The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015. Remaining movies: 289 Days to go: 278
Movie #88: Dirty Dancing
Dirty Dancing is classified as a romance, a romantic drama, a chick flick. What it really is, is a coming of age story for women. The coming of age story is a time-honored tradition that is revered around the world in many of its forms — but almost exclusively with regard to the coming of age of men. That is not to say there aren’t coming of age stories about women — there are many — but they are frequently downplayed as something niche, something not palatable for large audiences, as if more than half the population wouldn’t be predisposed to relate to them. Still, the term “chick flick” is almost always said with a tone of derision, of snide condescension. Even in Sleepless in Seattle — a movie I love — when Rita Wilson’s character explains the plot of An Affair to Remember and Tom Hanks’s and Victor Garber’s characters start crying about the plot of The Dirty Dozen — a scene I love — the hilarity comes from the idea of chick flicks being silly emotional sobfests.
Yes, there is romance in Dirty Dancing, but there is romance in almost all coming of age stories, because love is something that grows within us as we come of age, as well as something that brings about that change. Love matures us and matures because of us. The evolution and discovery of romantic feelings for someone is a hallmark of growing up.
The opening lines of Dirty Dancing introduce this as a coming of age film right away when Baby (Jennifer Grey) says in voiceover: “That was the summer of 1963 – when everybody called me Baby, and it didn’t occur to me to mind. That was before President Kennedy was shot, before the Beatles came, when I couldn’t wait to join the Peace Corps, and I thought I’d never find a guy as great as my dad. That was the summer we went to Kellerman’s.” It’s a story of an innocent — they literally call her Baby — on the verge of a great awakening, in her personal life and in the world at large.
Baby is incredibly idealistic at the start of the film, and also incredibly privileged but almost too naive to realize it. She really sees no issue with her helping with the luggage or wandering into all areas of the resort or consorting with the lower-class dance staff. (“I carried a watermelon??”) She sees people for who they are — including the reprehensible Robbie Gould (Max Cantor) the rest of her family is so impressed by just because he goes to Yale and flatters Baby’s sister Lisa (Jane Brucker). The coming of age, then, is a cruel introduction to the fact that some people are given the benefit of the doubt and others are forever under suspicion — how she can prove Johnny’s (Patrick Swayze)innocence by revealing her relationship with him, but he can still be punished because he had the audacity to be with a girl above his social class — to step out-of-bounds. And no matter that she came to him, he’s clearly seen as having taken advantage of her, and she is seen as having been sullied somehow, of having been taken advantage of.
That inequality registered strongly with me. When Baby confronts her father (Jerry Orbach, who I still miss every day as Lennie Briscoe on Law & Order) about the double standard he raised her with — “You told me everyone was alike and deserved a fair break, but you meant everyone who was like you. You told you wanted me to change the world, to make it better, but you meant by becoming a lawyer or an economist and marrying someone from Harvard” — it really stuck with me that there are all sorts of injustices out there, and they can’t be fixed by lip service. They have to be addressed by actually doing things differently, by walking the walk. And I love that while Baby has stood up for everything she’s believed in in this movie — has defended Johnny and has looked out for everyone else — that when she’s disillusioned by the outcome, he is the one who fights for her, because if nothing else, she has made a difference in his life and she has taught him change is possible.
I’ve seen Dirty Dancing more times than I could ever count — I know every inflection and every goofy sound Jennifer Grey makes through the entire thing (there are lots of them) — but honestly the things I love the most are so tiny I wonder if anyone else has noticed them. In the family’s first merengue lesson, for example, Penny (Cynthia Rhodes) has the men join her in a round robin and the ladies to do the same in an inner circle (“Come on, ladies, God wouldn’t have given you maracas if he didn’t want you to shaaaake ‘eemmmm.”) and when she says stop, the ladies will find the “man of their dreams.” When they stop, Baby is faced with her father, but is cut off by Penny, who takes his hand instead, leaving Baby to dance with an apparently addled little old lady we’ll find out later is Mrs. Schumacher — the very woman whose subversive behavior leads to the climactic ending that exposes Baby’s relationship with Johnny. Or when Johnny and Baby come back from the performance at the Sheldrake (and Baby has conveniently changed into a pretty, lacy bra from the boring Cross-Your-Heart deal she had on earlier that day when trying on the dress with Penny’s help) and Johnny checks her out in his rearview mirror as she changes — or flat-out turns around — like a half-dozen times (I’ve counted). Or how Max (Jack Weston) is completely blind to the cougar sexpot tendencies of Mrs. Vivian Pressman (Miranda Garrison). Or how Neil (Lonny Price) is such an oblivious, awful, arrogant snob, literally all the time. It’s really funny.
The movie is also great because of the dancing and the perfectly integrated soundtrack and because it features the great Kelly Bishop (of Gilmore Girls and Bunheads) as Baby’s mom, though it’s unfortunate she doesn’t have more to do than fail at golfing and saying “I think she gets this from me,” when Baby and Johnny dance their final dance.
Dirty Dancing resonated with a lot of women when it came out — I remember hearing about a club of people who had all seen it more than a hundred times — not just for the romance but for the story of women coming into their own, of finding their way. A friend once said that “Nobody puts Baby in a corner” was such a strong statement for teenagers — and her especially — at that time, is because at that age it always feels like someone is putting you in a corner, especially as a young woman always being silenced by experience and circumstance. She was exactly right, of course. There have been many times when I was younger, and even some as I’ve grown, when I felt put in a corner, when I felt my voice silenced. I think most women can relate to that feeling, which makes Dirty Dancing a hugely significant movie, not just a chick flick.
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