Dirty Dancing (1987)
Directed by Emile Ardolino
Written by Eleanor Bergstein
Starring Patrick Swayze, Jennifer Grey, Jerry Orbach, Kelly Bishop
Release Date August 25th, 1987
“It’s nothing, Marjorie, go back to sleep.”
As I watched Dirty Dancing for the first time in several years, this seemingly throwaway line from Jerry Orbach to Kelly Bishop, as the parents of Jennifer Grey’s Frances “Baby” Houseman, struck me. Orbach's Jake, a wealthy doctor, has just returned to his bungalow at this Catskills Hotel after having given treatment to Cynthia Rhodes’ Penny who has just undergone what at the time was referred to as a back-alley abortion. This was after she’d been knocked up by Robbie, a selfish snob doing time to raise money he doesn’t need for his Ivy League education.
The line struck me because of the way in which it spoke volumes in just six words. Here was past and future colliding; generational values only beginning to be challenged and two symbols of the supposed Greatest Generation, one in denial urging the other two go back to sleep and pretend time isn’t passing them and their values by. Seven years after when Dirty Dancing is set, Roe v. Wade would give women their first victory in reclaiming their bodies and their decisions from the white male patriarchy.
I realize that a review of Dirty Dancing is not the most likely place for a discussion of issues like abortion but that’s what makes this seeming trifle of 80s nostalgia so powerful, in of all places, the Reagan Era, when it seemed as if the Eisenhower, 50s family values crowd was making comeback after having defeated the hippies while getting millions of people killed to reclaim their supposed family values, here is Dirty Dancing, a musical with this innocent, almost Disney-esque sheen to it, to remind us what so many people had fought and died for. Change.
This theme of how the times they are a changing plays as the Greek Chorus of Dirty Dancing, always popping up in the background, playing peek-a-boo behind the graceful coming of age love story between Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze’s electrifying Johnny Castle, a man who looks like he just walked off the poster of some bad seed, Hayes Code era, motorcycle picture. Keeping with the theme, Baby is the idealistic innocent swept up in the change that people like Johnny are busy bringing about.
Find my full length review at Geeks.Media
