Introduction
Dirty Dancing (1987) endures as one of the most iconic coming-of-age romance films set during the pivotal cultural moment of the early 1960s. When the film begins, 17-year-old Frances “Baby” Houseman eagerly anticipates summer vacation with her affluent Jewish family at Kellerman’s, a posh resort in the Catskill Mountains. While her stern physician father and demure homemaker mother represent the last generation’s conservatism, Baby awakens to new ideas, sexuality, and social change on the horizon. Ultimately, she falls for Johnny Castle, the resort’s ruggedly handsome working-class dance instructor whose ethnic roots and sensual style contrast her sheltered background. On the surface, Dirty Dancing utilizes familiar tropes seen in countless romantic coming-of-age stories aimed at a female audience. An innocent young woman discovers love and her own sexuality by following her heart against the odds. However, deeper analysis through the intersecting lenses of feminist and critical race theories reveals more complexity lurking beneath the film’s comforting fantasy. While retaining some stereotypical elements like an exaggerated male gaze and simplified racial dynamics, Dirty Dancing nonetheless captures the impending transformation of gender roles and sexual norms during the dawn of the 1960s revolution.
This paper argues that applying an intersectional perspective exposes the film’s nuanced engagement with shifting cultural attitudes regarding gender, class, race, and sexuality. As Baby defies socioeconomic boundaries by embracing her passionate awakening with Johnny, she hints at liberalizing sexual mores taking root among American youth. At the same time, the narrative upholds certain privileges around her pleasure-focused liberation, oversimplifies racial themes, and overlooks the economic oppression faced by working-class women. Nonetheless, the film conveys both hope for progress and the need for further change across differences. Utilizing multiple lenses reveals the interwoven fabric of identity underlying Dirty Dancing’s glamorous fairy tale romance.
Baby’s Sexual Awakening
When we first meet Frances “Baby” Houseman, she epitomizes the innocence and vulnerable curiosity of youth on the brink of profound awakening. A studious 17-year-old terming herself an “outspoken radical,” Baby remains profoundly naive regarding adult relationships or sexuality (Dunagan and Fenton 2014). Though the summer of 1963 simmers with undercurrents of coming social upheaval, she focuses on little beyond winning the talent show trophy or gleaning wisdom from inspiring Peace Corps guest speakers at Kellerman’s retreat.
Baby’s charming guilelessness regarding sexual matters becomes apparent when she recoils squeamishly from her sister, joking about her virginity. “Because I am the dumb one who has to ask all the embarrassing questions,” she parries with comically pure indignation after inquiring about the crude vernacular phrase “knocked up” (Dunagan and Fenton). When her sister skeptically confirms she really has never done “it” before, Baby owns her innocence with conviction: “Why would I? I think it is gross” (Smith, 2013). Indeed, Baby personifies demure feminine virtue prized by the last generation’s stringent sexual mores – studious, idealistic, morally principled, respectful, and profoundly sheltered by her affluent physician father. She dresses practically rather than alluringly in modest cardigans and pleated A-line skirts, moving with the self-conscious hesitance of one unaccustomed to admiring male attention on her still girlish figure. Baby has scarcely entertained notions of her own awakening passions, let alone acted upon urges society deems inappropriate for well-brought-up young ladies. However, over the course of her coming-of-age journey that fateful 1963 summer, Baby’s once rigid moral worldview explodes into full Technicolor as she discovers the spectrum of adult sensuality (Smith, 2013). When she first encounters Johnny, the mysterious object of female adulation among Kellerman’s working-class staff, their electric charge attraction defies her privileged assumptions. Johnny soon initiates Baby’s education in carnal matters heretofore unfathomed, awakening the latent woman inside the blushing innocent girl (Dunagan & Fenton 2014).
Late one evening, restless and curious, Baby rejects rules and ventures beyond boundaries into uncharted sensual territory. Drawn by pulses of ecstatic drumbeats and tantalizing croons, she finds their source at a rowdy staff party in the off-limits employee quarters (Smith, 2013). Through a critical feminist lens, this scene underscores Baby’s initial blindness to class and gender assumptions as she reacts in disgust to the staff’s free hip gyrations. Her sheltered upper-middle-class background filters her perspective on appropriate expressions of sexuality along gendered lines (Smith, 2013). However, Johnny’s masculine sexual confidence dazzles her sensibilities hitherto confined to polite ballroom steps and awakens Baby to more primal urges.
