Why Dirty Dancing is a subversive feminist… | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

Why Dirty Danc­ing is a sub­ver­sive fem­i­nist masterpiece

12 Aug 2017

Words by Lara C Cory

A romantic couple embracing and kissing passionately on a wooden floor.
A romantic couple embracing and kissing passionately on a wooden floor.
There’s so much more to this lusty 80s hit than meets the eye.

The sto­ry of Baby and John­ny at Kellerman’s resort in the sum­mer of 1963 remains for many, the ulti­mate roman­tic fan­ta­sy. It saved two young women from bomb­ing in Bosnia, pro­vides instant com­fort in Russia’s bat­tered women’s shel­ters and even helped to bring down the Berlin Wall, accord­ing to The Guardian’s Pol­ly Vernon.

If the names Baby and John­ny don’t ring a bell for you, then chances are you won’t care too much that it’s the 30th anniver­sary of the lusty 80s hit Dirty Danc­ing – but maybe you should, because there’s so much more to the film than its roman­tic veneer sug­gests. While the sto­ry seems like out-and-out fan­ta­sy, it was in fact based on the life expe­ri­ences of cre­ator, writer and teenage mam­bo queen Eleanor Berg­stein, who once said of the project, there’s not a sec­ond in it that isn’t in some way part of my life and my history.”

Look beyond the decep­tive­ly raunchy open­ing cred­its and you’ll realise that the steamy romance was all just a clever vehi­cle for a crit­i­cal, social and polit­i­cal por­trait of Amer­i­can life in the 60s, and that Dirty Danc­ing is, in fact, an endur­ing piece of fem­i­nist cinema.

Shot on a mod­est bud­get and fea­tur­ing two up-and-com­ing leads, the film received a luke­warm response upon its ini­tial release. Then, over the fol­low­ing month, the film became a word-of-mouth sen­sa­tion, end­ing up as one of the high­est-gross­ing films of 1987 and break­ing records in the home video mar­ket. Sales remains strong even today and the film has spawned a ver­i­ta­ble micro-econ­o­my of tours, week­ends away, doc­u­men­taries, remakes, sound­tracks and even a live-show.

In Bergstein’s mind, the set­ting of Dirty Danc­ing was the last sum­mer of lib­er­al­ism” and the coun­try was on the brink of change. Mar­tin Luther King Jr had just deliv­ered his famous I Have a Dream’ speech and JFK was still pres­i­dent. Two months lat­er,” as Berg­stein notes, Kennedy was killed, the Bea­t­les came in, and a few months lat­er, Rad­i­cal Action started.”

Dis­guised as char­ac­ter and nar­ra­tive manoeu­vres, the script is pep­pered with sub­tle com­men­tary on the divide between socio-eco­nom­ic stra­ta, race rela­tions, cen­sor­ship and sex­u­al lib­er­a­tion. Set 10 years before the land­mark Roy ver­sus Wade case, the ille­gal abor­tion sub­plot was extreme­ly impor­tant for Berg­stein, who told Cos­mopoli­tan ear­li­er this year, if you’re going to put some­thing like this in, you bet­ter rhythm it so pre­cise­ly into the plot that when the day come – the day will come – when they ask you to take it out, you can’t with­out the movie falling apart. Because if it can be tak­en out, it will be.”

She also revealed to anoth­er pub­li­ca­tion that if you do a doc­u­men­tary on coat hang­er abor­tions, the only peo­ple who see it will be those who agree with you any­way. If you put one in a wide-based musi­cal with pret­ty clothes, and lots of romance, it may sur­prise peo­ple and make them think of things they didn’t think of before.”

Han­dled with empa­thy and with­out judge­ment the abor­tion is just one of the many ele­ments that make Dirty Danc­ing a fem­i­nist film. Oth­er notable box-office hits of 1987 includ­ed Three Men and a Baby, Bev­er­ly Hills Cop II, Good Morn­ing Viet­nam, The Untouch­ables, Stake­out and Lethal Weapon. In a cin­e­mat­ic cli­mate filled with machis­mo, Dirty Danc­ing was one of the only films where a lead­ing female char­ac­ter – an awk­ward, opin­ion­at­ed vir­gin no less – pos­sessed the agency to change the lives of the peo­ple in her life.

Frances Baby” House­man, played by Jen­nifer Grey, is the youngest daugh­ter of the well-to-do Jew­ish Doc­tor (Jer­ry Orbach). Baby becomes the eager go-between for the rough and row­dy work­ing-class staff at Keller­mans and the elit­ist, enti­tled clien­tele, all because she car­ried a water­mel­on.” This now icon­ic line res­onates because it rep­re­sents all the rea­sons Baby is so beloved and enno­bled, the inep­ti­tude we all feel when we’re out of our depth. As Les­ley Kinzel observes this is such a human moment.”

Grey’s ter­rif­i­cal­ly nuanced per­for­mance cap­tures so beau­ti­ful­ly, the way Baby is caught between attrac­tion and embar­rass­ment.” Baby’s naivety about life, social pol­i­tics and the staff’s less-than-friend­ly response to the priv­i­lege she rep­re­sents, cre­ates ten­sion that not only adds to the com­plex­i­ty of char­ac­ter, but makes the rela­tion­ship between her and Patrick Swayze’s lithe and vul­ner­a­ble Jon­ny Cas­tle all the more compelling.

The true hero of the sto­ry, Baby’s actions and courage, help her father and her lover learn to for­give, to change and ulti­mate­ly grow as peo­ple. Grey’s endear­ing­ly coura­geous Baby and Swayze’s fault­less­ly earnest John­ny, while fraught with fric­tion behind the scenes, pro­vid­ed one of the most gen­uine­ly inti­mate, play­ful and sen­su­al romances ever to hit the screen and all with­out so much as one nip­ple in sight. The chem­istry between Grey and Swayze was so pal­pa­ble that play­backs of their dance test-screen con­vinced the two to over­come their dif­fer­ences and push on to give career-defin­ing performances.

Dirty Danc­ing is a wolf in sheep’s cloth­ing, and its potent mes­sage is as rel­e­vant today as it was 30 years ago. On the film’s 25th anniver­sary Berg­stein told usnews​.com, When I made the movie, there was a sense that, hey, all those bat­tles were fought, why are you talk­ing about these things that don’t mat­ter any­more? The sad thing is that these are still issues, and the love­ly thing is that peo­ple are see­ing that in this.”

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