As a man who glides like a whale on rusty castors I’ve always envied good dancers.
Maybe it’s the lightness of movement, maybe it’s the certainty that comes from not having to think when you are just busy doing. There’s an ambivalent relationship men have with dancing too, as well as with drawing; activities that are neither obviously masculine nor feminine. For most men, moving and making exist in a parallel world, so while they may respect other men who can dance or draw, they don’t feel those qualities are extensions of themselves.
Anyway, dancing. The strutting peacock, that individual flourish in the midst of collective activity. If you’ve ever seen those clips of scrawny northern white working-class men swirling and spinning in super-tight tops and super-loose trousers at a Wigan Casino Northern Soul night, then you’ll know that for them 1970s masculinty was up for grabs. A night out with your mates was no longer 20 B&H, heavy boozing and a good dig at the end of the evening. Instead there you were with thousands of other peacocks - off the booze but on the pills - spending the entire night showing off. Not to impress women either - those that were there were there to compete too - but to impress yourself and your peers. I worked with one of those fine movers, Paul Mason, whose brief doucumentary about his dancing days is well worth a view.
So a couple of years ago I sat up, revisiting Saturday Night Fever. Top choons, top moves. And there he was, the preening John Travolta as Tony Manero, a man very much of his time and place (something I like). Dance floor shapes apart though, the film is of its time in another way. I’d forgotten what a rancid movie it is and how the music and dancing distract from that. A gang rape in the back of the car as a nonchalant Manero sits in the front (she deserves it though, so why care?). Later, when he rapes the only strong and independent character in their dull circle, his victim is the one who has to leave town. Then at the very end when he drives over to see her it is not in a rare moment of self-awareness, but so she can comfort him for all he’s been through, the poor dear. It’s an empty and hateful film.
Tony Manero
Pablo Larrain, 2008
Now I don’t know how TV programming works, but I’ve often felt it’s similar to - from experience - how policing works. There’s no innate understanding or willingness to move in and around a subject, to weigh things up, to strike a balance. Instead it’s a matter of proximity and convenience. So a tenuously themed night’s entertainment saw a Chilean film follow because it was called Tony Manero. After all who cares what is on at 1:00 in the morning anyway.
Annoyed at Saturday Night Fever’s self-pitying Manero I stayed up to see what Santiago’s version was like under Pinochet’s rule in 1978. Martial law and state murder gangs are merely the background to a middle-aged sociopath and his Travolta obsession; one whose world revolves around getting his white-suited self onto a TV talent show. In one of the most memorable films of the last 20 years an amoral man kills, steals and expolits any opportunity or anyone he can to get that chance. Obssessed, charismatic, vain and ruthless Manero also produces, squating, a genuine moment of dirty dancing before the film finishes with a bus ride home.
He’s hateful certainly but at least that’s the point here. And that man’s castors were beautifully oiled.