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PABLO LARRAIN'S TONY MANERO: FASHION AND ALIENATION

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 PABLO LARRAIN’S TONY MANERO: FASHION AND ALIENATION

Marina Soler Jorge, PhD - Universidade Federal de São Paulo

Warning: this paper is a translation of the original in Portuguese published in: 

Jorge, Marina Soler. "Tony Manero, de Pablo Larrain: moda e alienação." Revista
FAMECOS 25.1: 26829.

Available on: http://revistaseletronicas.pucrs.br/ojs/index.php/revistafamecos/article/

view/26829/0

If you want to quote it, please use the reference above. We apologies for problems in
translation.

Abstract

This article intends to analyze the Chilean film Tony Manero, directed by Pablo Larraín,
through the fashion phenomenon, thus displacing the question of Chilean identity and
American Cultural Industry – which are often considered central elements in the
interpretation of the film – and placing the focus on the disturbing way which Raul, the
protagonist of the film, participates in the disco fever. Using film analysis, we will try to
show that what is disturbing and critical in Tony Manero is not the imitation of a supposed
American model in the context of Chilean dictatorship, but the fact that Raul itself is
considered a model among his colleagues. To achieve our goal, in addition to film
analysis, we propose a methodological approach about fashion and the disco
phenomenon, as well as a brief consideration about the film Saturday Night Fever.

Keywords: Latin-American cinema. Fashion. Chile.

Tony Manero, film directed by Pablo Larraín, released in 2008 and part of filmmaker's
trilogy about military dictatorship in Chile (Tony Manero, 2008, Post Mortem, 2010 and
No, 2012) tells the story of Raul, a 52-year-old Chilean man of Santiago, played by actor
Alfredo Castro, who is obsessed with Tony Manero, John Travolta's character in Saturday
Night Fever (John Badham, 1977). Raul lives in the outskirts of Santiago at Wilma's
house, which serves as a boarding house, pub and show house, along with Goyo, a
young man of Amerindian descent, Cony, who has an attraction for Raul, and his
daughter Pauli, who also can't resist to the “charm” of the protagonist. Wilma runs the
concert hall and Raul, Cony and Pauli, under the choreography of Goyo, present an
unprofessional show based in Saturday Night Fever's disco songs. None of the characters
seems to work, except for Wilma that is suggested to live off the rent of the rooms, and
when Raul is asked about his job he simply answers that lives for the show. Pinochet
dictatorship functions as historical set for the movie, and the spectator recognizes it by
the existence of police forces of repression in the streets, by some people who quietly
adhere to the political militancy and by Pinochet's own image on television.

The film takes place during a week or, more specifically, between two Sundays. On the
first Sunday, Raul goes to the studios of a Chilean TV thinking that this is the day in which
there will be a contest to choose the Chilean Tony Manero lookalike. He wears his white
three-piece suit and his black shirt that “transform” him into the character played by John
Travolta. He is mistaken about the date, and is informed that should return next Sunday
for the contest. During the week before the contest, Raul prepares for a show at Wilma’s
pub, putting lights on the stage floor, improvising a strobe light with a soccer ball and
glass shards, and committing some killings so that things go as planned.

In Larraín’s film, John Travolta's three-piece white suit is presented as an iconic,

venerable object. Raul walks with it on the hanger through the streets, treating it like a
special object. Her colleagues admire the suit, and Wilma, also sexually drawn by Raul,
begs him to wear it. The beauty of the clothing is explicitly mentioned by the characters
and its shape is subject of a small discussion regarding the number of buttons that
Travolta's pants would have on the movie. As an iconic object, you must respect each
detail, so that it is as close as possible to the perfect copy.

In the history of cinema, some pieces of clothing are transformed into icons and earn a
living beyond the images that originated them, constituting themselves as objects of
worship and parody. One of the most emblematic cases is perhaps the poncho of Clint
Eastwood in Sergio Leone’s trilogy of the “man with no name”. On the internet one can
buy a replica of the poncho, and Eastwood himself, who has never discarded it, uses it in
charity events. The poncho has become a cinema meta-linguistic element, appeared in
Back to the Future - Part III (Zemeckis, 1990) as an essential part of the narrative – by
hiding an improvised shield that saves the life of Marty McFly –, and more recently was
seen in Rango (Verbinski, 2011), in which the “man with no name" himself appears to give
advice to the chameleon.

