The Moral Premise of "Dirty Dancing"

One explanation for the success of Dirty Dancing is provided by the website The Moral Premise Blog: Story Structure Craft. The blog is written by Stanley D. Williams, whose major theme is:

Great stories are about characters who stand for something greater than themselves against all odds, even if they don't know what they're doing and even more so if they do.

Baby Houseman is such a character, and Dirty Dancing is such a story. Baby is a do-gooder who takes initiative to help other people. Baby's initiative to help Penny get an abortion leads to Baby's dancing adventure.

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Stanley D. Williams, a philosopher about
"the moral premise" in effective movies 

Mr. Williams experience in making movies is summarized as follows:

Stan Williams is an international award-winning video producer, filmmaker and show creator. Since 1972, he has managed hundreds of industrial and dramatic productions, including numerous documentaries, live shows, theater, live and broadcast television as producer, director, writer, editor, and executive producer working with both union and amateur talent.

He is Executive Producer and Director for SWC Films and Nineveh's Crossing a media distribution company that focuses on the intersection of Catholicism and Entertainment.

Williams has a special interest in Christianity. He has written a book titled Growing Up Christian: A Search for a Reasonable Faith in America's Heartland, which describes his conversion from Protestantism to Catholicism. This book has been summarized as follows:

Stan Williams was born into a Bible-believing, Evangelical home. But he was utterly confounded by all the versions of Christianity around town. Each claimed to be the exclusive caretaker of truth and interpreter of the Bible. Yet, each disparaged the others. Who had the truth? Why was the church he was raised in right and everyone else wrong? Was everyone out of step except his little denomination? How could that be true?

The last place he considered was Roman Catholicism. He was taught Catholics were not Christians. And so, his life became a fascinating, odd, and sometimes humorous journey of faith. It led him where he least expected.

From a little boy seeking adventure, to a denomination-hopping man crisscrossing America's Christian landscape, Stan Williams entertains and challenges us with over a 100 stories of his intrepid journey as he searched for a spiritual home that embraced both the faith of his fathers and the reason of natural law.

Based on his interests in Christianity and movies, Williams wrote another book, titled The Moral Premise: Harnessing Virtue and Vice for Box Office Success. This book has been summarized as follows:

The Moral Premise: Harnessing Virtue and Vice for Box Office Success reveals the foundational concept at the heart of all successful box office movies and other stories. It is a principle that has been passed down from ancient times. It is a principle that modern research has shown is in all great stories that connect with audiences.

If you ignore this principle, your story is doomed. But if you consistently apply it to each character, scene, and dramatic beat, it is the principle that will empower your storytelling, and illuminate all the other techniques you bring to the craft. It is the guiding principle of writing that allows films and all stories to be great.

In brief, the Moral Premise describes how successful motion pictures are always structured around a psychological (or spiritual) premise based on true moral values, and how screenwriters can appropriate the structural elements of the moral premise to write successful movies.

This concept has been at the heart of all successful story telling from ancient times. We find its controlling nature in the writings of Plato, the Bible, and Aesop. We find it in English Classics ... and in the many good stories of modern stage, movies, and television. Most respected writers on screenplays mention it, but they use a variety of confusing terms and never tell us how important it is ...

Williams' book The Moral Premise has been summarized well by another writer, Karen Shravemade, in a couple of articles titled The Moral Premise -- Part 1 and Applying the Moral Premise to Your Story.

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Williams has written a series of articles about the story Charlotte's Web, and I used them for an article, titled The Meaning of Charlotte's Web, that I published in another blog that I write.

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Williams teaches that a protagonist's virtuous intent must be controlled intelligently by practical considerations. Often dramatic conflict is caused by virtuous intent that has become excessive. This idea is expressed in the following illustration.

At the bottom of the illustration is a list of four extreme virtues, the first of which is Extreme kindness can lead to intrusion. This is a particular problem of Baby Houseman.

Do-gooders like Baby often cause trouble by meddling into other people's business. For example, when Baby antagonized Robbie Gould by telling him to pay for Penny Johnson's abortion -- an issue about which Baby was inadequately informed and participatory.

Baby's major moral conflict in Dirty Dancing is that she had to deceive her father in order to obtain the money for Penny's abortion. Baby was so pleased with herself about helping Penny that she ignored the moral considerations about her father. Later, however, her deception was discovered by her father, who became angry and disappointed with her. Baby then responded by blaming her father for hypocrisy instead of apologizing effectively for her deceiving him.

Moral conflict of that kind makes an interesting and compelling story. The protagonist is virtuous, but acts with good intentions excessively in one direction, thus causing vice and conflict in another direction. For example, Baby's intention to help Penny caused Baby to deceive her father. Then that deception damaged her relationship with her father. That is a thought-provoking moral lesson.

Baby should not have deceived her father. She should have told him truthfully that the money would be used illegally. She would have benefited from his wisdom; maybe he could have advised Baby toward a better resolution of Penny's problem.

By the way, the movie Dirty Dancing might be redone with an alternative twist that Baby does tell her father that she intends to pay for an illegal abortion. Then Jake might have become involved immediately in Penny's situation and caused a different series of problems. I suggest the title Dirty Doctoring.

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Stories with a moral premise teach the wisdom of establishing balance in virtuous qualities. If a virtue is deficient, then problems happen. If a virtue is excessive, then other problems happen.

For example, courage is a virtue. If a person's courage is deficient, he is a coward, which causes problems. On the other hand, if a person's courage is excessive, then he is rash, which causes other problems. A wise person is courageous moderately. Moderation of virtue is a main teaching of Nicomachean Ethics.

Williams provides the following table of virtues, along with their deficient and excessive qualities. (Click on the table to enlarge it.)