political sense, should be embraced. In other words, queer politics should move away from simply wanting to be incorporated into society, and instead should champion the radical possibilities offered by everything that makes queerness so oppositional to heteronormativity. Edelman centers his argument around the concept of the Child because “queerness names the side of those ‘not fighting for children,’ the side outside the consensus by which all politics confirms the absolute value of reproductive futurism.”69 The presence of children or child-like characters in disco films visually creates a clear tension between queerness and what queerness opposes.

Disco in these films is the site of true horror in these movies because he disco space comes to be associated with other spaces of futurity, such as the school itself, which also become sites of horror. This is because the school is traditionally is represented as a space where rituals of academic and sexual often occur. Because of the way the disco-themed prom is situated within this space, it becomes a visual representation for how heteronormative spaces can subjugate alternative spaces.

68 Edelman refers to the “Child” with a capital “c,” which is why this capitalization is present in this writing. 69 Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 3. 67

By using the term “reproductive futurism,” Edelman is referring to political motivations that “impose an ideological limit on political discourse as such, preserving in the process the absolute privilege of heteronormativity by rendering unthinkable, by casting outside the political domain, the possibility of a queer resistance to this organizing principle of communal relations.”70 Reproductive futurism uses rhetoric centered on preserving the Child and qualities associated with the Child, like innocence and optimism. A collective sense of progression is defined by this rhetoric in that investing in the Child born out of a heterosexual union proposes a future better than the present day. Hence why Edelman heavily incorporates Freud’s concept of the death drive to illustrate our collective relationship to the Child. If our own lifetime is plagued with uncertainty, then by investing in the Child we are constantly investing in a future that might someday bring about political stasis. Of course, such a moment of closure is impossible according to Freud. Thus, our political landscape, from the right and left alike, is centered on a false notion of the Child that is actually invested on maintaining heteronormativity. Since our sense of self as political subjects rests on this fallacy of what the Child represents, queer theory, then offers new interpretations of the political subject since queerness “can never define an identity; it can only ever disturb one.”71 As explained in the introduction, disco presented a space of transformation of the subject in the ways that it encouraged participants to interact within the space. Disco, then, is an amazing example of a site where one’s identity and notions of self can be disturbed.

70 Ibid, 2. 71 Ibid, 17. 68

If disco is the irrational, mirror space to heteronormativity, then disco in these films can therefore be seen as a space of horror within the narrative, especially given how it is physically embedded within the academic institution. Seeing teenagers dance within this space that can be understood as horrific emphasizes the radical queer potential as outlined by Dyer and Lawrence. Not only do these films make this threat obvious, despite their attempts to promote heteronormative courtship rituals, but they also expose our culture’s seriously fetishistic obsession with Children.

The first time that we see the disco prom in Prom Night, it is clearly marked as a space for teenagers to assert their dominance as heterosexual subjects. Before showing the prom, the film leads up to the event with a sequence of shots featuring empty hallways of the high school where the prom is hosted. Disconcerting music plays as the camera pans quickly over dark, vacant hallways and classrooms. These shots foreshadow the places in the film where the killer will hunt his victims and also recall back to the abandoned building where the Child was killed. The contrast between the empty hallway and lively gymnasium is meant to demonstrate spaces that are marked as either safe or not safe. Of course, if disco is the real site of terror in the film, then attempting to mark safe and unsafe spaces is futile and it suggests that there is no such thing as a ‘safe space’ in a heteronormative world. An overhead shot of a crowd of dancing teenagers in a dimly lit gymnasium looks almost indistinguishable from a shot of the disco club in Fever. A series of shots focus on close-up of heterosexual couples kissing and nuzzling one another. Medium close-ups are employed to focus on couples dancing with one another.

In one shot, a pan is used to show an entire line of nothing but couples. This sequence of 69 shots emphasizes that the focus of the prom is on courtship and dating. There are rarely any shots of dancers in groups. Of course, there are no homosexual couples at the prom.

The only time individuals are the point of focus is when they are explicitly lonely and dateless.

A tracking shot moves in on Kim and her date Nick (Casey Stevens) as they enter the prom. The expression of Kim’s face is one of awe and enchantment. Being the film’s protagonist, her reaction to the prom is meant to be a reaction shared by the film’s female audiences. Though there are plenty of moments in the film that are clearly meant to appeal to female viewers, there are just as many moments that cater to the male gaze as well. A close-up shot of an attractive blond woman putting on makeup is followed by a tilt traveling down her body, ending up on her behind as she walks away in a form-fitting outfit. A tilt back up reveals two men leaning against the wall who make eye-contact with the woman, a sense of knowing on their faces. The moment is brief and does not feature any of the film’s principle characters, but such a moment emphasizes the many ways in which the film foregrounds a heterosexual desire to date and mate at the prom.

The next scene at the prom focuses on Kim dancing with her father (Leslie

Nielsen), who is also the principal of her high school. As they are dancing, Kim’s father explains that he and her mother were late to the prom because Kim’s mother was having a hard time coping with the anniversary of her sister’s death. A shot within this sequence focusing on the mother shows her in a black dress with a forlorn, grief stricken look on her face. This moment reminds the audience that the memory of a child’s untimely death lingers over the otherwise happy atmosphere of the prom. The death of Child who would 70 never be able to engage in courtship and mating rituals taints the event. Edelman describes the reasoning behind this attitude:

If, however, there is no baby and, in consequence, no future, then the blame must

fall on the fatal lure of sterile, narcissistic enjoyments understood as inherently

destructive of meaning and therefore as responsible for the undoing of social

organization, collective reality, and, inevitably, life itself.72

This description is used specifically in reference to the plot of the film, Children of Men

(Alfonso Cuarón, 2006) but also aptly describes the tone at the prom in Prom Night.

Kim leaves her father on the dance floor upon seeing her rival appear at the prom with a date. Immediately, Kim pulls Nick out onto the dance floor to, “show her what we can do.” Kim and Nick proceed to dance in a choreographed number in the middle of the dance floor. The crowd of dancers create a circle around the couple, cheering them on as they dance. In many ways, the moment once more harkens back to Fever, in particular the competitive moments of the film where dancing is used not as a means of self- expression and personal discovery, but as a tactic to instate one’s dominance. This move on Kim and Nick’s part—who had previously been revealed to be the prom’s queen and king—is petty and only serves to fuel teenage drama. However, the lingering memory of the dead child permeates the mood of the dance, especially considering that the death motivates the horror that has yet to come. All of these rhetorical moves both reinforce

72 Ibid, 13. 71 heteronormativity and the heterosexual obsession with children to the point where adult activities feel narcissistic and needless if even one Child is unable to fully enjoy them.

Despite the film’s best efforts to reaffirm heteronormativity, the presence of disco in the film completely undermines these efforts. Whereas the element of disco opened itself up to alternate interpretations in Roller Boogie and Xanadu, within the context of a horror film queerness and its opposition to reproductive futurism is the real site of terror that confounds the logic of heteronormativity. At the end of the film, Kim and Nick prepare to be crowned queen and king. A bully and his friends knock-out Nick and the bully takes his place in a teenage revenge set-up reminiscent of Carrie. A crowd gathers around the gymnasium stage as coronation music starts playing. A walkway leads from the stage and is lined with flashing bulbs. The light from the bulbs is blinding an obnoxious. The masked killer stands behind the bully and decapitates him, his head rolling onto the walkway. In the process of decapitation, the killer breaks some electrical equipment, causing the lighting and sounds systems to go haywire. A cacophony of bright lights blinks on and off and multiple music tracks play at once. The scene is overwhelming and visceral; the disorientating nature of these visual elements break down the visual aspects of disco, forcing the crowd and the film and the film’s audience to position themselves physically within the space as their senses are attacked. A close-up of the decapitated head is juxtaposed with the flashing lights and sounds. This moment links the dead teenager, and the killer’s motivation for avenging his dead sister to the disco scene. As the crowd realizes what image beholds them, they start to frantically run out of the gymnasium. A shot continues to focus on the head and begins revolving around the 72 horrific image. The crowd of people running and screaming can be seen in the background, but they are out of focus. The initially surface-level reading of this moment would suggest that the decapitated head is the most horrific element. But upon considering how the head relates to the disco scene and how disco disturbs heteronormative reality, the true horror of the scene rises up to the top, subsuming the initial, more banal interpretation.