Indeed, Johnny serves as the catalyst for Baby’s passage into womanhood as he guides her sexual awakening with knowing expertise. Their steamy dance interactions progress to Baby’s consummating desire completely within Johnny’s muscular embrace after nervously sneaking off to his cabin alone one night, determined to fully offer her virginal body as the ultimate proof of feminine devotion. With an amused chuckle at her endearing shyness, Johnny draws her down beside him onto the creaking cot, assured hands gliding expertly across her trembling body to gently peel back each layer of clothing until she lies nude and vulnerable beneath his approving masculine gaze (Naish, 2014). As Johnny tenderly tutors Baby in physical love, her initial wonder gives way to grasping at long last the supreme joy of sexual self-awareness and agency as she learns to actively participate as a subject, not merely an object, in erotic exchange.
Through Johnny’s skilled mentorship, Baby thus transforms from a guileless girl into a confident woman visibly commanding her sexuality and feminine wiles to enter her working-class lover. By responding to her awakening passions instead of submitting to social strictures dictating female virtue, she develops assertiveness and conviction, contrasting expectations for obedient daughterly submission (Dunagan and Fenton). When her enraged father vilifies Johnny as an unscrupulous seducer corrupting his little girl’s purity, Baby boldly stands up to parental authority for the first time, declaring her right as a woman to make intimate choices as she sees fit, regardless of external approval.
However, while Baby discovers sexuality and adult relationships predominantly through Johnny’s tutelage, some feminist critics have pointed out that this narrative frames her awakening through an exaggerated male fantasy lens (Smith, 2013). The camera often focuses salaciously on her body during dance sequences, clad provocatively in skimpy costumes of Johnny’s choosing rather than her own preferred modest attire. During rehearsals for their climactic talent show dance routine, low angle framing accentuates her spread legs wrapped ardently around Johnny as he struggles to support her weight balanced high overhead, catering voyeuristically to presumed male viewer appetite.
Rather than solely conveying feminine self-actualization, overtly sexualized scenes like this risk undermining Baby’s liberation as a subject by lingering decorative emphasis on her eroticized feminine curves through the objectifying lens of an idealized male gaze (Smith, 2013). Though Baby emerges from innocence to proudly claim her womanhood over the film’s course thanks to Johnny’s carnal tutelage, she never fully subverts enduring sexual double standards or archetypes measuring her worthiness as the female protagonist on the scale of male approval.
Class Differences Highlight Gender Roles
The romance between Baby and Johnny also highlights distinctions along gender lines stemming from their vastly different socioeconomic class backgrounds. Baby comes from an affluent family headed by a successful physician father, while Johnny’s working-class roots paint him as a dock worker’s son forced to take seasonal resort jobs to get by. Their unlikely relationship crosses firmly entrenched class boundaries, illuminating the unspoken social stratification subtly enforced at the idyllic Kellerman’s resort (Dunagan & Fenton, 2014). While romance blooms across social divides remains an enduring fairy tale fantasy trope, Johnny and Baby’s unlikely attraction growing into love reveals complex class and gender assumptions still permeating 1960s society on the brink of seismic upheaval. Champions of the dawning civil rights and women’s liberation movements might idealistically proclaim that socioeconomic status or gender constructs should pose no barriers to finding kindred spirits. However, Dr. Jake Houseman and numerous Kellerman resort guests would strenuously object to such newfangled notions. To them, class clearly signals virtue, character, and compatibility to form suitable family alliances for reproduction and child-rearing. Within the stratified Kellerman universe, class markers confer status and divide worlds between guests, esteemed professionals like entertainment director Neil Kellerman, and the anonymous seasonal working staff maintaining resort operations largely invisible until useful.
Born into upper-middle-class privilege granting comforts and security lower echelons could scarcely imagine, Baby naturally adheres to her socioeconomic sphere’s prescribed values cementing the status quo. Sure, she parrots her father’s liberal dinner table edicts that all people deserve equal dignity and chances to better themselves with hard work. However, that credo, however well-intentioned, remains an intellectual abstraction unsupported by any meaningful relationships outside her class bubble. So when Baby first ventures beyond familiar grounds after hours and stumbles into the secret staff dance party, grinding foreign music and gyrating bodies shock her senses. Hurrying back to her cushy family bungalow with its Voltaire books and Brahms lullabies, she processes dismay at these outsiders’ “dirty” Dancing verging on public indecency according to respectable standards. Little does she suspect the sultry dance instructor who dismisses her as just another slumming tourist will soon rock the foundations of her identity. Johnny Castle’s working-class confidences care little for elite credentials or conventions. Within his muscular arms, innocent Baby will discover new realms of understanding – not to mention sensual pleasure.