On the other hand, Travolta’s white suit, which appeared in a parody of Sesame Street,
was out of circulation for many years until Victoria & Albert Museum, owner of a notorious
fashion collection, located it for a exposition. However, although the original piece was a
long time gone, its influence was enormous in that it symbolized the young male fashion
of the 70’s. Unlike the Eastwood poncho, exotic and difficult to use, the Travolta suit is a
wearable clothing. While the poncho can be understood as a mythical costume, out of
history, worn by a mysterious and isolated character, the white suit is a symbol of Tony
Manero’s impeccable style, his adherence to the fashion of his time and his charisma
before the youth of his neighborhood.

In movies, often the man who takes too much care of appearance and has the desire to
be fashionable is frowned upon, or even seen as socially or psychologically deviant, since
this is considered a feminine characteristic. According to Stella Bruzzi,

Men’s dress is usually considered to be innately stable and to lack the ‘natural tendency to
change’’ of women’s clothes, displaying instead, by virtue of being functional rather than
decorative, a tendency to ‘stereotype itself’’ and ‘adopt the uniform of a profession [……].
There is also, therefore, the suspicion with which flamboyant male dressers like dandies and
dudes have traditionally been viewed, because ‘real men’’ are not supposed to be
narcissistically preoccupied with their clothes and appearance (BRUZZI, 2009).

There are, nevertheless, very masculine men who are always well dressed: gangsters,
usually Italo-Americans, that appear in crime movies. According to Stella Bruzzi,
gangster's appearance and vanity are symbols of his moral degeneracy, of his narcissism
and power, and it is by wearing the well-cut and quality suit that a gangster shows to his
peers that is rising in his career of crime. John Travolta’s Tony Manero, despite coming
from an Italian family, is not a gangster, but a man who is reference in fashion, style and
behavior in his community. Working as a simple salesman in a tool shop during the day, at
night he turns into a role model to be followed, envied, desired and copied thanks to his
sensual, energetic and contagious dance. He likes clothes in general, not just in his white
suit: right at the beginning of Saturday Night Fever, the character checks the news in
clothes stores and reserves a shirt that he intends to pay later with the money of his
wage. Throughout the movie, Tony Manero is always well dressed and wears fashion
pieces of the youth culture of the 70’s, especially tight jackets and shirts with pointed
collars.

Raul, though he has great care and affection for his “fantasy” of Tony Manero, practically
will not change his clothes during the week in which the story takes place. He walks and
run through the streets of Santiago carrying his precious costume on his shoulders, but
always wears the same khaki coat, a light shirt printed underneath, and black pants.
There is nothing in his appearance that calls attention: he is not well dressed or has an
interesting personal style. The character’s lack of costume can refer us to his moral and
spiritual emptiness as well as his inability to effectively aggregate and share with other
human beings. It also helps us to compose a character who is not exactly concerned
about fashion, contrary to what would be expected for a man who did not resist the disco
fever of the late 70's. Raul loves the style and dance of John Travolta, as well as the lights
and luster of dance floors, but does not seem to be someone who cares about his
appearance. For him, to dye his hair has less to do with being young and handsome than
looking like John Travolta's Tony Manero. His effort to look young is not related to the fact
that, in modern fashion phenomena, “looking younger […] matters much more than
exhibiting a social position” (Lipovetsky, 2009, 140). Raul is not interested either in fashion
or in a social position.

Raul, in his obsession with Tony Manero and his suit, seems to suffer from another
degeneracy: it is not that of the gangster, whose excessive vanity refers to violent
personality; nor is the social degeneracy of Saturday Night Fever youth, who tries to
alienate themselves from labor exploitation in the glamorous night. Raul is strange
because he participates in disco fever, typically a phenomenon of fashion, and therefore a
gregarious behavior, with spatial isolation and moral alienation in relation to his own. What
fascinates and upsets about this character is that he follows fashion without being
fashionable. He follows the wave of the 70’s, which we know to have affected practically
every corner of the planet, but in an absolutely individualistic and narcissistic way,
refusing the sociability that characterizes modern fashion phenomena.