Don’t Go in the House does not incorporate disco to the same extent that Prom

Night does. It also does not focus on young adults or children but is preoccupied by the protagonist’s trauma that was inflicted upon him as a child. However, applying how disco works to create a site of horror within Prom Night helps make sense of the only scene in

Don’t Go in the House that does take place at a disco, and how this moment makes sense within the narrative as a whole. Donny (Dan Grimaldi) works at a factory and lives at home with his elderly mother. He comes home from work one evening to find that his mother has passed away in her room, to which he responds by jumping on his bed and playing loud music because she can no longer tell him what to do. It is revealed through flashbacks that Donny was abused by his mother as a young child. She would tell him that he was a bad son and proceed to hold his forearms over an open flame on a stove.

This scarred Donny’s arms and is presented as the psychological motivation for his killings. The abuse Donny suffered is also presented as the reason why he is trapped in a state of arrested development where he has not fully matured as an adult. This is reinforced by his childlike response to his mother’s death and the fearful relationship he has with her. 73

Donny keeps his mother’s corpse in a spare room. In another room, he builds an incinerator where he burns young women alive after kidnapping them across the city. He keeps the charred remains of his victim in the same room as his mother’s corpse. The film makes it clear that Donny has a complicated relationship with his mother and women in general, and in some ways paints him as a sympathetic killer. Portraying the killer as sympathetic relates back to the killer in Prom Night, who is also shown in an understanding light as a young man who is unable to properly mourn the loss of his sister.

Both killers are represented in ways that would likely appeal to female audiences that were each films’ target audience.

The climax of Don’t Go in the House takes place at a disco. Donny’s coworker invites him out to a local discotheque for a double date. Donny agrees to come along despite feeling unwell and conflicted about his recent murders. Before arriving at the disco, Donny goes to a clothing store to buy the ‘right’ outfit for the club. Disco music can be heard playing in the store which sells high-end outfits. Donny asks the store clerk to help him pick out an outfit to which the clerk picks out a shirt and says, “this is what they’re all wearing.” This scene at the store emphasizes the ways in which disco had become homogenized by the early 1980s. Wearing a certain style of clothing became more important than it had been in the early 1970s, pointing to acts of gatekeeping instituted by club owners who wanted to filter in a certain type of clientele. The discotheque presented in Don’t Go in the House represents a corporatized disco totally foreign to what it was meant to be originally in the early days. 74

What’s also interesting about this scene is that the store clerk is coded as gay from his limp hand gesture to his snide remarks about what clothing trends are either in or out of style. This clerk acts a mediator for Donny between the outside world and the world of the disco. In other words, this clerk personifies the mediation that would always take place whenever an outsider would attempt to engage in the disco space. As has been noted before throughout this thesis, many heterosexual attendees of discos would often act as voyeurs to the event instead of active participants. Such a mediation would not be necessary unless disco, in its structure, was truly opposed to the rational world of heterosexuals.

In the next scene, Donny arrives at the disco in his new outfit. Other partygoers notice his ensemble and seem to embrace Donny among their company by giving him compliments on his outfits. For a brief moment, Donny appears to be succeeding at heterosexuality by wearing the right outfit to a courtship zone for heterosexuals. Upon meeting his co-worker and their dates, Donny’s date urges him to dance with her, and in doing so tugs his arms over a candle at one of the tables. This triggers Donny, causing him to throw the candle at the young woman’s head. Donny is then chased by a group of people back to his place, where he tries to make one last attempt to burn alive two young women. The film ends with Donny’s house exploding in a burst of flames. In the final scene, a little boy watches TV which is reporting on Donny’s murders. The boy’s mother yells at him to turn off the television. When he ignores her, she begins abusing him, insinuating that the cycle of mothers abusing their sons will continue, breeding more traumatized killers like Donny who are unable to become successful, heterosexual adults. 75

In each of these films, the disco space is represented as a purely heterosexual space, intended for heterosexual couples and courtship rituals. Various horrific acts take place at the disco, or otherwise serve an important role in the films’ plot. Because scenes of intense violence are juxtaposed with images of disco, the queer sensibility provided by disco highlights the terror, or irrationality, of these supposedly benign courtship rituals.

Namely, that we as a culture are obsessed with heterosexual courtship to the end that children are created by the heterosexual unions. Our cultural obsession and fetishization of children are also highlighted in these films, as the killers in both Prom Night and Don’t

Go in the House are motivated to compensate for another person’s inability to engage in these spaces and ultimately procreation. Also, these films highlight the dangers of being stuck in permanent immaturity—like the murdered child or Donny’s inability to date women, find a partner, and ‘grow up’ to start a family of his own.

The merging of early 1980s horror films with disco created texts where the dominant narrative was not only at odds with a queer reading, but was ultimately threatened by it. The queer reading of these two films further reveals the ways in which our culture is homophobic to the extent that these films reveal that the disco is a scary place precisely because it is proof of alternate ways of living that are not centered around procreating, children and family. Such a phenomenon and all that it threatened obviously had to die.

A Brief History of Disco Continued: 1980-1983

Citing 1979 as the official year of disco’s demise in Comiskey Park endorses a certain interpretation of disco that is both homophobic and not entirely accurate. The 76 evolution of both disco music and the disco scene continued into the early 1980s within prominent urban centers, especially New York City. Lawrence details the evolution of disco and party culture and cites the period of 1980 to 1983 as a peak moment in history where many advancements were made to the sound of party music. He writes that: “if the

1970s reinvented the parameters of party culture, then the early 1980s scaled new levels of socio-sonic possibility.”73 Again, it should be reiterated that the thrust of disco’s effectiveness as a potentially transformative space lay within its audible qualities as opposed to its visual aesthetic, as the movies would lead us to believe.

What made the early 1980s a fantastic and optimistic moment in New York’s history was that diverse artists from various subcultures united under a common interest to create non-conformist works of art. This led to, as Lawrence describes it, “the most influential (cultural renaissance) in (New York City’s), and perhaps any city’s history.”

When this renaissance emerged, it challenged the stereotype that disco and party culture at large was just a hedonistic and childish waste of time and in fact had real social, cultural, and economic potential.74 Notions such as “convergence” and “synergy” best describe this collaborative and community-focused moment in time. This spirit of collaboration began to erode after 1983 and has yet to be truly revived. The decline of this specific renaissance period parallels the overall closing of opportunities that disco suggested nationwide. Reagan ushered in an era where conservative politics dominated every cultural facet. Art forms and leisure activities intrinsically connected to anything

73 Lawrence, Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor, 459. 74 Ibid, xiii. 77 that lay outside these right wing, conservative values—like collaborative spaces for marginalized groups—were doomed to break away over the course of the 1980s.

Apart from the political landscape of the 1980s, the commodification of the disco scene also contributed to its eventual demise. Lawrence cites three reasons for this closure: the rise of discos catering to a specific group of people, establishing an in- group,out-group mentality by turning discos into an elitist space, and finally the re- branding of disco as a site for heterosexual courtship rituals that would appeal to mainstream audiences.

David Mancuso’s Loft set a precedence for truly inclusive disco spaces. The

1980s witnessed the shuttering of many of these spaces, and thus also the breakup of this notion of cultural inclusiveness that was at the heart of the disco ethos. Certain types of clubs started popping up in New York that focused on creating an exclusive clientele, specifically a white, gay community. It is because of these types of clubs that disco culture has come to be misunderstood as solely connected to this group of people as opposed to a diverse array of participants. In creating clubs focused on catering to a particular identity, diversity in all forms began disappearing at discos in New York, which further solidified misconceptions of who did and who did not participate in disco culture.75 Also, as elite discotheques became more and more popular, a certain hedonistic, decadent vision of disco would come to sublimate all possible interpretations of disco.