Because Johnny inhabits an alien masculine sphere where socioeconomic roots mire aspirations, ingrained distrust of class privilege penetrating his emotional armor requires sledgehammer force. Looking back over his shoulder, he sees how family poverty and labor chains bind him to backbreaking seasonal jobs at resorts where he regularly endures subtle humiliations and overt scorn from folks like the good doctor. Ghostly voices of his dock worker father and waitress mother, both worn prematurely old before their time, echo warnings that he will never escape their fate as the underclass serving spoiled elite offspring like Baby. So Johnny projects a carefully cultivated callous attitude, puncturing polite pretensions by cutting through to uncomfortable truths. His cocky bravado dares wealthy patrons to look down on him for roughness around the edges they secretly find compelling. Conquering a new wide-eyed female guest each summer fuels machismo central to his identity. “Teaching little Miss Privilege her first dirty dance while her daddy is not looking…” tantalizes as an especially sweet subversive male fantasy with time-honored appeal.
Therefore, Johnny feels entitled to his cavalier exploitation of female staff Penny’s crush despite callous disregard for her reputation or wellbeing. When crisis strikes in the form of Penny’s unplanned pregnancy threatening her life, Johnny’s first instincts prove typically self-interested. Without hesitation, he asks Baby to step in as his new dance partner to cover the impending loss of his existing one due to the catastrophic consequences of back-alley abortion. Only Baby’s indignant universalist morals awaken Johnny to show concern for Penny’s plight by securing the money needed for hospital care. However, his empathy emerges mainly thanks to Baby’s offer of herself as his lover. So Johnny may exhibit personal growth by getting the cash required to save Penny, but cracks remain in his moral armor. He never admits accountability for keeping naïve Penny at heartless arm’s length while benefiting from her affection. Nor does Johnny acknowledge long-term ruinous repercussions casting fallen woman Penny out of decent resort employment likely forever.
Thus, while Johnny appears sympathetic upon immediate reflection, deeper analysis reveals lingering misogyny, blaming exploited females for men’s lustful urges. Until Baby awakens his slumbering conscience, Johnny’s relaxed assurance basking in casually earned female attention smacks of privilege one notch down the food chain from the planter class guests above. Within his limited sphere, Johnny embraces male prerogatives to pursue pleasure at any humble woman’s expense without second thoughts. Their working-class status supposedly justifies masculine wiles to ensnare sexual favors from swooning subordinates blinded by romantic fantasies. In fact, Johnny’s visceral working-class resentment towards the elite he secretly envies erupts in his first dance lesson conversation with Baby. When she clumsily remarks that resort jobs must offer wonderful chances for staff friendships and fun, he retorts sarcastically: “Yeah, it’s a non-stop 24-hour flesh party, all right. I mean, I never even heard of hairdressers getting knocked up in the ladies’ room until I worked here.” Shocked by his cynical directness puncturing her naive assumptions, Baby realizes she knows nothing about realities beyond her privileged existence. Her humble sincerity risks mockery for cluelessness in Johnny’s earthy masculine presence.
Thus, beneath Johnny’s lazy charisma and seductive talent seducing admirers of all backgrounds, his dismissive disinterest in female interior lives relegates even poor Penny to a mere passing amusement. Despite his personal dreams ultimately transcending working-class destiny confined by external barriers, Johnny’s conditioned male attitudes reflect inherited biases, leaving females subject to stricter moral judgments. Limited opportunities locked Johnny into seasonal resort jobs, so Penny’s family way crisis jeopardizes his ambitions for escaping manager Max Kellerman’s economic control to launch an entertainment career in New York City (Tzioumakis, 2013). After all, losing his skilled partner threatens Johnny’s prospects just like having another mouth to feed would threaten a working-class family’s survival. So, while the film makes Johnny initially appear sympathetic given external constraints, under inspection, his response proves disproportionately self-interested relief that it’s not his mistake disrupting bright future plans. Let women like Penny alone face dire consequences for men’s roving urges.
Thus, Johnny internalized male disposability of young women’s virtue and well-being long before Baby’s influence, which helped him develop a social conscience regarding his privileges. Her beloved inspires better angels, but his moral ranks are still close protectively around fellow men first. After all, if Neil got a performer pregnant, Max would make the problem disappear without a lasting impact on his Yale medical school grandson’s ambitions. Not so for poor Johnny or Penny hanging by an economic thread despite backbreaking labor all season enabling the resort’s profits.