An exemplary sequence of what we are talking about occurs when Raul goes to the
movies to see, once again, Saturday Night Fever (Badham, 1977). It should be noted, first
of all, that Raul always goes alone to the movies, although he has colleagues available to
follow him. When Raul arrives, the movie is no longer being exhibited, and now is
released another one with John Travolta, Greese (Kleiser, 1978). Raul buys ticket to see
the movie, in the hope that his favorite character is somehow still there, but gets annoyed
when he realizes that this is not the case.

In movies, when a new star comes up, it needs to be used in a variety of ways, in order to
extract the highest possible popularity from its person. This is how the fashion of starlets
works: they must be transformed, always remaining the same, so that the public does not
be bored of them. Taking advantage of the success of Saturday Night Fever, the industry
resolves to explore John Travolta a bit more, now with Greese, a less somber and more
innocent story. The public who consume the starlets always remain interested, since
“novelties” are brought to them from time to time. The phenomenon of fashion, which
also affects star system, is characterized by its cyclical and random character, in which
our only certainty is that the new, whether it be a clothing, a star, or an academic author,
will break out of time in times. Fashion is, in fact, one of the characteristics of modernity,
penetrating into different domains of our social life and not just into our wardrobes.

Raul, however, is not part of this collective phenomenon. He does not want, unlike most
audiences, to see a new movie with the same star. Cinephile of a single film, cosplayer of
a single character, he wants to sit again next to the screen and to decorate the speeches
and corporal movements of his unique idol. Infantilized, as must be a narcissistic
personality, he steals candies to eat during the session. Unable to bear the frustration
with the change of the movie, he kills the elderly couple that takes care of the cinema and
takes home Saturday Night Fever copy. The same infantile and narcissistic behavior will
be verified when Raul stops his colleagues from watching the TV he takes home after
practicing robbery. Fascinated with television image, Raul connects the device in the
living room of the house, common space of all the residents. When he realizes the
gregarious nature of television, which soon attracts the attention of his colleagues, he
turns it off and gets rid of it because he does not want anyone else to have access to the
information he has. It's too late: Goyo watches the call of Tony Manero lookalike contest
and decides that he will also participate. Now, it is characteristic of fashion to be a shared
social phenomenon. There is no sense in participating in fashion alone. It is, in fact, a
contradiction in terms.

Opposing more traditional analyzes of fashion, such as those written by Simmel, Veblen
and Bourdieu, that see the phenomenon as an expression of imitation, conspicuous
consumption and effect of distinction, the philosopher Gilles Lipovetsky ( 2009) presents
an original reading of the subject. According to the author, fashion is an inalienable part of
the democratic development of the Western world, represents the achievement of an
individual right and is one of the agents of democratic revolution. For the French author,
freedom to participate in the play of frivolities, to imitate those who occupy the highest
social positions, to cultivate themselves aesthetically, signifies an empowerment of the
ordinary individual and is a phenomenon not only inseparable, but also a motivator of
democratic conquests. The emergence of ready-to-wear clothing, that is to say,
industrially made clothes with quality and design, was the peak of modern democratic
trends, in which the middle classes, the popular classes, and especially the youth not
only search to participate, but also begin to guide the sense of fashion. “... high fashion is
no more than a source of free inspiration without priority, alongside many others
(lifestyles, sports, flamingos, the spirit of time, exoticism, etc.) of equal
importance" (Lipovetsky, 2009, 131).

In the case of Tony Manero’s fashion, the disco fashion, we know that it has spread
around the world with its specific dance steps, musics and musical groups (that still today
play in parties), hairstyles, and new synthetic fabrics with brightness, fluidity, and solid
colors that showed the new body, now sculpted by gymnastic and slightly androgynous,
moving sensually on the dance floor. Authors who study the disco fashion of the late 70’s
consider it a reaction to the hippie movement of the 1960’s and its loose, natural clothing,
long and natural hair, its pacifist and protest songs, and its body movements not sexy at
all. Disco fever would have prepared for the arrival of individualism and conservatism of
the 1980’s, undermining the collectivist aesthetic of the hippie movement and creating
conditions for a fashion of ostentation, consumption and social rise that will characterize
neoliberalism.

