Dirty Dancing Analysis: Tropes in "Dirty Dancing"

Monday, September 25, 2017

Tropes in "Dirty Dancing"

A website called All the Tropes Wiki has the following purpose:

All The Tropes is a community-edited wiki website dedicated to discussing Creators, Works, and Tropes -- the people, projects and patterns of creative writing in all kinds of entertainment: television, literature, movies, video games, and more.

The website's definition of tropes:

Tropes are tools of the trade for writers; They are devices and conventions that we the audience expect to see again and again. Whether tropes are cliche or just standard for the genre is largely a matter of writing quality and personal opinion. But tropes will always exist, as they often reflect life -- and we exist to document them, play with them, and generally have fun with them.

The website currently lists 114 trope subcategories For example, the trope subcategories beginning with the letter D are as follows:

* Dating Tropes‎

* Death Tropes‎

* Dialogue‎

* Distraction Tropes‎

* Doctor Index‎

* Door Tropes‎

* Drama Tropes‎

* Dueling Tropes‎

Within the subcategory of Dating Tropes, for example, are the following individual tropes:

* Third Wheel

* Armor-Piercing Slap

* Two-Timer Date

* The "I Love You" Stigma

* Bachelor Auction

* Not a Date

* You're Not My Type

* Sturgeon's Tropes

Then, for example, the Third Wheel trope is described as follows:

Any instance where at least one other character is hanging around a couple and some form a social tick is getting in the way. He/she can either be

A) a nuisance to the couple and they consistently tell him/her to leave them alone,

B) a character who doesn't want to spend time with the couple but they drag him/her along, or

C) a character who is pulled into being with a couple due to circumstance and no parties necessarily have ill will toward each other, but awkwardness may ensue anyway.

Usually does not translate into a relationship between a couple and a third party who genuinely like to spend time together in a friendly way, since that would imply little to no awkwardness.

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The website's Dirty Dancing webpage lists many tropes, which include the following:

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All For Nothing -- Baby provides an alibi for Johnny when he's accused of theft. He gets canned anyway.

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Break the Haughty -- Lisa, when she catches Robbie in bed with another woman.

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Can't Believe I Said That -- This is Baby's reaction to awkwardly telling Johnny that she "carried a watermelon" when they first meet.

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The Cast Showoff -- One of the songs on the soundtrack ("She's Like the Wind") is actually sang by Swayze.

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Chekhov's Gun -- When Penny and Baby help Mrs. Schumacher when she drops her purse, multiple wallets can be seen.

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Dance Party Ending -- Everyone gets up and dances after Baby and Johnny perform.

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Foot Focus -- On both Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey, particularly during the scene where they're dancing on the log.

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The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry -- One-sided on Lisa's part.

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Hoist by His Own Petard -- How Jake finds out the real truth about Penny's abortion. Near the end of the film, while some of the staffers are singing the resort's anthem, Jake approaches Robbie, gives him an envelope containing either a check or a letter of recommendation, and wishes him good luck in medical school. Robbie replies by thanking Jake for helping Penny out and telling him, "I guess we've all gotten into messes", effectively confessing and insulting Penny at the same time. Jake, understandably miffed, takes the envelope back.

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Hollywood Tone Deaf -- Lisa singing the song "Hula Hana".

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Overprotective Dad -- Baby's father tries to shelter her from the world, but unlike many examples of this trope, isn't overly smothering and deeply trusts her. The real conflict happens when he has a misunderstanding about Johnny and Penny's need for an abortion.

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Parenthetical Swearing -- "He wouldn't know a new idea if it hit him in his pachanga!"

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Pet the Dog -- Lisa offering to do Baby's hair.

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Parental Obliviousness -- Marge remains blissfully unaware of what goes on throughout the film, though a deleted scene indicates that she isn't as clueless as initially presented -- she sternly chastises Baby for her behavior and reveals that she had been in a similar situation before meeting Jake.

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The Sixties -- Though you would never know it from Jennifer Grey's Eighties Hair.

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Smash Cut -- Baby's father learning of her sexual relationship with Johnny. Cut to Dr. Houseman sitting comatose at the lakefront. Ha!

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Taking the Heat -- Johnny has little choice but to take the rap for Penny's pregnancy.

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Wet Sari Scene -- The lift in the lake.

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The Wikipedia article about tropes in cinema defines them as follows:

In cinema, a trope is what The Art Direction Handbook for Film defines as "a universally identified image imbued with several layers of contextual meaning creating a new visual metaphor". It is an element of film semiology and connects between denotation and connotation.

Films reproduce tropes of other arts and also make tropes of their own. George Bluestone wrote in Novels Into Film that in producing adaptations, film tropes are "enormously limited" compared to literary tropes. Bluestone said, "[A literary trope] is a way... of packed symbolic thinking which is peculiar to imaginative rather than to visual activity... [when] converted into a literal image, the metaphor would seem absurd."

A common thematic trope is the rise and fall of a mobster in a classic gangster film. The film genre also often features the sartorial trope of a rising gangster buying new clothes.