The Time of Our Lives: Dirty Dancing and Popular Culture

I will buy this book and review its articles in my blog.

The book The Time of Our Lives: Dirty Dancing and Popular Culture was published in 2013. The two editors:

Yannis Tzioumakis is senior lecturer in communication and media at the University of Liverpool. He is the author and editor of five books, most recently Hollywood's Indies: Classics Divisions, Specialty Labels and the American Film Market, and co-editor of the American Indies book series.

Siân Lincoln is senior lecturer in media studies at Liverpool John Moores University. She has recently published her first book, Youth Culture and Private Space, and is working on her second, Rethinking Youth Cultures: A Critical Introduction.

The cover of the book
"The Time of Our Lives: Dirty Dancing and Popular Culture"

The Amazon webpage summarizes the book as follows:

.... In The Time of Our Lives: Dirty Dancing and Popular Culture editors Yannis Tzioumakis and Siân Lincoln bring together leading scholars of film, media, music, culture, theater, dance, and sociology to examine for the first time the global cultural phenomenon of Dirty Dancing.

Tzioumakis and Lincoln begin by assessing Dirty Dancing's cultural impact in the decades since its release and introduce contributors in four sections. Essays in "Dirty Dancing in Context" look at the film from several perspectives, including its production and distribution history, its blending of genres, its treatment of race, and its place in the political and visual culture of the 1980s.

In "Questions of Reception, " contributors examine the many ways that the film has been received since its release, while those in "The Production of Nostalgia" focus on the film's often critiqued production of an idealized past.

Finally, contributors in "Beyond the Film" examine the celebrated synergies that the film achieved in the "high concept" film environment of the 1980s, and the final two essays deal with the successful adaptation of the film for the stage.

With the enormous cultural impact it has made over the years, Dirty Dancing offers many opportunities for thought-provoking analysis. Fans of the movie and students and scholars of cultural, performance, and film history will appreciate the insight in "The Time of Our Lives.".

Here is the table of contents:

Introduction / Yannis Tzioumakis

Dirty Dancing in Context. Introduction / Yannis Tzioumakis

Vestron Video and Dirty Dancing / Frederick Wasser

Bringing Up Baby: Generic Hybridity in Dirty Dancing / Tamar Jeffers McDonald

Is Dirty Dancing a Musical, and Why Should It Matter? / Jane Feuer

White Enough / Richard Dyer

Dirty Dancing as Reagan-era Cinema and "Reaganite Entertainment" / Cynthia Baron and Mark Bernard

Dressing and Undressing in Dirty Dancing: Consumption, Gender and Visual Culture in the 1980s / Pamela Church Gibson

Questions of Reception. Introduction / Siân Lincoln

Dirty Dancing: Feminism, Postfeminism, and Neo-feminism / Hilary Radner

"There Are a lot of Things About Me That Aren't What You Thought": The Politics of Dirty Dancing / Oliver Gruner

"You Don't Own Me": Dirty Dancing as Teenage Rite of Passage Film / Siân Lincoln

Heteros and Hustlers: Straightness and Dirtiness in Dirty Dancing / Gary Needham

The production of Nostalgia. Introduction / Siân Lincoln

"(I've Had) the Time of My Life:" Romantic Nostalgia and the Early 1960s / Bill Osgerby

"It's a Feeling; a Heartbeat": Nostalgia, Music and Affect in Dirty Dancing / Claire Molloy

Dancing in the Nostalgia Factory: Anachronistic Music in Dirty Dancing / Tim McNelis

Beyond the Film. Introduction / Yannis Tzioumakis

A Dance Film with Legs: The Dirty Dancing Franchise / Amanda Howell

From Screen to Stage: Dirty Dancing Live / Millie Taylor

Dirty Dancing and Its Stage Jukebox Dansical Adaptation: The Dancing Male in a Teenage Female Fantasy of Desire and Sensuality / George Rodosthenous.

There are no reader reviews on the Amazon webpage.

The scholarly journal New Review of Film and Television Studies has published a book review written by Jade Boyd. Only the first page is available on-line for free.

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I have reviewed all of this books articles. See the list of my reviews here.