The movie
Dirty Dancing takes place during the 1963 summer vacation of the Houseman family at a Borscht Belt resort hotel that caters to Jewish families. The Houseman family consisted of the parents, Doctor Jake Houseman and Marjorie Houseman, and two daughters, Lisa and Baby (Frances).
The family regularly ate in the hotel dining room, where they were served by a waiter named Robbie Gould. He himself had grown up in a family that visited this resort hotel. Since he began to attend college, he has worked during his summer vacations as a waiter in this resort hotel. By the summer of 1963 he has been accepted into Yale Medical School.
When the movie’s story begins, the Housemans already are acquainted with Robbie Gould, although the reason is not explained. Perhaps Robbie’s father was a medical colleague of Doctor Houseman. Perhaps the two families had met at the resort hotel in a previous summer. Perhaps Robbie had served the Houseman family as a waiter during a previous summer.
During the first days of the Housemans’ stay at the resort hotel, Robbie began to court the older sister Lisa. The basic romance between Robbie and Lisa was not kept secret from the hotel resort’s owners or from the rest of the Houseman family. The hotel resort’s owner has encouraged the waiters – all of whom are Jewish and successful college students – to flirt with the Jewish families’ daughters of marriageable age.
In one of the very first days of the Housemans’ vacation, the Houseman mother Marjorie and her two daughters were participating together in a group activity of trying on wigs and cosmetics. Robbie approached Lisa, who was sitting near Marjorie and Baby, and joked to Lisa: “Ask not what your waiter can do for you, but what you can do for your waiter” – an allusion to President John Kennedy, who was in office during that summer of 1963. Robbie remarked also to Lisa that he was saving his tips to buy an Alfa Romero automobile, and Lisa immediately exclaimed: “That’s my favorite car.”
Robbie and Lisa were flirting publicly, and neither her mother Marjorie nor her sister Baby paid attention although the flirting was taking place in their presence. After Lisa and Robbie talked quietly some more, Lisa confided to Baby that she intended to go that night with Robbie to spend some time together secretly on the golf course. Lisa asked Baby to lie to their parents about her whereabouts if the parents asked. Baby agreed to tell a lie if asked.
Robbie’s public flirting and Lisa’s confidential request about their intended secret meeting that night were overheard by Penny Johnson, who was serving as an activity leader, helping the female guests try on wigs and cosmetics.
Penny Johnson’s main employment at the resort hotel was to dance. She and her dance partner Johnny Castle performed for the guests and taught the guests how to dance. Since Baby already had seen Penny dance and admired Penny’s beauty and dance skills, she approached Penny to compliment Penny during the moments when Penny was angrily watching Robbie flirt and plan with Lisa. Penny was so angry at Robbie that she responded to Baby’s compliments rudely.
That night, when Robbie and Lisa sneaked away to the golf course, Penny ran away into the woods and disappeared. Apparently Penny had become emotionally distraught when she saw Robbie and Lisa leave together, and so she ran away. In the movie’s original script, there was a rather long scene where Baby secretly organized several people to search for Penny in the woods, but this scene eventually was cut out of the movie’s final version.
The movie does show, however, that Baby noticed Robbie and Lisa walking together out of the woods. Lisa’s hair and clothing were disordered, and they were arguing because Robbie had become too aggressive in his seduction efforts and because Lisa had refused to submit completely.
Lisa: Robbie, I don’t hear an apology.
Robbie: Go back to Mommy and Daddy and listen. Maybe you’ll hear one [an apology] in your dreams.
Eventually Baby found Penny hiding and crying in the resort hotel’s kitchen. Baby then accompanied Penny to Penny’s cabin and learned that Penny had become pregnant by Robbie. The dialogue never reveals when the relationship between Robbie and Penny had begun. Robbie and Penny both have worked at the resort hotel in previous summers. Perhaps their relationship began in a previous summer, perhaps it began earlier this same summer. In any case, Penny had become sexually involved with Robbie because she really loved him and hoped to marry him.
Penny told Robbie about her pregnancy, but he refused to acknowledge any responsibility and he accused her of sleeping with lots of other men, any one of whom might be the father. In fact, Penny has been faithful to Robbie during their relationship and knows for sure that she became was impregnated by him. Robbie broke off his relationship with Penny and refused to help her with her pregnancy or an abortion. Penny decided to have an abortion, but did not have the $250 (1963 dollars) to pay for it.
