Dirty Dancing - Why am I reviewing this?

A very good question.  Well I happened to be at a small Christmas gathering last night and someone had the TV on.  Upon it there was Channel 5 (though not in HD on a massive HD TV - what on earth is the point?) showing the 1980s cult classic upon which this blog post will focus.  I have a slightly strange relationship with this film.  My Mum was a huge fan and my recollection is that she watched a VHS recording almost on repeat through a portion of the early 1990s.  Back in those days there was only 1 screen in the house, and as such it formed a small part of the background to my upbringing.  Seeing it again last night, I was surprised at the familiarity of the beats and cues of the film, almost as surprised as I was by the adult themes that had largely gone over my head as a 12 year old.

For those who have been living in a cave for the last 25 years, the premise is thus.  The Houseman family go for their summer holidays at a resort in upstate New York.  'Baby' Houseman (Jennifer Grey) is a young woman who falls in love with the resort's hotter-than-hot dancer Johnny Castle (Patrick Swayze).  Citizen Kane it is not.

Sounds simple right?  Well it is.  So why is it so popular?  Well it's a question that on the surface has an obvious answer, but one can go slightly deeper and understand something about storytelling.  The obvious answer is that Patrick Swayze has amazing abs and dances like a god.  Women love dancing and washboard abs - so success is guaranteed right?  Well not quite.  Dirty Dancing is a film with a surprising amount of heart; it deals with issues of abortion, abuse, growing up and - crucially - has a central character in Baby who is the perfect every-woman.  Baby is assertive and confident, but also very vulnerable when she doesn't understand what's going on.  She has a father who is strong, understanding, supportive and emotional; he is a rock when she needs strength and breaks down in tears when she has disappoints him.  Oh and her lover is Patrick Swayze.  Who wouldn't want to be Baby?

This is the thing that so many rubbish films get so wrong.  It isn't enough to just tickle our visual taste buds (I'm talking about guns and action here just as much as I am talking about bums and abs), a film needs to have an emotional connection to make you care.  Don't get me wrong, Dirty Dancing isn't my kind of film, but I can relate to what is going on and I understand why it has come to touch the hearts of so many women (I would say 'people', but let's not kid ourselves eh?) out there in the movie-going world.

Of course there are numerous criticisms that we can legitimately level at the film.  For a start the sound track isn't completely of the 1960s, which is a huge mid-step for a film that works very hard to establish itself in that pre-Vietnam era.  Also it suffers from same as the main problem I have with the Twilight saga, which is that the main character is little more than an empty vessel on to which female viewers are encouraged to cast their own personalities.  I would argue that this criticism has less weight here than in the Twilight saga, here Baby's father and family have crushed her individuality and expression out of her, so we might expect her personality to be a little thin.  However I agree that this is one of the film's major weaknesses.

Certainly no-one is going to be persuaded to watch Dirty Dancing or not as a result of this blog.  These are merely some musings on a cult film that has firmly entrenched its place in the zeitgeist over the last 25 years.  I shall try to get another review in before 2017 - would be a bit weird to end the year on a film that was released in 1987 after all!