I’ve never felt this way before
I watched Dirty Dancing again last night and was again wowed by what a brilliant love story it is. The movie is such a classic I won’t even try to go into all the reasons it’s fantastic, because I’m guessing a lot of you already know them. Everything about this movie is perfect, basically. It’s also the ultimate feel-good movie. My roommate was having a bad day yesterday, and I said, “Hey, come watch Dirty Dancing with us, it’ll make you feel better.” She said, “I just watched it.”
Also, the dancing! Not only is it sexy and amazing, but the dancers always look like they’re having so much fun. Fun fact: Kenny Ortega, the choreographer, was also responsible for the fantastic dancing in Newsies, another movie that will probably end up in one of my ftE.com posts.
What particularly struck me last night, though, was that this is my favorite kind of love story: what Sarah Rees Brennan calls transformative romance. My favorite flavor of romance isn’t star-crossed lovers or soulmates or people who are meant for each other or love each other more than anyone else on earth (although I love plenty of stories with those tropes in them). No, it’s stories about the power of love to change minds, and lives. To change people. (Cf. “Beauty and the Beast” and also the Star Trek movie franchise.) I eat that stuff up.
What’s beautiful about Johnny and Baby’s story is that their relationship, even though it isn’t permanent, changes them in ways that are. They’re both afraid to fight for themselves, but when they have to fight for each other, they realize they can.
When Baby tells Mr. Kellerman and her father that she’s been spending the night with Johnny, she does it to protect him. But when she confronts her father afterwards, that’s for herself. She’s fighting to be seen for who she is, to be loved for who she is. She’s fighting to make her father believe that she can change the world not just by getting a good education and using it to help other people from a safe distance, but by thinking and living differently. By living the way she wants to, and loving who she wants to. By being herself.
And when Johnny sticks up for Baby to her father, when he says “Nobody puts Baby in a corner,” he’s also saying that no one can put him in a corner. He’s sticking up for himself: for his right to speak and be heard, even by people richer than him; for his right to participate in the planning of the summer’s final dance as an equal with Neil Kellerman; for his passionate desire to dance even though the world’s already planned a life for him in the house painters’ union; for his right to be with Baby and love who he chooses instead of servicing rich women who don’t believe he’s a person. And it’s also his answer to Baby’s father, when Johnny said, “If you could see what I see when I look at Baby–” and Dr. Houseman interrupted, “Don’t tell me what to see!” He’s saying, “Yes. Listen to me, and look at what I see. Because I see something different than you do and what I see matters.”
When Johnny makes that speech about Baby showing him something about what kind of person he wants to be, I melt. Love changes lives, you guys.
Also, I know y’all want to watch that final dance scene now. You can do that here.
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OMG. I was so into this movie when it came out. I bought the cutoff jeans and Keds, and both soundtracks, and I remixed them onto a single tape because they had the songs all out of order, and I had the poster on my bedroom wall, and and and.
OMG you sound like the coolest kid ever! Also I HATE when songs are out of order on a soundtrack…
Wow. I guess maybe it was a girl thing? I remember that at the time my ENTIRE reaction to the Dirty Dancing phenomenon was: “Jennifer Gray? Not that hot.”
I will admit that the line “nobody puts Baby in a corner” has given me DECADES of delight, though. How does something like that get added to the cultural lexicon? What does it even mean? Is it not weird that the girl in this move is named “Baby?”
My dearly departed father loved Dirty Dancing, Matt. Are you calling him a girl? WELL ARE YOU!
He did, though. He had Dirty Dancing, Footloose and Flashdance on VHS and sometimes when he was drunk and giddy, he put them on and fast-forwarded to their big dance finales.
But he loved them all the way through.
My dad loves Dirty Dancing too! Not as much as my mom, though, she had the world’s biggest crush on Patrick Swayze in that movie…
Possibly it *was* a girl thing, but it doesn’t have to be now. You’re a grown-up, you can revel in Dirty Dancing with the rest of us. See what you’re missing! Never mind the love story, this is a movie about three things American movies never talk about: class, reproductive rights, and Jewish people.
In case you can’t tell, I’m a big fan. <3
EXACTLY. She’s Jewish and she’s NOT hot and she has a brain and she wants to join the Peace Corps and she doesn’t want to be a rich girl untouchable deb who only worries about clothes and class. Also? She totally seduces him! For real, she makes her own choices and decides she’s ready for sex and she makes the first move and is totally decisive about it.
It really IS a great movie in a lot of ways – the dancing and cheese is just part of the fun!
I love Baby hardcore. I wish I had seen the movie when it first came out — I could have used a hero like her at the time. Instead, my first viewing was just a year ago. I was still won over, of course.
Yes yes yes!!! Baby is so fantastic. <3 And I love how much she loves dancing and how hard she works on the routine.
It continues to be amazing and wonderful to me how universal the movie’s appeal seems to be when I watch it and it’s like the most Jewish thing ever. It’s like when I found out Woody Allen is really big in France. Like…what?
It is super-duper Jewish, in a way most Woody Allen movies aren’t (he tends to be the only Jewish person in them, have you noticed?). It makes me happy.
Actually, like three minutes in she says “It was 1963[...]when everyone called me Baby and it didn’t occur to me to mind.” Think of it as like Mad Men! That’s a thing guys like, right?
Also, Paul says: “Jennifer Gray? SMOKING hot.”
He agrees with you on the “nobody puts Baby in a corner” thing, though.