When Baby Houseman was told about this situation, she immediately exclaimed: “But if it’s Robbie, there’s no problem. I know he has the money.”
In the next scene, Baby confronted Robbie in the resort hotel’s dining room and asked him to give Penny the $250 for the abortion. Robbie refused, saying “some people count and some people don’t.” Robbie then handed Baby an obviously much-read paperback copy of
The Fountainhead and recommended that she read it: “Read it. I think you’ll enjoy it, but return it; I have notes in there.”
Baby was immediately offended by the suggestion that she read this novel. She refused to take the book, angrily poured a pitcher of water on his pants (he was dressed in his waiter’s uniform and preparing the dining room’s tables for a meal) and rebuked him: “You make me sick. Stay away from me, and stay away from my sister, or I’ll have you fired.” Then she walked out angrily.
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The novel
The Fountainhead was written by Ayn Rand. She was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in 1905 and grew up as the eldest of three daughters in a family that was ethnically Jewish but agnostic and non-observant. Her father was a chemist who had developed a pharmacy business. After the Communists seized power in 1917, they nationalized her father’s business. Ayn attended the University of Petrograd (her native city’s new name) and graduated with a degree in Social Pedagogy (with emphases in history, philology and law) at the age of 19 in 1924. She then attended the State Institute for Cinema Arts until early 1926, when she obtained a visa to visit some relatives in the United States. She never returned to Russia from that trip, and eventually she became a US citizen.
Rand moved to Hollywood and worked in a variety of jobs in the movie industry. During the 1930s she wrote a variety of works – screenplays, plays, novellas – that had some, but not great success. Her first huge writing success was the novel
The Fountainhead, which she published in 1943. More than six million copies of this novel have been sold, and about 100,000 copies are still sold every year.
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The Fountainhead’s major characters is a man named Howard Roark, who strove to work as an architect. Since his architectural designs were unconventional and creative, however, he suffered difficulties in developing a successful career. He was expelled from the school where he studied architecture, and so he apprenticed himself to another unconventional, creative architect who suffered various business problems.
Roark could not succeed professionally in this situation, so he quit and went to work instead as a stone cutter in a granite quarry. The quarry’s owner had a daughter named Dominique Francon, who became infatuated while watching Roark work in the quarry. She tried to arrange situations where she could be in Roark’s presence. Eventually she arranged for him to replace a broken stone in a fireplace in her home. Three days later Roark sneaked into Francon’s bedroom, raped her and left. As the rape was happening, she felt that Roark was “a master taking shameful, contemptuous possession of a slave.” The rape dismayed her, but she did not report the rape to anyone.
Later Roark was awarded a contract to design a monument. His design featured a huge statue of Dominique Francon nude.
This design caused a public outrage, and so contractor sued to cancel the contract. The dispute eventually was settled in a trial, in which Francon testified in Roark’s favor. Roark nevertheless lost the lawsuit, and so the contract was canceled and Roark again found himself impoverished.
After the trial, Dominique Francon married a mediocre architect who had testified against Howard Roark in the trial. As the mediocre architect’s wife, Francon persuaded a series of potential clients to hire her husband instead of Roark for various architectural projects. As part of these efforts to attract potential clients, Francon had sex with a wealthy man, who was so pleased with Francon that he paid her and her mediocre-architect husband to divorce so that he could marry her.
While married to the wealthy man, Francon secretly helped Roark to develop Roark’s own architectural business where he could exercise his own creativity fully and autonomously. Francon then divorced the wealthy man and married Roark, who after he has become a famous and successful architect. At the end of the novel, Roark was building a unique skyscraper with the wealthy man’s money but free from the wealthy man’s ideas or interference.
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The Fountainhead is a novel that praises the efforts of an extraordinary creative genius to conduct his life focused completely on his own professional goals. If such a genius refuses to compromise professionally and personally, then eventually he might achieve extraordinary professional success and personal happiness.
Ayn Rand provides a female perspective on the lives of such creative geniuses through the novel’s main female character Dominique Francon. This character believed that she herself is unusually intelligent and capable and that practically all the men around her were mediocre and unworthy marriage partners. The one extraordinary male she ever found was Howard Roark, but he confounded her when he raped her. Still infatuated with Roark but unable to understand his attitude and impulsiveness, she resigned herself to marry two other men in turn who lacked Roark’s creative genius.