Even Baby’s physician father reflexively attributes Johnny’s supposed corruption of staff dancer Penny to deadbeat character flaws, contrasted with automatic favorable assumptions towards the likes of Neil. Dr. Houseman’s outraged paternalism fuels venomous accusations, “You know what I think? I think you’re a liar. I think you’re an unemployed no-good parasite who drinks and can’t keep his pants zipped!” Such contempt betrays Dr. Houseman’s privileged blindness towards gender and class biases, revealing uglier aspects of supposedly enlightened liberal 1960s attitudes. Whereas free-spirited Johnny earns visceral blame for rock music and gyrating hips bewitching his innocent daughter, Neil’s esteemed pedigree grants the benefit of the doubt as a gentlemanly scholar incapable of similarly sullying pure female virtue. So Dr. Houseman rants at his wife, “You don’t know what he did! Robbie told me that he got Penny pregnant and made her get an abortion!” Even once the truth outs that greaseball Robbie actually impregnated Penny, Dr. Houseman’s convictions waver only reluctantly given enduring elite affinity towards Ivy-pedigreed Robbie. His educated white-collar ambitions reflect respectable parental aspirations, contrasted with Johnny’s unambitious working-class toil in the doctor’s biased estimation.
Thus while Baby reacts against status judgments overriding fair assessment of individual character as she awakens to social justice consciousness, her father’s knee-jerk response exposes less tolerant prevailing hierarchies. Class clearly signals virtue conveniently tracking gender assumptions. After all, loose summer fun need not permanently disrupt Robbie’s bright future once youthful mistakes run their course, whereas equally aspiring but economically vulnerable Johnny and Penny bear blame for consequences from backseat fumblings. For they should have known better indulging reckless passions without means for handling complications endangering social mobility. So although Baby ultimately earns hard-won parental respect asserting her own identity by following her heart without their approval, social stratifications persist. Johnny may redeem himself enough to prove worthy of Baby’s love, yet never quite escape stigmatized class status, dimming her family’s enthusiasm. Lingering tension betrays Dr. Houseman’s resignation that this greaser would never have made their selective cut for potential son-in-law absent extenuating dance camp circumstances (Dunagan & Fenton, 2014). But the fairytale fantasy magic of summer’s fleeting stand outside time and space sprinkles enough pixie dust for optimistic dreams of worldly barriers falling before the young couple’s transcendent love…at least until autumn’s fading leaves return Baby and Johnny to worlds drifting inexorably apart.
Portrayal of Sexuality Reflects Changing Values
Baby’s burgeoning sexuality through her relationship with Johnny also hints at shifting sexual mores occurring during the 1960s counterculture movement. Whereas Baby’s parents embody the last generation’s demure repressed attitudes about sex, Baby’s carefree indulgence in her sensual urges under Johnny’s guidance reflect youth embracing liberalizing sexual values. Baby’s middle-class mother disapproves of her even watching the staff’s “filthy” Dancing. Meanwhile, Baby engages permissively in a sexual relationship with Johnny without shame. Dirty Dancing places Baby’s unchecked pleasure in her sexuality in stark contrast to the fate of Penny, Johnny’s original dance partner who nearly dies from a botched illegal abortion after ending up pregnant by one of the waiters (Smith, 2013). The film hints at the prevailing double standard as the men involved face no consequences in these trysts resulting in unplanned pregnancies.
Whereas the film paints Baby’s middle-class parents as prudish and disapproving regarding her overt sexuality with Johnny, they remain oblivious to the staff’s frequent love affairs and unintended pregnancies. The aborted pregnancy that threatens both Penny’s life and Johnny’s dreams poignantly captures the harsh consequences sexually active young working-class women faced in the early 1960s before Roe v. Wade legalized abortion (Rheindorf, 2004). However, the narrative resolution frames Penny’s back-alley abortion mainly through how it enables Baby to take her ill-fated place as Johnny’s partner rather than focusing on Penny’s suffering or adversity.
Ultimately, through Baby, Dirty Dancing associates female sexuality with liberation and self-discovery reflective of encroaching modern values. She engages enthusiastically in sex with Johnny out of wedlock without moral judgment or societally imposed shame. However, the unilateral celebration of Baby discovering her sexuality also glosses over the gendered double standards still prevalent at the time regarding sexual modesty and consequences faced by young women like Penny (Smith 2013). The film falls short in acknowledging lingering sexual oppression and stratification along gender and class lines. Instead, it privileges Baby’s carefree, feminine sexual pleasure as an unmitigated positive.
