The movie will revolve around sexy dancingBergstein decided to set the story before 1973 because that was year when the US Supreme Court legalized abortion. I speculate that Bergstein set the story in 1963 simply because that year was one decade before that legalization. Her story would depict the horrors of illegal abortion one decade before abortion was legalized.
The movie will be about two women -- a professional dancer and an amateur dancer
The professional dancer gets an abortion
The movie will portray the consequences of laws that prohibit abortion
The story will take place before 1973
The two women will be Penny Johnson and Vivian Pressman
Penny will become pregnant from a non-dancer
The story will take place at a Catskill resort
The Houseman family enters the story
The movie would depict the dilemma of an unmarried professional dancer -- Penny Johnson -- who has become pregnant. Penny's married friend -- Vivian Pressman -- would help Penny get an illegal abortion, but Penny would suffer various consequences to her health and career.
No seventeen-year-old girl was in the story. Rather, the two main characters were women in their mid-twenties. In 1963, Bergstein was 25 years old -- about the age of Penny and Vivian in the story.
The Vivian character was based on Bergstein herself. In her younger years, Vivian had planned to become a professional dancer, but then she abandoned her dancing career because she married and devoted herself mostly to her family. However, she spent a few weeks at a Catskill resort every summer teaching dance along with Penny.
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This all is merely my speculation. I have practically no evidence for any of it.
As Bergstein thought more and more about the year 1963, she felt compelled to point out that her story was taking place shortly before the beginning of a a major social upheaval in the USA. Soon President Kennedy would be assassinated, the Beatles would come to America, the Civil Rights Act would become law, and so forth.
Those imminent events certainly would affect Penny and Vivian, but both those women were already in their mid-twenties. By that adult age, their personalities, attitudes and ambitions were quite established. Their lives' trajectories would not be changed by the assassination of JFK and the arrival of the Beatles.
This consideration (I speculate) caused Bergstein to insert a seventeen-year-old girl into her story as the new main character. A character of such young age might look back many years later and find that her life indeed change its trajectory significantly soon right August 1963.
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In fact, American society did not change visibly much right after the assassination of President Kennedy in November 1963 and the arrival of the Beatles in February 1964. The visible change did not become blatant until 1967 -- until the so-called Summer of Love.
The 1967 Summer of Love would have coincided with Baby Houseman's graduation from college. That was the time of her life when her life would have changed its trajectory most significantly.
It was in 1967 that the Beatles released their break-through album Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
In 1967, Bergstein was 29 years old -- as were the original Dirty Dancing story's main characters -- Penny Johnson and Vivian Pressman. They were almost 30 at a time when the rebellious younger generation was declaring, "Don't trust anyone over 30!"
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Anachronistically, Dirty Dancing features one 1967 song -- "Love Man", performed by Otis Redding. This particular song is significant in the story because plays when Baby tries "dirty dancing" for the first time.
This song evokes not the year 1963, when the story takes place, but rather the year 1967, when the social upheaval became blatant.
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Below is a list of the movie's period-piece songs that were released no later than 1963.
Be My Baby -- released in 1963Except "Wipe Out", all these songs were middle-of-the-road, melodic, lyrical, romantic songs that would have fit easily into the popular songs of the complacent, conformist 1950s. None of the above songs express any social protest or rebellion.
Big Girls Don't Cry -- released in 1962
Do You Love Me? -- released in 1962
Stay -- released in 1960
Wipe Out -- released in 1963
Hey, Baby -- released in 1961
Some Kind of Wonderful -- released in 1961
These Arms of Mine -- released in 1962
Cry to Me -- released in 1962
Will You Love Me Tomorrow? -- released in 1962
Love Is Strange -- released in 1956
You Don't Own Me -- released in 1963
In the Still of the Night -- released in 1956
For that reasons, the above-listed songs are apt, because they do characterize the our society that was pleasant and prosperous but was becoming ripe by the mid-1960s for an upheaval. The continuing prohibition of abortion was -- in many people's opinion -- a symptom of social and political stagnation.
In 1963, plenty of popular songs did express social protest, but they were the songs of the American Folk Music Revival.
In 1963, Baby Houseman was not complacent; she wanted to change the world. However, her sister Lisa, just a year or two older, was complacent.
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The setting of the story in 1963 was a factor in the movie's box-office success in 1987. People who themselves had been 17 years old in 1963 were about 41 years old in 1987. The movie's audience included many middle-age adults who remembered nostalgically their own teenage lives in the early 1960s.
Suppose Bergstein had set her story in the year 1955, when she herself was 17 years old. The movie audience would not have included so many people who personally remembered their own teenage lives in the mid-1950s.
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I speculate that Bergstein set her story in 1963 merely because that year was ten years before the Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973. Bergstein worried that Ronald Reagan, who had become President in 1981 and who began his second four-year term in 1985, would appoint new Supreme Court justices who would make abortion illegal again.
Bergstein wanted her story to remind people about the problems that had been caused by the prohibition of abortion just ten years before the legalization.
Bergstein's original story was about the effects, in 1963, of the abortion prohibition on two women in their mid-twenties. One woman had abandoned her dance career to marry and raise a family, while the other woman had continued to pursue a dance career. The latter woman became pregnant and wanted an abortion, and so the first woman helped her get an abortion.
As Bergstein thought about the year 1963, however, she recognized that it was a year when a major social upheaval was imminent. Bergstein decided that she could improve her story if her main character would declare plausibly that the year 1963 would become a turning point in her life. Such a declaration was more plausible if the character were 17 years old (rather than 25 years old) in 1963.
Therefore Bergstein introduced the 17-year-old character Baby Houseman into this story that takes place in 1963. That new character brought along into the story the Houseman family, with its various dynamics and conflicts.
The Penny character remained about the same, but the Vivian character was disassociated from Penny and from the abortion. Vivian became even a villain in the story.
The year 1963 was the social calm before the social storm, which became blatant in 1967. The Catskill resort society of 1963 became a "lost world" after 1967.
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On one hand, Bergstein's story depicted the year 1963 as a bad time -- when abortion was illegal and so even professional women in their mid-twenties, such as Penny Johnson, suffered the consequences of that illegality.
On the other hand, the story depicted the year 1963 as a time of great fun and even triumph for Baby Houseman. The movie reminds us about some of the popular music of the early 1960s. The movie reminds us also about beautiful clothing fashions and supportive family life of that period.
Very importantly, the movie reminded the 1987 movie audiences about ballroom dancing, the popularity of which had declined greatly after 1963. The movie is not really about "dirty dancing". The movie is really about ballroom dancing.
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