The movie is many things at once

Michał Oleszczyk, a Polish critic of movies, has written an article titled Summer of ‘87: Dirty Dancing, Take One that was published by the Slant website. Oleszczyk is a contributor also to the Roger Ebert movie-reviewing website, which has described Oleszczyk as follows:

Michał Oleszczyk is a film critic and scholar based in Poland. In 2012, he has been named the Critic of the Year by the Polish Film Institute.

His work has appeared in numerous Polish outlets, as well as on American websites such as Fandor, The House Next Door and Hammer to Nail.

Oleszczyk wrote the first Polish book on the films of Terence Davies and has published a translation of J. Hoberman and Jonathan Rosenbaum’s Midnight Movies. After having defended a Ph.D. thesis on the work of Pauline Kael, he has taught film at Polish universities, as well as worked as a programmer for Off Plus Camera International Film Festival.

Michał Oleszczyk

Oleszczyk's article about Dirty Dancing includes the following passages:

.... The film is surprisingly levelheaded in its avoidance of agitation about matters of sex. Apart from the steamy dancing they practice together, Baby and Johnny have no coital scenes — those are always nipped out by a discreet cut .... These kids are a pair of instantly mature lovers, enjoying sex without freaking out about it. ...

The movie is many things at once:

* a distaff coming-of-age story,

* a Marxist parable of dancing and sex as simultaneously class-reaffirming and class-leveling forces,

* a period piece,

* a backstage musical, with an unwanted pregnancy enabling the aspiring performer to get her big break and shine (thus replacing the traditional 42nd Street ankle injury).

Contrary to another celebrated generation gap musical — Bye Bye Birdie, shot the same year Baby’s adventures take place — Dirty Dancing is not a spoof of the early 1960s’ pop-fueled teen discontents, but rather a loving recreation of an era that’s deliberately rendered just this side of goofy.

The Catskills resort itself, with Wayne Knight ostensibly fine-tuning his later Newman-cackle in the role of an outlandish barker-cum-emcee, seems like a funhouse image of lazy, exaggerated privilege. The cynical owner of the place (played by Jack Weston), as well as his reptilian princeling (Lonny Price) are mere ciphers, designed to provide a trial for Baby’s classless creed and moral resilience, both of which prove to be unbreakable.

The film’s oddest creation is by far Patrick Swayze’s Johnny. While there can be no doubt that this is Baby’s story (since the entire plot serves to vindicate her correct moral instincts), Johnny is a fascinating specimen of Frankenstein-like approach to patching a character together from assorted pieces of pop mythology. Athletic and forlorn, aloof yet affable, forever hinging at the cusp of gulp-inducing shirtlessness, Swayze is part Marlon Brando, part Conrad Birdie in the making. His looks are destined to make the audience swoon; his righteousness starts as abrasive (when he treats Baby with derision) and ends up being celebrated (when Baby’s dad apologizes to him for priggishly assuming he was the father of the aborted child). Johnny is presented as both victim of sex-starved older women he depends on and as a near-virgin (he’s been saving his heart, so to speak). He’s both experienced and pure: a perfect teenage-girl-fantasy construct. ...

Dirty Dancing proved apparently too much to handle for the dying Communist regime in Poland, and thus remained unreleased in this writer’s homeland until 1989, when people were already subconsciously preparing for a mambo danced upon the remnants of the Berlin Wall ... Rendered near-impossible to get into for me and my horny older friends by its Polish distributor’s suicidal title change (Spinning Sex), the film gained its second life within the burgeoning VHS-craze of the early Nineties.

The glow given off by Patrick Swayze’s fantasy incarnate — as silly as it is irresistible — has enveloped an entire generation and to this day is being referred to as a landmark of erotic assurance ....

Twenty-five years after its premiere, Dirty Dancing is still the ultimate, filth-free teenage dream of sex as a fiery fulfillment of the era-defining fantasy of making love, not war — which at the time of the film’s opening must have felt much more quaint than “dirty.”