Studio 54 is perhaps the most infamous disco club of all time. Though it bore some

75 Lawrence, “Disco and the Queering of the Dance Floor,” 240. 78 resemblances to the Loft, Studio 54 “instituted a competitive and hierarchical entrance policy” that ultimately symbolized a non-inclusive, non-queer, and capitalist form of disco that would forever capture the cultural imagination.

As for successfully re-branding and effectively sterilizing disco, Saturday Night

Fever nearly sing-handedly accomplished this goal. Because the movie and its soundtrack became mega successful, disco music created in a similar vein were produced in mass quantities, completely over saturating the music market. The homophobic backlash over disco as displayed in 1979 was spurn in part over opposing tastes in music. However, the economic recession at the time coincided with disco’s increasing presence. The marginalized groups associated with disco were viewed as the benefactors of the liberal attitudes of the late 1960s and 1970s that were largely blamed for the recession.76 Thus, disco became symbolically linked to both a threat to heteronormative sexuality as well as economic prosperity. Efforts to minimize the unsavory components proved ineffective because the intrinsic queerness of disco could never be fully sublimated, as chapter one demonstrated. Just like the narratives of Roller Boogie and Xanadu, the historical narrative of disco is also founded on the tensions between two accurate, yet different, readings of disco. And just like these two films, the dominant reading of disco that states that its death culminated in 1979 supersedes and effectively erases the 1983 death of disco and the events surrounding this history.

76 Ibid, 241-242. 79

No Future for Disco Films

Disco’s popularity coincided with the rise of the slasher horror film of the 1980s, hence why some of these films refer to this fad within their stories. Most films that featured disco to a large extent were movie musicals since this genre made it easy to seamlessly incorporate disco popular songs. Exploring the horror films from this time period that also incorporated this fad provides unique insight into how the conventions of different genres can play up certain aspects of disco’s queer sensibilities. Ideally, incorporating disco in film would mean promoting the ideals connected to disco such as breaking down heteronormative barriers and creating healthy environments for exploring one’s sexuality. Had disco maintained its popularity for a longer period of time, horror films might have evolved into the perfect vehicle for exploring our culture’s heteronormative persuasions. Unfortunately, as disco died, its incorporation into popular film genres became less and less frequent. Disco largey exists as an affect in modern times. The next chapter will illustrate how disco can be understood affectively, especially when it is used in such a way within a text that it bears little to no influence on the text’s story.

It can be odd and somewhat jarring to see disco incorporated into horror films.

The LED lights and thumping music do not typically match the tone of the rest of the film. However, for some homophobes, nothing is scarier than a space that might reveal their own queer desires and that others around them may not be as straight as they appear. 80

Chapter Three: The Affect of Disco

Images of disco continue to proliferate in films, television shows, and other forms of media in the modern age. Sometimes such references are made very quickly, especially in period pieces that take place in the 1970s. The instantly recognizable visual markers of disco are often used as a shorthand for the decade, so much so that its overuse is quite the cliché. Previous chapters have argued that even when it gets taken up for other uses, disco maintains a queer sensibility that affects how the narrative can be read.

However, since disco in modern times is more commonly used as a form of quick, nostalgic shorthand, the modern-day effect of disco in narrative is usually never strong.

Disco functions as an aesthetic mode when it is used in such a flippant way.

An example of this nonchalant usage can be seen in the film Boogie Nights (Paul

Thomas Anderson, 1997). Despite the film title’s reference to the disco craze, very few scenes actually take place at a disco. The film focuses on the rise and fall of a 1970s porn star, Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg), and most of the film’s scenes take place within domestic spaces where porn scenes are shot. Many of the most thematically intense moments take place within domestic spaces as well, such as a moment where Dirk and his co-workers attempt to scam a drug dealer by selling him counterfeit cocaine in the drug dealer’s home. Scenes at the disco happen in quickly edited montage sequences during moments where Dirk is off duty. It is made clear that the disco is a space for leisurely activity void of sexual exploration.

To juxtapose heterosexual sex work with the domestic space and leisure time of the disco scene suggests that disco is viewed very differently in the late 1990s than it had 81 been in the late 1970s. This differentiation might positively suggest that the discotheque in the film might be a safe haven from exploited heterosexual love making if not for the fact that the only clearly identifiable gay man in the film is so clearly Othered. Scotty

(Philip Seymour Hoffman), who is a woefully pathetic character with a sad demeanor and love-handles, clumsily pines after the enigmatic and fit Diggler with no success. This character is explicitly outed when he is first introduced in the film at a swanky party at porn director Jack Horner’s (Burt Reynolds) house. The camera cuts to a POV shot from

Scotty’s perspective as an iris forms around Diggler, surrounded by admirers. No other character is given this treatment that spells out their sexual orientation for the audience.

This moment highlights Scotty’s queerness in such a concrete way that any sexual fluidity between any of the other characters is immediately closed off. Needless to say,

Scotty is never seen enjoying the disco with his co-workers. During a montage sequence detailing Dirk’s rise to stardom, a brief shot in this montage focuses on him performing a stereotypical disco dance move where he points his fingers back and forth from the ceiling to the floor. The camera quickly zooms in on his elated face clearly enjoying the frenzied energy of the dance. Presumably straight participants perform this dance in unison; no one is using the space for self-exploration. Such synchronicity provides one of the most unsettling uses of disco in any film, as if they are all controlled by a hive mind humming away to the sound of conformity.

Nothing significant to the narrative happens on the disco floor. This stands in stark contrast to the ways in which disco played an important setting in the films previously described in this thesis. Even Don’t Go in the House’s use of the disco club 82 for one scene incorporates disco into a significant moment in the film. It can thus be concluded that disco, when referenced in such a slap-dash fashion, represents an empty aesthetic rather than a significant actant within the narrative. This chapter will explore the ways in which disco as an aesthetic mode can be thought of in modern times. Disco’s queer sensibility is still maintained in this mode, but it has little to no influence over the narrative in comparison to when the site of the disco plays a larger role in a story. To explore this aesthetic mode, three more films along with Boogie Nights will be analyzed:

Muriel’s Wedding, Mamma Mia!, and Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. These films were chosen because they all heavily rely on the music of the band, ABBA, whose music is largely associated with the late 1970s and disco. Just like the fleeting scenes of the disco in Boogie Nights, ABBA’s music and other iconic disco tracks are also used as shorthand for the decade. Muriel’s Wedding and the Mamma Mia! films incorporate

ABBA for slightly different purposes, yet ultimately rely on ABBA and disco’s aesthetic modes to add a sense of repentance within their stories. ABBA’s affective qualities also compensate for a lack of meaningful labor production within these films to different extents.

Disco as a Zany Affect

This thesis has frequently mentioned the connection between disco’s visual properties and the hedonism associated with the 1970s. Part of the reason that the decade is seen as so sinfully self-indulgent is because of the rise of mainstream pornography as well as an increase in sexually-laden content among the public sphere in general. Dirk

Diggler comes of age in the adult entertainment industry during the Golden Age of porn 83 where films like Deep Throat (Gerard Damiano, 1972) and The Devil in Miss Jones

(Gerard Damiano, 1973) experienced mainstream success during the majority of the

1970s, as explained by Susanna Paasonen and Laura Saarenmaa in their essay, “The

Golden Age of Porn: Nostalgia and History in Cinema.”77 As Diggler grows into a star in his own right from the late 1970s into the 1980s, the world around him changes as pornography and other titillating capstones of the 1970s were fought off by the Reagan and later Bush administrations in the 1980s and early 1990s.78 None of the characters in the film escape the misery of the 1980s that is marked as more frigid and conservative, hence the reason why the porn industry had to become so much more exuberant and raw in content. In the later half of the film, Jack Horner shoots a 1980s style pornographic film in his hot tub, where the actress’ breasts are markedly larger and makeup much more harsh than on the actresses Horner worked with in the 1970s. Horner also starts to produce more rough and raw content, including taking the actress known as “Rollergirl”

(Heather Graham) out for a ride in limousine with the intent of recording her having sexual encounters with strangers picked off of the street instead of another porn actor.

Both scenes depict a forlorn Horner who feels that his craft has been cheapened by the work that he must do in order to survive in the changed industry. Other primary characters within the film are also depicted as having their lives take a down-ward, desperate turn as the reality of the new decade solidifies.