Saturday Night Fever (Badham, 1977) was an important landmark of disco fever. Originally
a modest budget film for Hollywood standards, “boy meets girl” conventional narrative,
an actor with little film experience and soundtrack of a band until then little known (Bee
Gees), the film was successful in many countries , including Latin American, and reached
a box office of 110 million dollars. Young people around the world wanted to be like Tony
Manero and to copy his style, and nightclubs inspired by the film proliferated in big cities.
In Brazil, this fashion gave rise to the famous Nelson Motta’s nightclub, Frenetic Dancing
Days, attended by artists, and to the soap opera Dancing Days (Filho, 1978-1979),
considered today one of the most important in Brazilian television drama. Dancing Days
was accused of imposing on the Brazilians an American way of life and of alienating their
viewers with an foreign model of life. As usual, these critics had no resonance among the
spectators, who eagerly consumed not only its episodes, but also its fashions, created
here in Brazil, such as lurex socks. The disco fashion continues to cyclically influence the
clothes, the hair, the youth and the dance floors, which suggests that it was a
phenomenon of high intensity and potential of re-signification. What we see in Larraín’s
Tony Manero is the passage of the disco fashion by Chile in 1978. There, as here and as
in the rest of the western world, men wanted to be like John Travolta and much of the
youth wanted to enjoy the night with the sound of disco songs.

According to Chris Jordan, in the article “Gender and Class Mobility in Saturday Night
Fever and Flashdance” (1996), during the early 1970’s Hollywood erected American
working class man as a symbol of authentic and traditional masculine values, especially
through the success of Rocky (Avildsen, 1976), whose character, played by Sylvester
Stallone, is a simple, honest and persevering man who works hard to win in life, values
the family above all and never loses his humility. This type of character was
counterbalanced in the late 70’s by Saturday Night Fever, in which the central character,
Tony Manero, also a worker, seeks to break free from the real and symbolic limits
imposed by family and work through dance. Tony Manero does not identify with his work,
which is portrayed in the film as something mediocre, and knows that through it he will
never rise socially. His family, full of prejudices and traditionalism, does not understand
his need to express himself, and devalues him openly in relation to his brother priest (who
in turn is also dissatisfied with the life of a cleric). Dancing is an activity traditionally
considered less appropriate to man and therefore, in the movie in question, functions as a
questioning of the anomies of society founded on traditional masculinity. According to
Chris Jordan (1996), Saturday Night Fever has the merit of aiding in the discussion, which
began to take place in the society of the 70’s, of the male liberation from traditional sexual
roles.

Progressively, throughout the film, Travolta’s character becomes aware that his mediocre
environment does not help him in developing his subjectivity and that dance can be a
pathway for expression of sensitivity and for liberation of a social environment that offers
few prospects of social ascension. Chris Jordan notes that this process has as catalyst a
female character, Stephanie, also a dancer, who is independent from traditional sexual
roles, so that, at the end of the film, she prefers to keep a friendship with Tony Manero
instead of becoming one of his girlfriends. Stephanie managed to escape the limits of her
social background and, throughout the film, makes a point of maintaining a strictly
professional relationship with Tony Manero, refusing his love advances. We can add to
these arguments the fact that, in the process of caracter change, he becomes aware of
racism in American society, refusing to accept the award of best dancer for being sure
that it was a black boy who deserved it. Manero revolts against the fact that the Afro-
descendant couple did not take the first prize of the contest, denouncing discrimination.
For reasons of space, it would not be possible in this text to add to the narrative
dimension a discussion about the style of Saturday Night Fever, but we can, in some
lines, say that it has nothing to do with the typical gloss of Hollywood products; on the
contrary, the film seeks to make explicit the antagonism between the luster of the dance
floor and “the world out there” through raw realism and a blurred and dark photograph,
which seek rather to undo illusions than to create them. Indeed, it is not a film that fits
into the stereotype of Hollywood cinema, either by the bitter narrative, which refuses the
happy end, or by the discreet, dark, and, paradoxically, not very bright style.