As Dominque Francon lived with her two husbands and continued to observe Howard Roark’s creative genius from afar, she continued to fall more deeply in love with him. When Roark designed a monument that featured a huge nude statue of her, she accepted this grand, creative gesture as an extraordinary compensation to her for the rape. She reasoned that an extraordinarily intelligent woman such as herself should grant a special understanding, appreciation and indulgence for the sexual desires of such an extraordinarily creative and superior man as Howard Roark.
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Ayn Rand wrote a second famous novel,
Atlas Shrugged, which was published in 1957.
Atlas Shrugged likewise praised the extraordinary contributions of extraordinary individuals to economic and social development.
Atlas Shrugged likewise elaborated Rand’s opinions about sexual morality, praising sex that expresses intellectual and spiritual compatibility. In the novel, the mediocre characters experience mediocre sex with other mediocre characters, and the extraordinary characters enjoy extraordinary sex with other extraordinary characters.
After writing
Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand devoted herself to developing a philosophy that she called
Objectivism. One of Objectivism’s major elements was its contempt for altruism. Rand argued that altruism is a misdirected and ineffective motivation for economic and social development. A much more effective motivation is the desire of geniuses to create innovative systems and technology for the sheer joy of creating and achieving. Altruistic people who try to help disadvantaged societies accomplish far less improvement than creative people who simply love to build and develop wherever they can.
With regard to sexual relations, Rand believed that men and women should be treated as intellectually and socially equal but also that their physiological differences caused significant psychological differences. Men act aggressively, and women respond. Rand taught that “the essence of femininity is hero-worship — the desire to look up to man." Rand said that no woman ever should serve as US President because any woman would be damaged psychologically in such a position.
Jenny Turner, a biographer of Rand, wrote:
The sex in Rand’s novels is extraordinarily violent and fetishistic. In The Fountainhead, the first coupling of the heroes, heralded by whips and rock drills and horseback riding and cracks in marble, is ‘an act of scorn ... not as love, but as defilement’ —- in other words, a rape... In Atlas Shrugged, erotic tension is cleverly increased by having one heroine bound into a plot with lots of spectacularly cruel and handsome men.
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A movie was made of
The Fountainhead in 1949. The role of Howard Roark was played by Gary Cooper, and the role of Dominique Francon was played by Patricia Neal – both of whom were famous stars. Millions of people who never read the book saw the movie during the 1950s, so the story and its ideas were well known. The rape scene was not depicted explicitly in the movie, but the novel’s rape scene was notorious among the general public, even among people who had not read the novel.
By the early 1960s Ayn Rand had reached the apex of her fame and influence. After the social welfare programs of the Depression, the military teamwork of World War Two and the Korean War, and the social conformity of the Eisenhower Presidency, Rand’s praise of extraordinary, creative, nonconformist individuals struck a fresh chord among much of the population.
Men who read
The Fountainhead imagined themselves to be like the heroic individualist Howard Roark who had to work as a stone cutter in quarry but who eventually designed and built the world’s greatest skyscraper. Male readers were intrigued that the female author depicted the main female character, the beautiful Dominique Francon, as tolerating a rape by Howard Roark and as nevertheless continuing to admire Roark as a hero, as being complimented when Roark proposed to create a huge nude statue of herself, and as eventually leaving a wealthy husband to marry Roark.
The Fountainhead was popular among female readers too. During an era when women were supposed to try or at least pretend to try to preserve their virginity until marriage, pre-marital sexual relations between an engaged couple often included a private drama in which heavy petting between the forceful male and reluctant female culminated in a quasi-rape. Thus the woman’s virginity itself was not preserved, but her principled intention and effort to preserve her virginity were preserved. In that era of supposed pre-marital virginity, the rape fantasy provoked by
The Fountainhead struck a subconscious chord that was shocking but enjoyable among female as well as male readers.
In that era, the overwhelming majority of women also saw their lives as revolving primarily or even entirely around marriage and family and as dependent on their husbands’ professional success. During a marriage, the husband was supposed to achieve and earn in the economic world, and the wife was supposed to nurture the husband and the children in the domestic world. Ayn Rand’s thinking about sexual relations was rooted firmly in the first six decades of the twentieth century.
Attitudes about sexual relations began to change in the early 1960s. Betty Friedan’s book
The Feminist Mystique was published in 1963, and the expression “women’s liberation” began to appear in public discourse in 1964. In the following decades, women in modern societies developed significantly new attitudes about their own life achievements and about their attitudes toward men.