77 Susanna Paasonen and Laura Saarenmaa, “The Golden Age of Porn: History and Nostalgia in Cinema,” in Pornification: Sex and Sexuality in Media Culture, ed. Kaarina Nikunen, Susanna Paasonen, and Laura Saarenmaa (Oxford: Berg, 2007), 23. 78 Robert C. Sickels, “1970s Disco Daze: Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights and the Last Golden Age of Irresponsibility,” Journal of Popular Culture 35, no. 4 (2002): 50. 84

Some film critics read Boogie Nights as a morality tale where those within the porn industry must reconcile with their sins and grow-up from the innocent 1970s into the more stern, harsh reality of the 1980s. Another reading of the film by Robert C. Sickels suggests that Anderson avoids a simplistic morality tale by demonstrating how the cast of characters are merely victims of the times:

Rather than presenting the porn industry as exploitative and tawdry, [Anderson]

presents it as a world populated by people with perhaps more than their fair share

of problems who still manage to peacefully coexist in an alternative version of the

traditional nuclear family. It’s not until the advent of the 1980s business climate

that their insular world begins to fall apart.79

Even still, this reading is too simple, as Sickels review largely states that although the film has nuance when dealing with 1970s nostalgia, it fails to answer why it matters that the 1980s are depicted as so much colder than the decade prior and how such representations fuel our cultural perceptions of each decade.

Stating that the characters lack autonomy and are at the mercy of their socio- political climate suggests a nihilistic reading, but a sort of nihilism that only matters to a certain group of people. The sexual revolution and the overall relaxed views on sexuality during the 1970s stem from a very patriarchal view of the decade that does not fully consider the multitudes of sexual freedoms experienced by different types of people. By refusing to fully acknowledge how more than one subjectivity influenced the decade, a

79 Ibid, 55-56. 85 master narrative persists that the sexual revolution catered to one type of desire and one desire only. We see this in how Boogie Nights recreates the taste of this era by foregrounding any pleasures from this time period within the perspective of a young man.

Other characters who are not white or male or straight completely lack autonomy; it is not even that they are victims of the times, for the film refuses to acknowledge them as people at all. Overall, Boogie Nights paints a wholly anti-sex worker, homophobic narrative that falls on clichés.

This trend in presenting the 1970s as a care-free, almost naive decade in comparison to the 1980s is a rampant misrepresentation. Sickels even concludes his essay on Boogie Nights with the statement, “in many ways, the 1970s do seem like they were the last golden age of irresponsibility.”80 Paasonen and Saarenmaa actively work against this type of reading in their study on pornographic films and how 1970s pornography culture is reinterpreted by modern filmmakers. They argue they branding a particular decade around general clichés such as hedonism and youthful self-indulgence “works to mask the diversity of cultural trends and forces” during that decade.81 In other words, the complexity of social and political factors that shaped the decade are sterilized in favor of a sexier master narrative that filmmakers especially enjoy retelling.

One aspect that becomes removed from modern discussion is the sexual freedom offered in the 1970s that seemed particularly blissful before the AIDS crisis. Nostalgic representations of this era, fully aware of this historical context, create temporal distance

80 Ibid, 60. 81 Paasonen and Laura Saarenmaa, 26. 86 between these issues regarding sexual expression and our modern times to the effect that unpacking these issues is not necessary.82 It has become so common to associate the

1970s with “rise of AIDS, cocaine, violence” and greed, and to depict the 1980s as a savior from this period of overindulgence, that disco becomes the visual bridge between these two stereotypes. References to disco, then, must do a double work: it must represent the sexual freedom of the 1970s while retroactively repenting these sins as indicated by the ‘grown-up’ agenda of the 1980s. This double work is the foundation for disco’s modern affective applications.

Studying a thing’s affective properties, in some sense, means attempting to organize its affections. Affect is sometimes used interchangeably to describe a thing’s emotional appeal but affect and emotion are not the same thing. Emotions describe a private experience whereas affect refers to an experience felt by a collective and is thus shaped by social structures. Disco’s affective properties stem from a society’s interpretation and understanding of not only disco as a phenomenon, but of how disco is situated between the 1970s and the 1980s. More broadly, disco’s affective properties are also shaped around our culture’s attitudes towards sexuality and associations made between promiscuity and youthful innocence.

Interpreting disco’s affective properties helps make sense of moments where disco is insignificantly incorporated into a text. The previous films in this thesis have used disco elements within the plot to a significant extent. But how can we make sense of

82 Ibid, 27 87 jokey references to mirror balls, finger-pointing, and leisure suits? When this iconography is used as a quick gag to be forgotten again moments later, how do we interpret this gag’s effect within the text? Such inconsequential references to disco dancing in a facetious fashion are abundant in popular culture. One such example can be seen in the 1991 animated television special, Garfield Gets a Life (John Sparey), starring the famous fat, orange cat of comic-strip fame. In one scene, Garfield joins his hapless owner, Jon, for a night out on the town. They arrive at a club known as the “Ticky-Tacky

Club,” where Jon attempts to woo a potential partner with his dancing prowess. A running gag in the comics is that Jon is consistently bad at attracting dates due to his geeky demeanor. This character trait manifests on the dance floor in a montage sequence where Jon participates in a wide variety of goofy-looking dance moves, including moves that are clearly linked to disco dancing such as pointing his fingers and gyrating his hips.

There are close-up shots of other patrons clearly annoyed by his exuberant style of dancing. As Jon loses himself and his potential partner to his raucous dancing, he suddenly wakes up from his spell to find that the club is deserted, and the music has stopped playing. He ends his routine in a pose identical to the pose John Travolta uses in promotional materials for Saturday Night Fever (Figure 1 and Figure 2). An extreme- long shot reveals Jon standing alone in the middle of the dance floor while an off-screen voice yells, “Hey Jerk! Disco is Dead!” “What!” Jon replies, “When?” He walks out of the frame, visibly discouraged, as a sad trumpet noise signals his defeat. This scene lasts for about two minutes and plays no significant role in the plot other than to further illustrate how ineffective Jon is at dating. 88

Figure 1. The character Jon Arbuckle posing in Garfield Gets a Life.83

Figure 2. Film Poster for Saturday Night Fever, featuring John Travolta and Karen Gorney.84

83 Kobe E. Blanchette, “Garfield Gets a Life (1991 TV Special Episode),” YouTube Video, 22:29, April 26, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfX5nspEKiM 84 “Saturday Night Fever,” Wikipedia, last modified July 22, 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_Fever 89

A queer sensibility can still be inferred from these moments as this thesis has demonstrated—unfortunately, in this case, one that situates Jon’s social awkwardness as a failure of his ability to perform heterosexual courtship rituals successfully. However, since these moments are so brief and have little impact on the plot, it does not easily accommodate a queer reading of the narrative that was necessary in films like Roller

Boogie and Prom Night. A singular Garfield cartoon would not benefit from a queer intervention unless there were more than one instance where disco was referenced. That being said, such moments do deserve a proper analysis when analyzing disco’s influence over narrative as a whole since they recur frequently enough across films of the time as to mark a clear cultural reference point. An investigation regarding disco’s affective qualities allows us to make sense of these otherwise insignificant incorporations of disco without disregarding them completely.

The specificity of context is crucial to determine a thing’s affective qualities, as

Eugenie Brinkema outlines in her book, The Forms of the Affects. She argues that within the humanities, affect theory is employed in order to make sense of something theoretically when no other form of inquiry seems to adequately analyze the thing.85

Unearthing a thing’s affective properties can produce boring results that do not advance our cultural understanding of what that thing represents. Brinkema’s advice on fixing this issue is to resist an understanding of affect as having an obvious answer.86 As a noteworthy example, she unpacks the affect of the tear on Marion’s face after her murder

85 Eugenie Brinkema, The Forms of the Affects, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014), 27. 86 Ibid, 4. 90 in the shower scene in Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960). Brinkema traces the history of the affect of the tear in the humanities to demonstrate that nothing has an ‘obvious’ affective quality. Context and form are crucial to understanding how a thing works affectively within a text. Specificity most fruitfully articulates a thing’s affective properties; a thing’s perceived affect should not necessarily explain its context. This thesis, up to this point, has provided adequate context for disco and its inherent queer sensibilities. Such context lays the proper foundation for beginning to outline disco’s affective applications.