So, we reject analysis that see in Larraín’s Tony Manero a “rupture, on the part of the
director, with the representative model of Hollywood hegemonic cinema” (2016, p. 7), as
we read in the article “Representação e ilusão na trilogia do cineasta Pablo Larraín acerca
da ditadura no Chile” by Vinicius de Araújo Barreto and Tânia Siqueira Montoro,
published in Cinemas d'Amerique Latine. We do not agree that the specificity of this film,
its disturbing and grotesque aspect, is related to the critique of Hollywood cinema, which
would function as “a machine of illusions, in which the spectator is a defenseless victim,
subjected to the sensorial pressure of alienating images”, as we read in another article by
the same authors (Montoro and Barreto, 2015, p.16). In our view, Larraín uses this
situation, that of the arrival of the disco fashion in Latin America, as well as one of its
most successful representatives, Saturday Night Fever, to discuss an absolutely
pathological context, but not necessarily imposed by Hollywood and consumed
uncritically by victimized Latin Americans.

In order to clarify this point, we would like to argue that, firstly, film analysis must pay
attention to the specificities of each particular work, often bringing to light, as Fredric
Jameson (1994) ponders, not only the alienating content, but also what is utopian in every
product of the cultural industry. These products should not be identified uncritically with
open and imprecise classifications such as “Hollywood cinema”. An attentive analysis
would show us, as we have just begun to suggest above, that Saturday Night Fever is not
a “legitimate” representative of Hollywood, if the inferences of alienation promoted by this
industry, based on simplified Marxism, really make sense. The argument that Tony Manero
criticizes the American cultural industry ignores the model film in question, Saturday Night
Fever. He simply was not seen with the necessary care, but encased and killed in a
questionable category. It is a film that would benefit from a more dialectical reading, as
proposed by Jameson in the article in question, which takes into account the capacity of
part of the American cinema to offer us, simultaneously, an image of the status quo and
the glimpse of transformation.

In addition, secondly, there is another filmic reduction operation here: not only the
interpretation of Saturday Night Fever but also that of Tony Manero is reduced to
stereotypes, so it cannot be understood what is alive and disturbing in Larraín’s film, that
also remains encased and reduced to a Latin American political-allegorical cliché. As we
said earlier, what is shocking in Raul is not his idolatry to Tony Manero, but the fact that
this behavior is isolated from what gives its fashionable specificity as a social and
collective phenomenon. What's disturbing about Raul is not that he has Tony Manero as a
role model. Now, it is a time fashion, which affects a large part of the public, and in which
Raul participates. And, albeit, it is not difficult to understand the identification of the
public with Tony Manero: he is a young middle-class worker from a family of immigrants,
living in a violent neighborhood and working hard during the week to live the dream of
being someone on Saturday night. The identification of the spectator with these semi-
marginal cinema characters is a well-known phenomenon, and many films of the 60’s and
70’s have as protagonists dudes that are in the limit between the established order and
the rupture of it.

Montoro and Barreto consider that in Tony Manero underpins a conception that “Chile
under Pinochet is a country whose identity is in permanent crisis; a country that wants to
be a foreigner, detaching itself from its Latin American condition "(2016, p. 7). In order to
understand the limits of this analysis, Nestor Garcia Canclini's considerations in Culturas
Híbridas should be retained, for the author questions the fixed conceptions of Latin
America that treat modernity as a project of the hegemonic sectors and the
underdevelopment as “a fateful destiny of the popular ones that are rooted in
traditions” (Canclini, 2008, p. 246). For Caclini, hybridization is no exception, but the
normal condition of Latin America, whose people, even native ones, have been living for
decades “processes of migration, miscegenation, urbanization, various interactions with
the modern world” (Canclini, 2008, p. 246). According to the author, hybridization is a
process that “interests both the hegemonic and the popular sectors, who want to take
advantage of the benefits of modernity” (Canclini, 2008, p. 22). The existence of these
“incessant, varied, hybridization processes lead to the relativization of the notion of
identity” (Canclini, 2008, p. 22).

