The times, of course, are the 1970s, the cultural font we can’t seem to leave behind. Crowds gathered at the old 2001 Odyssey disco in Brooklyn last weekend to celebrate the 20th anniversary of ““Saturday Night Fever’’ (with the Bee Gees and K.C. and the Sunshine Band! Get down tonight!). In fashions like the wrap dress and the obscenely tight trousers of Helmut Lang and Gucci’s Tom Ford, in movies like ““Boogie Nights’’ and ““The Ice Storm,’’ in the disco vibes of Wyclef Jean and Mariah Carey, the ’70s revival has now lasted longer than the decade itself. Dirk’s heroic adventures highlight one face of our nostalgia. Beneath all that tight polyester lurks a roguish male sexual swagger; in John Travolta there’s the soul of a Bob Packwood. Unlike his ’80s and ’90s counterparts, neo-’70s man does not believe in wimpy sublimation. He believes in display. ““No more hiding,’’ says Out magazine fashion director Stefan Campbell, who recently styled a whole shoot around images from old Burt Reynolds movies. ““It’s all about flaunting. There’s nothing P.C. in any of this. It’s a total backlash.''
The ’70s revival is as much a response to the ’90s as to the ’70s; it tells us what we need now. And like the first time around, it is not so much about records and TV shows and clothes as about sex. On an obvious level it is about AIDS, which bathes the couplings and uncouplings of the earlier era in a glow of golden innocence. ““You have to remember,’’ says ““Boogie Nights’’ director Paul Thomas Anderson, who is 28, ““that when I was growing up, I was told that if you have sex, you die.''
More specifically, the revival is about male sexuality. Though the decade itself gave afternoon delight to both men and women, the remix plays favorites–how else to explain a movie about the porn industry in which the fill-the-seats star is a man? This is an inherent ’90s bias. The men need the boost, says Dr. David Gutmann, professor emeritus of psychiatry and education at Northwestern University. ““It’s a desperate assertion of masculinity in its most fundamental terms. All of this stems from a sense of maleness under pressure, under hostile review.''
As pop women like Madonna broadened the range of female sexual expression in the ’80s and ’90s, images of male roguery tended to shrink in the direction of Clarence Thomas or Michael Kennedy. It just wasn’t cool anymore. At the same time, as feminist gadfly Katie Roiphe recently argued, an enduring sexual double standard has flip-flopped: when women have affairs (think Diana), they are now ““striking a blow for sexual freedom’’; when men do it (think Charles), they are cads. This upheaval only spurs nostalgia for swordsmanship past; it’s comforting to celebrate, say, the preening rappers Snoop Doggy Dogg or Puff Daddy, creations straight out of ’70s blaxploitation films. ““There’s been a “de- gendering’ of mascu- linity,’’ says sociolo- gist Michael Kimmel, author of ““Manhood in America.’’ ““The places where we used to prove our masculinity are now coed: the Citadel, the workplace. So men proving their masculinity has to look somewhat different.’’ The climax of ““Boogie Nights’’ is a shot of Dirk’s massive member. Says Anderson, ““Every movie needs a big ending.''
The ’70s of ““Boogie Nights’’ is not the ’70s of ““Saturday Night Fever.’’ For all its hot-comb verisimilitude, ““Fever’’–reflecting the nostalgia of its times–depicts an updated 1950s, only with tackier clothes and more genital activity: ““American Graffiti’’ with- out foreplay. The sex is coarseand repressed, generally at the expense of women. As Travolta asks a dance partner: ““Are you a good girl or are you a c—?’’ It is as if the ’60s never happened. ““Boogie Nights’’ and ““The Ice Storm,’’ by contrast, vamp on the liberations of the ’60s as they slide into decay. In ““The Ice Storm,’’ a child dies while his parents are at a ““key party,’’ where couples swap mates. In ““Boogie Nights,’’ the decade ends with a cuckolded husband killing his wife, her lover andhimself, a sign of worse things to come. ““There had to be a punishment’’ for all that pursuit of pleasure, says Anderson, especially for the drug use.
Wahlberg, the star of ““Boogie Nights,’’ began his showbiz life as the rapper Marky Mark, who stripped down to his Calvins in a notorious underwear ad campaign. In this respect, says Susan Faludi, who is now working on a book about masculinity, his performance as Dirk recapitulates the present, not the past: Dirk just peels off an extra layer. ““I don’t see the ’70s revival as nostalgic,’’ she says. ““It seems like the beginning of what we’re in now.’’ The return of the strut, she says, is less a backlash than ““a protective cover for what’s really going on, which is men trying to deal in a world where what’s valued is not manufacturing, but a manufactured image.’’ In the current hit film ““The Full Monty,’’ a crew of unemployed steelworkers, desperate for money, stage a motley Chippendales revue–a blunt declaration of manhood by men who need to prove they’re still men. This is a theme for the late 1990s. As Kimmel says, ““Masculinity has changed, but we haven’t done anything to accommodate that. The rehabilitation of John Travolta is just the tip of the iceberg.''
The revival, meanwhile, shows no signs of letting up. Next year there will be not one but two films about Studio 54. A handful of directors, including Quentin Tarantino and John Singleton, are planning blaxploitation riffs. This is the ultimate, extended-play remix. See you at Odyssey 2001 for the 30th-anniversary party for ““Saturday Night Fever.’’ By then, perhaps we’ll see some things clearly: ““Boogie Nights’’ as a parable of corporate decay in the ’80s, ““The Ice Storm’’ as an indictment of ’80s workaholism and its impact on the family, and Hot Chocolate’s ““You Sexy Thing’’ as just a great song till the break of dawn. Because even in the next millennium, you still gotto do it, do it, do it till you’re satisfied.