One such starting point can be to think of disco’s affect as zany according to

Sianne Ngai’s definition of the word. Her book, Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute,

Interesting, analyzes these three categories and how they speak to very specific post- modern practices relating to production, circulation, and consumption. The category of

“zany” best describes disco’s affective properties in the way that this affect revolves around the concept of play as a form of labor production. Disco, as a leisure activity, is most certainly a style of play. That being said, Ngai’s description of the zany does not perfectly describe disco’s affect. For her, a zany character is often tasked to perform multiple types of labor positions simultaneously.87 An example she uses to explain the zany character is Lucy Ricardo from the 1950s sitcom, I Love Lucy. Lucy is a housewife with ambitions of becoming a celebrity. From episode to episode, the character is seen performing a variety of jobs requiring different types of labor. Much of the usefulness of

87 Sianne Ngai, Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, and Interesting, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012), 210. 91 her zany personality comes from her flexibility to take on any type of job at any moment.88 When it comes to disco, the only type of labor that can be produced is on the dance floor or in relation to reacting to disco music. There is a limit to how a character can perform within the confines of all that is disco, thus the fluid aspect of Ngai’s definition is absent. Even though disco does not perfectly fit into this definition of zany, other qualities of the zany do adequately describe disco’s affective qualities as it pertains to creating—or rather, overcompensating—a type of useful labor despite being a form of play.

Being a bridge between the lackadaisical 1970s and the stern 1980s means that the affect of disco must at once maintain a playful quality that simultaneously repents this quality. The ways in which the zany is a form of often humorous play that in turn produces forms of surplus labor precisely describes how disco’s affect works within film and other visual texts.89 The idea that other forms of labor outside of physical labor could be useful arose from the 1970s economic environment. Specifically, there was a trend in capitalizing off of emotional labor and other types of work within what would otherwise be considered leisurely or traditionally feminine activities.90 Since disco has come to represent a bridge between two distinctly different decades in terms of economic prosperity, it is apt to consider how disco dancing could be interpreted as a form of productive labor while also representing the collective hedonism of the 1970s that is so

88 Ibid, 9. 89 Ibid, 188. 90 Ibid, 203. 92 often romanticized. In other words, how can this childish, reckless sense of play be turned into productive labor? Another reason why thinking about disco as a zany affect is the way that the zany produces a sense of fun and humor is also what leads to the destruction of that fun. Ngai describes this destructive quality as such:

The zany thus has a stressed-out, even desperate quality that immediately sets it

apart from its more lighthearted comedic cousins, the goofy or the silly. Although

zaniness is playful in all of its manifestations across genres, media, and cultural

strata, it is an aesthetic of action pushed to strenuous and even precarious

extremes.91

Not only, then, does describing disco as zany allow us to understand its polarizing place within our collective history, viewing disco as something that is zany also allows us to view disco related activities in a condemning light. If the self-indulgent sexual explorations of the 1970s is something to be ashamed of, then it is the affective role of disco of the era to both indulge and flagellate these explorations.

Ngai comments that the zany often creates pleasure and displeasure for onlookers.92 If Jon Arbuckle’s dancing can generate laughter from the cartoon’s audience, then it also simultaneously creates a sense of disgust and sadness from this same audience that recognizes what a ‘failure’ Jon is on the dating market. It is important to note that the zany object or character exists within relation to a spectator that is not-

91 Ibid, 185. 92 Ibid, 11. 93 zany; someone who minds the zanies’ antics.93 Within this spectator-object relationship, there exists a distance between the zany and the non-zany because of how strained and desperate the zany’s labor comes across. The zany is not something to be totally identified with. The labor produced by the zany “often seems designed to block sympathy or identification as a subjective response.”94 There are various reasons why a zany image may not encourage sympathy from onlookers. In the case of disco, as I have expressed, this lack of sympathy comes from the zany’s role as a marker of the failure to successfully perform heterosexuality in a society that demands such success from all of us. Disco’s zany affect relates to an overcompensation of excessive labor related to a subject’s inability or immobility to conform to heteronormative standards.

Voulez-Vous: The Affect of ABBA in Film

ABBA was a Swedish band that rose to prominence in the mid-1970s after their single, “Waterloo,” became an international hit. Although the band is primarily categorized as a pop group, many of their most famous songs fit into the disco soundscape.95 The time at which they rose to fame, the type of music they produced, and their campy style of dress and showmanship cements ABBA for many as a ‘disco’ group.

The incorporation of ABBA music into a film’s plot and soundtrack can be analyzed as a disco element for this reason. Also, ABBA is often recognized as having a high amount of popularity within the LGBTQA+ communities due to their feminine stage presence

93 Ibid, 182. 94 Ibid, 8. 95 Angela Harmon, “ABBA (Music Group),” Salem Press Encyclopedia, 2017, https://search-ebscohost- com.proxy.library.ohio.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ers&AN=87323316&site=eds-live&scope=site 94 and campy musical tracks. Despite the fact that the band never produced any music with lyrics that could be easily appropriated by queer folk, the escapist, fantastic qualities of their music have none the less provided queer and other marginalized groups the escapism needed as a break from the turmoil of everyday life.96 Escapist themes are apparent in both Muriel’s Wedding and the Mamma Mia films which heavily rely on

ABBA’s music within their plots. These escapist qualities and disco’s zany affectations can be used to analyze how ABBA impacts the narrative of these films.

The use of ABBA in terms of affect works identically to how disco is used affectively. Moments where ABBA’s music is incorporated into a scene performs work that attempts to compensate for an inability to totally conform to heteronormativity.

These scenes produce a kind of pleasure and displeasure for the viewer. By and large, disco’s affect and in turn ABBA’s affect carries negative connotations. It is possible, however, for films to re-purpose disco’s affect in order to create progressive narratives that critique heteronormativity and the restraints that they place upon individuals.

Muriel’s Wedding succeeds in this repurposing as it illustrates an alternative living situation between two people outside of romantic love and marriage. The Mamma Mia films, on the other hand, present a polarity between the sexually sinful past and an obligation to be responsible in a post-sexual revolution world. The labor produced by disco’s affect attempts to reconcile and repent the transgressions of the past, but a full reconciliation proves to be impossible.

96 “Decoding the Queer Appeal of ABBA,” Means Happy, Last modified June 1, 2019, https://meanshappy.com/decoding-the-queer-appeal-of-abba/

95

Muriel’s Wedding is an Australian film that focuses on a young woman, Muriel

Heslop (Toni Collette), whose only ambition in life is to become a wife. Besides this dream, Muriel does not assert herself and lives her life as if it were a dream in the fictional, hapless town of Porpoise Spit. Muriel spends her time associating with a group of women her age who do not care for her. They make this clear to Muriel by telling her that she is not welcome on their holiday excursion because Muriel does not fit their image of young, attractive women who like to party. She follows her friend group to an expensive island destination where she runs into Rhonda Epinstall (Rachel Griffiths), an old acquaintance from high school. The two quickly ignite a friendship and Rhonda becomes the only person in Muriel’s life who supports her.

The film flashes forward to show Muriel and Rhonda living together in Sydney.

One night, the two women pick up dates from a nearby club and bring them back to their apartment. The night quickly becomes chaotic; at one point, Rhonda falls and hits her back which paralyzes both of her legs. Muriel takes Rhonda into a hospital to be examined where it is revealed that a tumor has wrapped around her spine. In order to extract the tumor, Rhonda must undergo multiple surgeries that will likely leave her unable to walk ever again. From this point one, Rhonda spends the rest of the movie confined to a wheelchair.