In the argument that Larrain's film treats Hollywood as an illusory factory, an alienating
mechanism, it underlies the conception of a passive, victimized Latin America that would
only consume uncritically imposed products, in which the mixture between national and
foreign, between modern and undeveloped, would be an aberration to be eliminated in
the name of a supposed uncontaminated identity. We do not agree that this is the case,
or that this is the prevailing theme of Larraín’s Tony Manero. In other words, the old
allegorical-political discussion does not help to understand it, nor does it properly
describe it. Otherwise, let's see: Raul, when he dances alone, does not dance Bee Gees,
but Chilean music. At the end of the show at the bar, after the dream of shining on stage
Saturday night is performed for Raul, Goyo, Coni and Pauli, is singing Chilean music that
they close the night. More importantly, among the four characters who enter on the disco
wave, we have two that are not alienated: Goyo, possibly the best dancer in the group, is
producing material against Pinochet dictatorship, and Pauli collaborates with his
subversive activities, as well as criticizing the military. We can also mention the fact that,
when Raul is in the movies, we see a poster of Aguirre by Werner Herzog, to suggest that
Chile also consumes independent and art films.

It is necessary, therefore, to analyze not how Hollywood reaches Latin America, but in
what way Latin America consumes Hollywood. In this sense, we should not speak of
illusion, but of an active local elaboration and transformation of this industry. In terms of
psychoanalysis, we could say that it does not only matter what EUA did to our continent,
but what our continent did from what they did with it. Turning to the film Tony Manero,
therefore, we believe that it is the case to analyze not a possible damage caused by the
influence of the foreign cultural industry, but in what ways this influence is reworked. So
what disturbs us in Tony Manero is not, as we said, the identification of Raul with the
character of John Travolta, moreover a banal happening in mass culture. What disturbs us
in this film is the fact that he, Raul, an antisocial, narcissistic, selfish, violent,
psychopathic guy has become an idol for his colleagues.

The identification with John Travolta is a collective phenomenon, explainable within the
complexity of the mechanisms of fashion and filmology, as theorized respectively by
Gilles Lipovetsky (2009) and Edgar Morin (1970) – the latter when dealing with the
polymorphic identification mechanisms between public and characters. The admiration,
respect, or excitement that Wilma, Pauli, Coni and Goyo feel for Raul is that it is not
understandable, and that is the grotesque and disturbing aspect of the film. All these
women – and even Goyo – feel a desire uncontrollable by Raul, offering himself sexually
and insisting to run away with him and leave everything behind. Coni even denounces her
daughter Pauli to the military police because of jealousy. Even Goyo, more critical of his
colleague, and critical of the dictatorship, has Raul as an authority in fashion within the
group. What we can say, therefore, if we want to extrapolate the situation of the film to the
Chilean political and social scene, and also Latin American, while clarifying its critical
potential, is that sad is the people who have Raul as model of success, style and
masculinity. Better if it was John Travolta.

 References

BARRETO, Vinicius; Montoro, Tânia. Representação e ilusão na trilogia do cineasta Pablo

Larraín acerca da ditadura no Chile. Cinémas d’Amérique Latine, v. 1, p. 1-10, 2016.

BRUZZI, Stella. Undressing cinema: clothing and identity in the movies. Abingdon:
Routledge, 2009, ebook.

CANCLINI, Nestor Garcia. Culturas Híbridas. São Paulo: EDUSP, 2008.JAMESON,

Fredric. Reificação e utopia na cultura de massa. Crítica marxista, v. 1, n. 1, p. 1-25,
1994.

JORDAN, Chris. Gender and class mobility in Saturday Night Fever and Flashdance.
Journal of Popular Film and Television, v. 24, n. 3, p. 116-122, 1996. DOI: https://doi.org/
10.1080/01956051.1996.9943721.

LIPOVETSKY, Gilles. O império do efêmero. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2009.

MONTORO, Tânia; Barreto, Vinicius. A alegoria da identidade chilena no filme Tony

Manero (2008), de Pablo Larraín. Esferas - Revista Interprogramas de Pós-graduação em
Comunicação do Centro Oeste, v. 6, 2015, p. 11-20.

MORIN, Edgar. O cinema ou o homem imaginário: ensaio de antropologia. Lisboa:

Moraes, 1970.

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