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Dirty Dancing, which takes place in 1963, depicts two sisters with significantly different attitudes about their own future achievements and marriages.
The older sister Lisa Houseman is interested primarily in fashion, romance and marriage. She is frivolous and lacks any interest in global problems. For her performance in the talent show she is deciding whether to sing
“I Feel Pretty” or “
What Do the Simple Folk Do?” She eventually will sing a silly Hawaiian song.
The younger sister Baby Houseman intends to begin attending
Mount Holyoke College, an excellent women’s college in Massachusetts. She intends to major in the economics of underdeveloped countries and after graduation intends to serve in the Peace Corps. She intends to defer her marriage until at least her mid-twenties and probably intends also to continue to develop an intellectual career during her marriage.
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Baby was insulted when Robbie recommended that she read
The Fountainhead. Even if she never had read any of Rand’s writings, she as an educated and socially aware young woman in 1963 knew enough about Ayn Rand and this novel that she expected it’s message to be, as Robbie himself remarked to her, “some people count and some people don’t.” Baby perceived that the novel’s philosophy and Robbie’s philosophy excused supposedly extraordinary individuals from common concerns and morality. An extraordinary male should be excused even if he raped a woman, and the woman should be satisfied to hope that she still might marry him in the far future. And altruism was a bad motivation!
Baby refused to take the book that Robbie tried to lend her. She poured a pitcher of water onto Robbie and rebuked him: “You make me sick. Stay away from me. Stay away from my sister, or I’ll have you fired.”
Baby’s threat to have Robbie fired was an empty threat. She herself had heard the resort hotel’s owner tell the waiters to flirt with the young female guests. Furthermore, she herself had heard the owner tell the male dance instructor Johnny Castle not to become involved with the young female guests. Baby was in no position to try to have Robbie fired. If she tried to cause trouble, the employee most likely to be fired was Johnny.
Despite Baby’s threat, Robbie continued his involvement with Lisa. Even after Lisa told Baby she intended to have sex with Robbie, Baby did not take any action to have Robbie fired.
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When Baby confronted Robbie to provide the money for the abortion, Robbie was dressed in his waiter uniform and preparing tables for the next meal in the resort hotel’s dining room. As she talked with him about Penny’s situation, Baby walked alongside Robbie from table to table and poured ice water into the glasses as Robbie set the tables.
During this conversation, Robbie pulled his much-read paperback copy of
The Fountainhead out of his uniform pocket and tried to give it to Baby to read. Why was Robbie carrying this novel in his uniform as he set the tables for the next meal? He could not have expected Baby to confront him in this situation, so he could not have brought the novel with the intention of giving it to Baby.
Apparently, Robbie had brought the novel into the dining room with the intention of giving it not to Baby, but rather to Lisa, whom he expected to serve as a waiter at the imminent meal. He and Lisa had quarreled the previous night when he had become sexually aggressive at the golf course. Lisa had refused to submit to him, and he had refused to apologize. Robbie had not given up in his efforts to seduce Lisa, however, and he intended to lend Lisa
The Fountainhead as his next step.
If Lisa would only read
The Fountainhead, then Lisa would understand and appreciate Robbie better. The novel was written by a famous female author with a female perspective that Lisa should share. Lisa should understand that Robbie Gould was similar to the novel’s hero Howard Roark. Robbie Gould was working now only as a waiter, but Howard Roark had worked for a long time only as a stone cutter in a quarry. Eventually, however, Robbie Gould would become the world’s greatest medical genius, just as Howard Roark became the world’s greatest architectural genius. And Lisa should identify with novel’s beautiful and intelligent heroine, Dominique Francon:
- Lisa Houseman should adore the genius Robbie Gould just as Dominque Francon adored the genius Howard Roark.
- Lisa Houseman should submit to and then forgive Robbie Gould’s sexual aggression just as Dominique Francon had done submitted to and forgiven Howard Roark’s rape.
- Lisa Houseman should feel flattered that Robbie Gould would adore her nude body, just as Howard Roark had designed a huge monument to Dominique Francon’s nude body.
- Lisa Houseman should be willing to wait patiently until Robbie Gould was ready to marry her, just as Dominque Francon had waited – even through two marriages to other, mediocre men – until Howard Roark was ready to marry.