Instead of helping Rhonda adjust to her new life, Muriel begins visiting nearby wedding boutiques and lies to the saleswomen about being engaged and having sick relatives who will not be able to see her in a wedding dress. Pitying her, the saleswomen fit Muriel into a wedding gown and gives her a collection of Polaroids which Muriel 96 keeps in a scrapbook. Completely enraptured with the fantasy of marriage, Muriel soon agrees to marry a professional South African athlete just so that he can obtain citizenship in order to play for Australia’s Olympic swim team. Muriel asks her old friend group and

Rhonda to be her bridesmaid in her sham wedding. Rhonda refuses to be a bridesmaid; after agreeing to be part of a fake marriage, Muriel abandoned Rhonda and forced her to move back in with her mother in Porpoise Spit. This revelation causes Muriel to start reconsidering her life’s choices. Only after her mother’s suicide does Muriel start to take real accountability for her actions. The movie ends with Muriel leaving her marriage and rescuing Rhonda from her mother’s home, leaving their old lives and Porpoise Spit for good.

The movie excels as a satire of the institution of marriage, where the fanfare of a woman’s wedding day is more important than marriage itself. Jill A. Mackey breaks down the numerous moments of farce throughout the film in her essay, “Subtext and

Countertext in Muriel’s Wedding.” For the women in Muriel’s wedding, “it is as if the idea of the wedding and what it represents retains its power for them, which the reality of divorce and infidelities seem unable to dislodge.”97 At the start of the film, Muriel attends one of her disingenuous friend’s wedding. While walking around the house where the wedding reception is taking place, Muriel accidentally stumbles upon the groom and another bridesmaid having sex in the laundry room. It is revealed later on in the movie that both the bride and her groom engaged in various infidelities throughout their

97 Jill A. Mackey, “Subtext and Countertext in Muriel’s Wedding,” NWSA Journal 13, no. 1 (2001): 93. 97 marriage. Muriel’s father also engages in an extra-marital affair with a flashy, confident makeup saleswoman, a stark contrast to Muriel’s despondent, quiet mother. Muriel’s mother is a truly tragic figure in the film. She is often seen disassociating and the audience clearly sees the toll that a loveless marriage has on a person who presumably spent her entire life devoted to her husband and her family. Her suicide is provoked not only by her husband’s desire to divorce her for his mistress, but for her inability to create an image of herself, her home, and her family suitable for a politician on the rise. Being a devoted wife and prolific mother was not enough, and the movie makes clear that the role of the wife is virtually impossible to fulfill. As Mackey states:

the heterocentrist message of the promise of romance and marriage is so

overdetermined that, when juxtaposed with the unhappy reality of Muriel’s

parents’ marriage and with the hypocritical, bed-hopping young adults’ of

Muriel’s generation, the imagery turns back upon itself. The result is a satirical

undertone that calls into question the very values that marriage purports to

engender and the social forces that produce such disregard of the promises made

during the wedding ceremony.98

Mackey concludes her essay that within a film rife with critique on heteronormativity, that the film lends itself to a lesbian reading where Muriel and Rhonda find solace with one another. Although the incorporation of ABBA’s music throughout the film does allow the film to be read through a queer lens, I do not agree that the two women are

98 Ibid, 94. 98 presented as a lesbian couple by the film’s end. Though, as Mackey suggests, the nature of the film does readily lend itself to be enjoyed as a lesbian romance for lesbian spectators, there are not enough instances of looking between the two characters that would suggest anything sexual or romantic between them. That being said, the platonic relationship that develops between the two women does suggest a devotion to one another and the possibility of an intimate living situation that flourishes outside of the restrictions of heterosexual marriage.

Notable uses of ABBA’s music throughout the film produce a zany affect that emphasizes the limits that each woman faces in their life as failing heterosexuals. At her friend’s wedding, it is revealed that the new dress Muriel is wearing was stolen from a local boutique. Police bring her back to her home where her father bribes the young police officers with beer in order to drop Muriel’s charges. Unable to cope with the situation, Muriel locks herself in her bedroom. The camera slowly pans to the left to reveal Muriel’s walls strewn with posters of the band members of ABBA. Her entire bedroom is a pastel pink that matches the high-spirited emotion associated with ABBA’s music. Muriel turns on her tape player and the song, “Dancing Queen,” fills the room.

Despite the upbeat tempo of the song, Muriel merely mumbles along to the lyrics. The camera zooms in on her despondent face as Muriel looks up. A cut reveals a close-up of a montage of brides cut out of magazines. As the camera traces the images down towards a mirror, the audience sees Muriel glumly look back at herself. Holding up the bouquet of flowers caught at the wedding, Muriel makes a weak attempt to mimic the images that line about her sanctuary. 99

Here, the candy-coated melody of “Dancing Queen” provides the scene with a zany energy. The affect of ABBA produces a kind of labor that overcompensates for

Muriel’s own lack of meaningful production. At this point in the film, Muriel has no job, no real friends or social circle, and clearly does not fully participate in her own hobbies.

The pleasure in this scene comes from the bubbly room and romance created by the images plastered on Muriel’s wall, along with the aid of a catchy-song. Displeasure comes in the form of Muriel refusing to fully engage with the song or the space that she has created for herself. Listening to ABBA’s music is meant to overcompensate for her inability to have a meaningful life as a wife, or even a meaningful life in general. Muriel is inhibited by her own laziness and escapist tendencies, and the affect of ABBA highlights this failure.

Another moment in the film that uses ABBA’s affect to highlight the character’s shortcomings comes after Rhonda is paralyzed and Muriel starts building up her scrapbook of fake wedding pictures. Despite promising her friend that she will look after her, the film makes it clear that Muriel is unable to cope with her friend’s new life. In order to escape the reality of Rhonda’s condition, Muriel begins to frantically scour

Sydney for every wedding boutique where she can con polaroids from the sales clerks.

This scene begins as the song “Mamma Mia” begins to play, matching the energy that

Muriel puts into her search for boutiques. An extreme close-up shot reveals a section of the local newspaper with listings for different bridal boutiques, all with pen marks crossed through them. The camera cuts back and forth between a determined Muriel on her quest for wedding pictures and Rhonda, who prepares to be taken to her physical 100 therapy appointment. As Rhonda searches for her cigarettes, she stumbles across Muriel’s wedding album. The look of concern and worry on Rhonda’s face—who at this point believes that Muriel is in a complicated relationship with her imaginary fiancé—does not match the tone of the song. Rhonda delays her appointment to search for Muriel, only to find her trying a wedding dress. The song abruptly ends when Rhonda confronts Muriel, who then proceeds to confess that she has never had a fiancé. In this moment, Muriel is forced to confront her shame of addictively trying on wedding dresses and her self- indulgent fantasy of becoming a bride. The use of an ABBA song before this admission highlights the work that Muriel fails to do in order to successfully secure a husband. The joy of listening to an ABBA song in relation to a fast-past montage if obstructed by the shame that both the audience and Muriel feel when they must confront the truth of the situation. ABBA’s affect can only overcompensate for Muriel’s lack of productive labor for so long, hence why the non-diegetic song cuts short when reality comes crashing down on the titular character.

The affective properties shared by disco and ABBA tend to be used in negative ways to mock characters who cannot perform rituals necessary for the heterosexual plot.

These rituals include being able to date other straight people, being able to get married, and successfully raising a family. However, in a movie like Muriel’s Wedding that actively critiques these rituals and arbitrary expectations, the negative connotations associated with this affect are effectively re-purposed. As Muriel and Rhonda ride away together in a taxi, they pass by Porpoise Spit landmarks and shout “good-bye!” to all of them. “Dancing Queen” plays once again during this final scene. Unlike the first time this 101 song is played in the film, Muriel is seen in an elated, free state of being. The cheerful song is juxtaposed next to her smiling face. Instead of overcompensating for a lack of labor, the song instead produces an affect that is not zany, but matches the queer possibilities presented by the film from the get-go. The final scene suggests that Muriel will truly take responsibility for herself and Rhonda; the two will likely go on to live and support one another as more than just roommates, perhaps in a queer platonic relationship. When quick references to disco, such as ABBA music, can be used in such a way that clearly relates back to queer themes such as alternatives to marriage, then their affective qualities no longer carry a negative connotation.

