You may think that the 1987 film Dirty Dancing is about coming of age, dance lifts, and Patrick Swayze’s arms in a tank top, and true, you’d be partly right. But it is also about the mid-century culture of the Catskills, and that resort standard included family vacations, dressing up (beige, iridescent lipstick and coral shoes included) for dinner, and fancy dining to go with the fancy duds.Burt analyzes insightfully the movie's references to pickles, pot roast, watermelons, rice pudding, beets, cabbage roll, fruit salad, sweet gherkins, toasted bagels, Jujubes and "spaghetti arms". For me, Burt's most interesting commentary is about the Houseman family's breakfasts.
However, in DD (if you’ve watched it more than 20 times, you get to abbreviate), there is the added bonus of food symbolism, illustrating character attributes, and of course, sexual innuendo ....
Grapefruit vs. breakfast plateBurt has made here a valuable contribution to the literature about Dirty Dancing. Although Burt does not illustrate her breakfast comparison, I will provide the relevant screenshots here.
This is subtle, but the morning after the good doc saves Penny’s life and Baby’s changes forever, the breakfast choices illustrate the family divide. Baby and her father are enjoying a hearty breakfast plate, while the clueless Lisa and her mother are daintily deconstructing grapefruit halves.
Does this mean that saving lives and doing the horizontal mambo works up an appetite? Or that nobody “in the know” would ever eat grapefruit for breakfast? You decide.
Jake chowing down a breakfast platter. Marjorie "daintily deconstructing grapefruit halves". |
Baby already has chowed down half of her breakfast platter. Lisa has daintily deconstructed only one segment of her half-grapefruit. |
* Jake medically examined and treated Penny's pelvis.Also, Baby is planning to sneak back to Johnny's cabin after breakfast to hump him a lot more, all day.
* Baby sexually dry-humped Johnny's pelvis.
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In contrast, Marjorie and Lisa slept all night, and so a little grapefruit gives them all the energy boost they need to start their day of relaxing all day in lounge chairs by the swimming pool.
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Beyond the consideration of calorie expenditures, the breakfast differences illustrate that Baby routinely emulates her father whereas Lisa routinely emulates her mother.
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