Racial Undertones Reveal Intersectional Complexity
Finally, while less overtly addressed, racial themes emerge through Dirty Dancing’s choreography and dance sequences that further intersectional complexities. The staff house band and much of the “dirty” Dancing originated from Black artists and early rock and roll culture, which the film never explicitly unpacks. Kellerman’s working staff skews more ethnically diverse than the WASPy, Jewish guests. Johnny even offhandedly refers to the man from whom he learned to dance as “the little black guy.” However, the film does not further explore the African-American origins and influence central to the Dancing that enables Johnny’s entire character and dramatic arc (Dunagan & Fenton, 2014).
Moreover, the climactic final talent showcase painfully erases these racial undertones, relegating Johnny’s all-Black band of staff dancers to mere back-up performers in his glamorous dance spectacle showcasing Baby. As Johnny and Baby conclude their final dazzling mambo complete with the signature dirty dancing lift, they occupy the spotlight alone as triumphant white protagonists while the nameless black staff dancers who contributed the dance styles recede wordlessly into the shadows (Monroe, 2014). This simplistic climax eliding over the African-American origins of rock, Latin dance, and even dirty Dancing itself exemplifies the film’s superficial engagement with racial dynamics. Avoiding nuanced social commentary, the narrative safely contains the liberating yet potentially threatening influences of marginalized racial identity through the whitewashed framing of its consummate dance finale. Dirty Dancing celebrates white feminine sexuality and class mobility through dance without equally acknowledging the art forms’ entanglement with disempowered racial identities. Its diluted intersectionality ultimately upholds existing privilege by sidelining non-white narratives.
Conclusion
While utilizing familiar romance and coming-of-age genre conventions, analysis through feminist and critical race theories exposes more complex social commentary within Dirty Dancing. As Baby discovers love and her own sexuality by defiantly following her heart across entrenched class boundaries, the film subtly hints at gradual liberalization of gender roles and sexual norms against the backdrop of 1960s cultural upheaval. However, the narrative falters in its simplified engagement with issues of racial appropriation and economic disempowerment that intersect with gender identity. Ultimately, the unequal narrative privilege granted Baby’s pleasure-focused sexual liberation without balancing working-class or minority perspectives undercuts the film’s progressive feminist undertones. Nonetheless, applying an intersectional lens enables a richer understanding of Dirty Dancing as not just sheer romantic fantasy but also a barometer of American social transformation across lines of gender, class, race, and sexuality during the dawn of the tumultuous Sixties.
The film leaves room for critique regarding ongoing oppression as well as hope for greater freedom, equality, and understanding between diverse groups in seasons yet to come. As viewers, we can acknowledge the social limitations conveyed through its glamorous fairy tale resolution while still finding inspiration that binaries of gender, race, and class might gradually dissolve through the language of music, dance, and universal human connection. The utopian promise of the film’s conclusion – through determination and the alchemy of shared culture – perhaps we can still come together as one. However, the film’s simplistic portrayal of racial dynamics and female empowerment also reflects lingering biases still prevalent in 1980s American society when it debuted. Though Dirty Dancing celebrates Baby’s sexual liberation and romantic idealism, harsh realities facing sexually active young working-class women underline her privileged narrative position. We see those painful consequences through Penny’s near-death back-alley abortion absent other opportunities.
Similarly, while the Dancing so central to the film’s thematic arcs clearly originated from African-American artists and rock/Latin musical innovation, the narrative downplays these critical influences. Johnny’s climactic talent show performance relegates his all-black band to muted back-up dancers celebrating his showcase with Baby as lead white protagonists. This diluted engagement with racial representation perpetuates ongoing appropriation and erasure, still requiring remedy through conscious acknowledgment and effort. Nonetheless, Dirty Dancing retains value as an escapist fantasy hinting at the seeds of positive social change through romance, defiantly pursuing connection across differences. If we supplement its well-intentioned but simplified narrative engagement with marginalized perspectives, the film can still inspire hopeful visions for greater equality, understanding, and celebration of our shared humanity in the dance of life.
Reference
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Dunagan, C., & Fenton, R. (2014). Dirty Dancing. Dance, Class, and Race in the Pursuit of Womanhood. The Oxford Handbook of Dance and the Popular Screen, 135.
Monroe, R.L. (2014). ‘“The White Girl in the Middle”: The Performativity of Race, Class and Gender in Step Up 2: The Streets’. In Borelli, M.B. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Dance and the Popular Screen. Oxford University Press.
Naish, S.L. (2017). Dirty Dancing: An Ethnography of Lap-Dancing. Zed Books.
Rheindorf, M. (2004). The multiple modes of Dirty Dancing. Perspectives on multimodality, 137-152.
Smith, F. (2013). ‘The time of our lives: Dirty Dancing and popular culture’. New Review
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