Unfortunately, these instances of repurposing disco’s affect are few and far between. The Mamma Mia! films are popular examples of the negative implications of disco’s affect that impact the entirety of the film series. Adapted from the stage musical of the same name, Mamma Mia! centers on a young woman named Sophie (Amanda

Seyfried) living on a Grecian isle with her single mother, Donna (Meryl Streep), who manages a hotel on the island. Engaged to be married, Sophie yearns to know the identity of her real father so that he can give her away on her wedding day. It is unclear who her real father is because, according to her mother’s old journal, Donna slept with three different men within a close time-frame. Upon learning she was pregnant, Donna decided to raise Sophie on her own and ceased contact with all three men. Sophie sends wedding invitations to the three possible fathers—Sam (Pierce Brosnan), Harry (Colin Firth), and

Bill (Stellan Skarsgård)—with the hope that upon seeing them in person, she will instinctively know which one is her real father. 102

Days before her wedding, the three potential fathers show up to the hotel at the same time to the shock and dismay of Donna. Sophie did not include her mother in on her plan for fear that Donna would stop her from trying to contact her fathers. Even though

Sophie is unable to determine who her real father is, this fact does not seem to matter.

The film ends on a happy note as Sophie and her fiancé (Dominic Cooper) decide to scrap their wedding in order to travel the world together. Donna ends up marrying Sam in her daughter's place so that the wedding preparations do not go to waste.

The sequel, Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, adds little to the original story. Ten years later, Donna has passed away and Sophie has decided to re-open her mother’s hotel and to turn it into a lavish island get-away for rich tourists. Like the first film, Sophie’s three fathers arrive at the island just in time for the event, along with her mother’s best friends Tanya (Christine Baranski) and Rosie (Julie Walters). Amid preparations for the re-opening, the film flashbacks to 1979 to show a young Donna (Lily James) having her intimate encounters with Sophie’s fathers and discovering what would be her future hotel. These flashbacks reveal no new information that was not already provided in the first film. The sequel ends with the appearance of Sophie’s grandmother (Cher) and the discovery that Sophie is now pregnant with her own child. Nearly all of the principle characters are awarded a romantic partner at the end of the film, save for Harry, who was hinted at being homosexual in the first film.

Despite the subject matter regarding Donna’s promiscuous lifestyle, the films fail to depict sexual exploration in a serious, productive way, instead treating Donna’s indiscretions as a nuisance and something to relegate to the forgotten past. In the first 103 film, Donna and her friends frankly discuss their sex lives in a bawdy manner without ever diving into specific details. The failure of these films, particularly the second, is that they never discuss explicitly what it means to live a sexually adventurous lifestyle, how such a lifestyle is shamed in American society, and how sexual adventures seemed to be reserved for young people and young people alone. When her friends ask her when was the last time she had sex, Donna shoos them away and replies, “I’m so glad that part of my life is over. I do not miss it at all.” What is interesting about the first film is the way it establishes the polarity that is the definitive aspect of disco’s affect. In 1979, young

Donna enjoyed sexual encounters with various men. Once she became pregnant, she disavowed that part of her life forever, choosing instead to ‘grow-up,’ settle down, and start a business. These films could easily break down these arbitrary barriers regarding sexual freedom, and the barriers imposed on the 1970s versus later decades as a whole.

Instead, the film nervously jumps back and forth between these two polarities, unable to reconcile—or rather, make sense of—Donna’s past in the present.

ABBA is used in these films in a nostalgic mode, one that distances the characters and the audience from the 1970s. The pleasurable aspect of this affect is in seeing these famous Hollywood actors recite well-known songs from a beloved pop-band. The displeasure comes from seeing these renditions do little to nothing in advancing the story, oftentimes functions as ill-placed non-sequiturs. In these films, it is established that in their youth, Donna and her friends formed an all-girl group known as “Donna and the

Dynamos.” The first film has these three women reprise their role as a girl group at

Sophie’s bachelorette party, completely decked out in ridiculous costumes with over-the- 104 top embellishments, similar to the style of clothes ABBA wore in their performances.

The Dynamos sing “Super Trooper,” much to the mild embarrassment of Sophie and her guests. This performance serves no purpose to the plot other than to remind the audience in and outside of the film that the 1970s happened, it was an embarrassing decade, and not only can we not go back, no one really wants to go back, despite the personal freedoms afforded by the decade. The surplus labor provided by this and all the other songs in the film overcompensate by the film’s inability to fully reconcile Donna’s promiscuity and child born out of wedlock. If the film were to re-purpose ABBA’s affect, then a much more thoughtful investigation regarding what counts as a ‘legitimate’ family, and why are adults barred from adventurous sexual escapades outside of marriage is vital.

Instead, the film helplessly fluctuates back and forth between wanting to escape to the past while affirming the necessity of the future which requires marriage and childbirth.

Perhaps the zaniest moment within Mamma Mia! is the final scene which occurs outside of the narrative of the film. After Sophie and her fiancé are seen sailing off into unknown territory, Streep, Baranski, and Walters once more don their Dynamo outfits for a final rendition of “Dancing Queen,” which was already performed previously in the film. The end credits roll as the actresses move around on a soundstage. Boxes quickly appear and disappear all over the frame, showing the actresses from various angles. The lackluster, tired performance given by the actresses combined with the editing and music create a truly zany moment where the actresses are forced to perform for no other reason than to delight the audience who recognize their famous faces. This moment proves that the film cannot settle on an ending that does not at once romanticize and flagellate the 105 sins of the past. As the actresses finish their performance, the music cuts out and they all give exasperated laughs. Whooping and hollering, Streep shouts out, “that’s it! Bye!”

“Bye!” echoes Walters, as Baranski blows a kiss to an off-screen spectator. Streep faces the audience, further breaking down the fourth wall, and teasingly asks, “want another?”

Despite the smile on her face, the desperation in all of the actresses’ voices clearly mark their position as the imprisoned zanies, forced to continue their performance in order to compensate for the film’s inability to end. “Do you want another one?!” Streep continues,

“Do you want another one?!” All of actresses beg the audience to end their suffering in no explicit terms, only through their affectations.

Instead of an end, the opening to “Waterloo” starts, and the women begin performing another number. This time, Seyfried, Cooper, Brosnan, Firth, and Skarsgård all join in on the number, each also wearing ABBA-fied costumes. The credits continue the roll as the soundstage fills up with flames, smoke, flickering lights and colors as if the actors were performing at a rock concert. In an odd turn, the camera cuts to a chorus of individuals dressed up as Greek Gods. The turn, in its oddness, almost borders on camp.

However, unlike the camp found in Xanadu, the film fails to take any critique of heteronormativity or the conventions of the movie musical far enough for it to be authentic gay camp. As the performance finally ends, a crowd laughing and jeering can be heard as the final roll of credits appears on the screen. All of the aspects of the zany can be found in this one performance, and the desperation found in this scene can be applied to the entire film series as a whole. Unable to unpack the negative connotations surrounding Donna’s past and the 1970s, the film has no choice but to rely on ABBA as a 106 zany affect. Donna doomed herself as a heterosexual by having a child out of wedlock, further justifying how ABBA works affectively in these films.

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again had the opportunity to rectify the wrongs of its predecessor. The musical number to “I Kissed the Teacher” seems promising; in the first flashback sequence of the film, young Donna is seen graduating from New College,

Oxford and gives a graduation speech. She halts her speech to begin a flashy rendition of

“I Kissed the Teacher,” completely disrupting the serious occasion. Her classmates join in singing with her and leave the event in a hurry on bicycles. This performance is interesting as some of the lyrics are switched from male to female pronouns (“They had never seen the teacher blush, she looked like a fool / Nearly petrified 'cause she was taken by surprise”) yet some lyrics retain their original pronouns (“I want to hug, hug, hug him”). Changing these lyrics suggests a bisexual or pansexual rendition of the song sung by a subject who is attracted to both their female and male instructors. Unfortunately, this moment does not evolve into more progressive territory; it stands as a cheeky joke similar to the bachelorette humor presented in the first movie.

Two things could have made the sequel truly progressive and redemptive. One would be to explore the explicit details of young Donna’s sexual conquest. Instead, these scenes are skipped over and the details are excluded, hushed away into the darkness.