We don’t know whether Lisa actually read
The Fountainhead. It’s a long (750 pages) and high-minded novel. Perhaps she just started and then asked Robbie to tell her the story. Robbie certainly pointed out the sexy parts – the scene where Dominique was raped and the scene where the married Dominique had sex with the wealthy man who then was so pleased that he paid Dominique’s husband to agree to a divorce so that Dominique could marry the wealthy man and the scene where Dominique left the wealthy man and reunited with Howard Roark, who had raped her many years ago.
We do know, however, that by the end of the vacation stay Lisa had decided to have sex with Robbie. She intended to surprise Robbie. She made herself up as beautiful as she could, and she went to his cabin in the early evening. As it turned out, however, Lisa found Robbie having sex with Vivian Pressman, and so she left and did not have sex with him after all.
If, however, Lisa had found Robbie in the cabin alone, she certainly did not intend to declare abruptly that she had decided to have sex with him. I think she intended the consummation to happen in a different manner. She would engage him in some kissing and petting, and then as Robbie became more aggressive, she would make a show of resisting but eventually would submit to him. She would enable Robbie to experience his rape fantasy, and so he would fall in love with her and propose marriage. She would get pregnant, and Robbie would married her immediately, and then on their tenth anniversary they would come back to this resort hotel, which would let them stay for a vacation for free.
That’s how Lisa misunderstood
The Fountainhead. She understood only that the hero raped the heroine but then they got married and lived happily ever after. Lisa did not understand that the hero did not marry until he achieved extraordinary professional success, because marriage impeded his professional efforts in the meantime. Lisa did not understand that the heroine was supposed to satisfy herself with a couple of marriages to other, mediocre men in the meantime. The hero had time to satisfy his own sexual desires only with an occasional rape in the meantime.
Perhaps Robbie Gould previously had used this same seduction technique –
The Fountainhead – on Penny Johnson. If she was overpowered by Robbie when they had sex, then maybe that is why she was not able to prevent her pregnancy.
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A day or so before Lisa told Baby that she intended to have sex with Robbie, there was another confrontation between Robbie and Baby.
The situation is that Baby and Johnny had become sexually involved, but Baby still had not told her father that she even considered Johnny to be her boyfriend. Johnny felt insulted that Baby apparently was ashamed to admit that she was involved with such an uneducated, low-class man as Johnny. Baby and Johnny had quarreled about her reluctance to tell her father about Johnny, and so Baby had gone to the employees’ cabins to find Johnny to discuss their quarrel some more.
Baby found Johnny in Penny’s cabin, in a serious discussion. Johnny then left Penny in the cabin and walked out onto the cabin’s porch to talk with Baby. Before they began talking, Johnny and Baby embraced briefly on the porch.
At that moment, Robbie walked past the cabin porch and noticed Johnny and Baby embracing, and joked insultingly: “Looks like I picked the wrong sister. That’s okay, Baby, I went slumming too.”
The joke’s idea was that Robbie perceived that Baby was more on his intellectual and cultural level than Lisa was. Baby would have been a better sexual partner for Robbie. Lisa still was refusing to have sex with Robbie, but Baby apparently had begun already to have sex with Johnny.
Robbie had picked the wrong sister to seduce when the Housemans had arrived for their family vacation. Baby was the sister who read books and could understand
The Fountainhead and understand the Objectivism philosophy. Baby was the sister who was willing to have sex without a marriage commitment. Instead of picking Baby for a brief sexual affair, Robbie had made a mistake and went slumming with the intellectually and culturally inferior sister Lisa.
Robbie told Baby that Baby had made a similar mistake. Baby actually was like Dominique Francon, but she had gone slumming with the intellectually and culturally inferior Johnny instead of submitting herself sexually to and spending her vacation time with Robbie the Roark-like genius.
As this confrontation turned out, though, Johnny jumped off the course and beat Robbie up. And then Johnny told Robbie, “Get out of here. You’re not worth it.”
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The role of Robbie Gould was played by an actor named Max Cantor. He was born in 1959, and so he was about 27 years old when
Dirty Dancing was filmed. He grew up in a theatrical family (his father produced more than 100 plays) and graduated from Harvard University. He played the piano superbly, and he played classical music for
Dirty Dancing’s cast during breaks in the filming.
Dirty Dancing was released in 1987 and four years later, in 1991, Cantor died of a heroin overdose.
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Added on April 27, 2017:
Many reader comments below are critical of my above article. I respond to those criticisms in
this article.
