“American Experience” (9 p.m., PBS, TV-14, check local listings) glances back at an earlier generation’s culture war in “The War on Disco.”
The hour-long film explores the rise of disco music in New York’s gay underground as well as in Black and Latin clubs. Not unlike the newborn hip hop scene (unmentioned here), disco made a star of the DJ, the artist whose mastery of the turntable could turn a 3-minute song into an extended sensual experience.
In a story already well explored in the terrific 2020 documentary “The Bee Gees: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart,” the disco phenomenon went from an underground scene to mainstream pop to total saturation in a couple of years. To the casual listener, it was new — then it was everywhere, then it got old — really, really quickly.
“War on Disco” argues that the decline of the industrial economy and dwindling job prospects for white males without a college degree arrived at the exact same time that disco, with all its gay, feminist, Black and Latino overtones, seemed to dominate pop culture.
On July 12, 1979, a goofy promotion at a Chicago White Sox game invited fans to “Disco Demolition Night.” The event was organized by a local radio personality fired from his job when his radio station abruptly changed its format from rock to disco. Expecting 5,000 more fans than usual, the organizers were besieged by tens of thousands of rowdy kids drunk on cheap beer.
Not unlike the Woodstock concert 10 years earlier, “Disco Demolition Night” became an instant media metaphor even before the crowds had dispensed.
Some of the arguments presented here contradict each other. It’s said that the “velvet rope” culture of Manhattan’s Studio 54 left blue-collar white kids feeling excluded. At the same time, the fictional disco depicted in the hugely popular “Saturday Night Fever” is a magnet for neighborhood Brooklynites, where John Travolta’s character triumphs in a meritocracy of dancing talent. So, was disco exclusionary or democratic?
“War” ignores too many nuances of ’70s culture to catalog here. How can you discuss the shift in popular music from languid listening to frantic dancing without discussing the differences between marijuana and cocaine? How can you look at the white alienation and rage of the period without even mentioning the word “punk”?
As histories go, it’s most interesting that changes brought about by economic forces and corporate decisions can be discussed only in terms of race and identity politics.
The 1970s saw corporations gobble up record companies as well as radio stations, breeding the kind of imitative sameness that could make a hapless consumer believe that a trend like disco was being shoved down his throat.
Products and trends can be oversold. Revolting against such obvious coercion doesn’t always have to do with race.
But it seems easier to explain things based on racism than entertain the notion that, left to their own devices, unregulated corporations tend to make hash of once-familiar cultural touchstones.
In the decades since disco, corporate monopolies have turned much of radio itself into a wasteland of sameness, not to mention an echo chamber of fascist propaganda. The humble telephone, once indispensable, is now a medium dedicated to torturing older people with junk calls, schemes and scams. Checked your email inbox lately? How did streaming television get so bewildering? Who ruined Twitter?
Cultural corporate vandalism did not begin, or end, with disco.
— Shudder streams the 2023 horror film “Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor.”
TONIGHT’S OTHER HIGHLIGHTS
— The Diamondbacks and Rangers meet in game three of the MLB World Series (8 p.m., Fox).
— The Raiders and Lions meet in Monday Night Football action (8 p.m., ABC, ESPN).
— A body is found at an ancient burial site with a history linked to the occult on “NCIS” (10 p.m., CBS, r, TV-14).
— Alec takes the stand on “The Irrational” (10 p.m., NBC, TV-14).
— The “POV” (10 p.m., PBS, TV-14, check local listings) documentary “Fire Through Dry Grass” looks at the plight of New York City nursing home residents during the COVID lockdown.
CULT CHOICE
Joan Fontaine stars as a private school headmistress driven mad by her exposure to African witch doctors in the 1966 Hammer shocker “The Devil’s Own” (10 p.m., TCM, TV-14).
SERIES NOTES
On two episodes of “Ghosts” (CBS, r, TV-PG): mischief night (8 p.m.); a conjured spirit (8:30 p.m.) … “The Voice” (8 p.m., NBC, TV-PG) … “Loteria Loca” (9 p.m., CBS, TV-PG).
LATE NIGHT
Jimmy Fallon welcomes Michael Shannon, Annaleigh Ashford and Jesus Trejo on “The Tonight Show” (11:35 p.m., NBC) … David Duchovny and Renee Rapp visit “Late Night With Seth Meyers” (12:35 a.m., NBC).