Another move the sequel could have made was to expand upon Harry’s sexuality by making it explicit that he is a homosexual as hinted by the first film. Instead, Harry’s homosexuality is completely glossed over and again, he is the only principle character that is not given a romantic partner in the film’s Shakespearian ending. In summary, 107

Mamma Mia! and Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again rely on the zany affect offered by

ABBA as a means of distancing themselves from frank discussions regarding human sexuality and the confines and unreasonable expectations of heteronormativity. Each film wants to delight in the light-hearted atmosphere of ABBA, yet cannot justify the embarrassing context from which ABBA was born. If Muriel’s Wedding demonstrates how disco’s queer sensibility and affect can work together to create an insightful satire, than the Mamma Mia! films demonstrate our collective unwillingness to have these important discussions regarding queerness in the first place.

Forever Repenting for Our Sins

The beauty of ABBA’s songs lies in their ability to capture a spectrum of feelings toward sexuality. ABBA’s music could be at once innocent and playful while simultaneously addressing adult desires and realities. This mastery plays a large part in why many LGTBQA+ members enjoy their music so much. Like other disco songs,

ABBA’s music creates not only and escape from reality, but fantasies that allow the listener to experiment with the limits of their own personal tastes. Very few musical acts have ever created music that truly caters to a wide range of vanilla and kinky preferences.

Although using ABBA affectively in film does not have to produce a zany affect with negative connotations relating to failing heterosexuality, unfortunately, this is not often the case.

Disco’s queer sensibilities and affective properties can be studied hand-in-hand in order to full analyze how disco influences how a text’s narrative can be understood.

Starting to think about disco’s affective properties, zany or not, proves to be especially 108 useful when disco is utilized for a quick joke. Although seemingly innocuous, these jokes such as the one seen in the Garfield cartoon further reinforce our culture’s inability to conceptualize queer readings of narratives and our collective inability to deal with our sexual hang-ups. Collectively deciding to understand a decade in a limited way that is not entirely false nonetheless erases important details and peoples that shaped these time periods. Hopefully this chapter has made it clear how obsessed we are as a culture with particular representations and functions of disco, and how reluctant we are to engage in meaningful critiques surrounding topics related to sexuality, marriage, and child rearing.

Intervening with disco’s history and application means confronting all of the ways in which narratives often privilege a dominant reading. From disco films, to the history of disco, and to the history of the 1970s at large, all of these narratives have been exploited, abused and mutated to fit into a master narrative that so many tragically take for granted as the ultimate truth.

109

Conclusion: Dead But Never Forgotten

The dream that came through a million years / That lived on through all the tears

Electric Light Orchestra and Olivia Newton-John, “Xanadu”99

Beginning this thesis by stating how important it is to remember the histories of marginalized groups was perhaps an overly-ambitious quest. Although I stated in the introduction that many crucial omissions will occur throughout the project, this disclaimer does not even begin to compensate for all of the histories that deserve to be included in a project that focuses on disco in film. These histories include not just other texts that use disco to some extent, but the non-queer, non-white histories of those who helped to give shape to what we know and respect as disco. Disclaimer aside, I do not wish to diminish the work done in this thesis despite these egregious omissions. This thesis is a starting point for thinking about cinema’s importance within the history of disco. It is a strong, fortified starting point at that. The work done in this thesis lays the necessary groundwork for a continued expansion of the crucial relationship between representations of disco in film.

A very brief outline of disco’s history from 1970 to 1983 has given shape to a history that tends to begin and end with Saturday Night Fever and Comiskey Park. There is nothing inaccurate with this latter history, as these events are important within disco’s historical trajectory. However, reinforcing the significance of these moments and these moments alone continue to solidify a dominant narrative surrounding disco throughout

99 Electric Light Orchestra and Olivia Newton-John, “Xanadu,” by Jeff Lynne, recorded June 1980, track 10 on Xanadu, Jet Records and MCA Records, Vinyl LP. 110 our culture. This narrative threatens to occlude and erase any other type of historical reading. The exigence for this thesis was born from my concern regarding the prevalence of this dominant narrative. Obviously, whenever a culture re-packages a history of anything to circulate throughout a visual economy, many details will be blurred away.

One question remained despite this inevitability, its presence standing before me like a blinding, bedazzled white elephant: how has it come to pass that an excessively violent film like Saturday Night Fever is only remembered for its music and dancing? The violence from other famous films from the 1970s like The Godfather (Francis Ford

Coppola, 1972) and Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976) are central to our culture’s understanding of these films. What makes Saturday Night Fever an exception? Because to understand the violence in the film would require an acknowledgement of the film’s historical context. This, in turn, would lead to a confrontation with the film’s undeniably queer associations and the queer associations of disco in general. The reason some of us do not choose to do this work, and why so many celebrate the machismo violence found in other iconic films from the 1970s oeuvre, is because we can not collectively be bothered to discuss any form of sexual expression and exploration that does not coincide with the desires of the placid, heteronormative subject.

Disco is dead. This thesis has illustrated the many ways in which this death is reinforced by studying how disco films often concede to dominant narrative structures.

Some films like Xanadu and Muriel’s Wedding offer examples of disco films that manage to effectively disrupt these heteronormative readings and demonstrate how incorporating disco or disco’s affect in a film can be fruitful. Chapter two’s focus on disco horror films 111 demonstrates how disco, when incorporated into different types of narrative structures, can create texts that work in potentially productive ways that force viewers to confront their assumptions about our culture and, possibly, their own homophobia. Unfortunately, most disco films are not radical and fail to craft narratives that cater to disco’s queer sensibilities first and foremost. Disco culture revolved around a very special premise that has yet to be recaptured in a modern-day form of leisure. There are currently no mainstream party-scenes that I am aware of that encourage a spirit of true collectivism that disco managed to establish. Films still have the potential to use disco as inspiration for championing these democratic goals, but only if film makers are willing to push-back on popular assumptions regarding what disco is and what it is not. This task is incredibly challenging given how often disco narratives and affects are subservient to dominant ideologies.

All of this being said, I have hope for the future. Online activism has made it possible for all kinds of marginalized histories to be circulated frequently and reach a wide audience. People clearly care about preserving these histories because there is a wide-spread understanding of what is at stake when these histories are erased. The work done for this thesis is just a piece of this larger effort. I want to make it clear that the history and knowledge of disco presented in this thesis should not be used as a weapon.

All too often, I see people tote their prowess of queer history as a way of asserting their superiority. As if knowing this history gives them the authority to decide who and who is not queer enough. Gatekeeping is not the answer to help our culture transform into becoming more open to all forms of sexuality and gender expressions. If we truly want to 112 keep the spirit of disco alive, we must remember that at its core, disco is about community.

I love disco music and greatly appreciate the positive effect it has had in my life.

Disco movies and music help me connect to a part of my identity that yearns to break down social barriers and stigmas surrounding sexual discovery. I cannot think of a genre of music that creates an environment so welcoming of all types of people and persuasions. It is anything but tacky or embarrassing; it is not an obnoxious remnant of a bygone era. How could anything that contains such a multitude of sensual and playful expressions for the listener to discover and enjoy be anything but exquisite and lovely.

113

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117

Filmography

Boogie Nights. Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. 1997; New Line Cinema. Film.

Don’t Go in the House. Directed by Joseph Ellison. 1980; Film Ventures International.

Film.

Garfield Gets a Life. Directed by John Sparey. 1991; 9 Story Media Group. Television

Special.

Mamma Mia! Directed by Phyllida Lloyd. 2008; Universal Pictures. Film

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. Directed by Ol Parker. 2018; Universal Pictures. Film.

Muriel’s Wedding. Directed by P. J. Hogan. 1994; Miramax Films. Film

Prom Night. Directed by Paul Lynch. 1980; AVCO Embassy Pictures. Film.

Roller Boogie. Directed by Mark L. Lester. 1979; United Artists. Film.

Saturday Night Fever. Directed by John Badham. 1977; Paramount Pictures. Film.

Xanadu. Directed by Robert Greenwald. 1980; Universal Pictures. Film.

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