"Dirty Dancing" and Diegesis

The website Shag Pile has published an article titled Dirty Dancing and Diegeis and written by Peter Ayers.

Ayers had not seen the movie Dirty Dancing until shortly before he participated recently in a Secret Cinema festival.  He was puzzled that a movie about events in 1963 featured a 1987 song -- "The Time of My Life". The article includes the following passages.

.... What I hadn't realised before, and what puzzled me hugely, is this: The film is set in 1963. Dirty Dancing was released in 1987, as was the number-one smash-hit power-ballad  ...

Up until the end of their story, the characters have been firmly rooted in their world of 1963, so surely there's no way they can be hearing what we're hearing [the 1987 song]. But if so, how come they're dancing in time with the beat and joining in with the words? What on earth is going on? ...

I was perplexed. This deliberate anachronism bothered me. Why had they messed up the end of the film like this? Was it deliberate? The questions kept resurfacing for the following days, so I had a read, had a think, and came up with the theory you're about to read.

Setting the Scene

The movie begins with slow-motion, black-and-white footage of people dancing to "Be My Baby". The effect is a nostalgic, like looking through an old photo album, or hearing a familiar old song on the radio -- which is what it turns out to be, as a radio announcer cues up the next track, and the action cuts to the interior of a car. An opening voice-over sets up the plot: 'Baby' is off with her family to a holiday camp in the Catskills - and for sexual awakening amongst the pines...

Diegesis

This opening sequence sets up an important concept that will come into play down the line: the difference between diegetic and non-diegetic sound. Brief definitions:

Diegetic sound comes from within the movie world.

Non-Diegetic sound is overlaid on the movie world.

In the opening scene, we hear diegetic sound from the car radio:

We then hear non-diegetic commentary on the story from the unseen narrator.

This sets up the relationship between audience and action that will continue throughout the movie. We're looking into the past through the magic mirror of the cinema screen, and this separation between now and then, here and there is made clear in the use of music.

Diegetic

Characters living within the world of the film hear only era-appropriate diegetic music: for example, when Baby approaches the Staff Quarters from a distance we hear faint music: as she gets closer the music gets louder but remains muffled by double doors, filmed square on to form a 'wall' at the back of the screen. We're hearing what she's hearing.

Then -- boom; the conveniently-wide-format-doors crash open revealing the room beyond the back wall of the cinema, the music fills our ears, Baby walks through the portal, the camera walks through behind her, and we are both engulfed. ...

Non-Diegetic

Non-diegetic music plays in the world outside the story of the film during a couple of montage sequences. On these occasions, the action is compressed, and music smooths what might otherwise feel uncomfortably choppy editing.

Whilst thematically and emotionally appropriate, these non-diegetic pieces are resoundingly magnificent '80s power ballads. Songs like "Hungry Eyes" work to reinforce our separation from the time and space of the action, and remind us that we are looking back at the past as older, wiser individuals. ...

The Grand Finale

So, with that digested, back to the end of the film. Can we use our digression about diegesis to clarify anything?

Let's briefly rewind to the beginning of the film:

At first, when 'Be My Baby' plays, we are led to believe we are hearing non-diegetic music. ... Then the radio announcer crashes in, revealing that yes, we are hearing diegetic music from the car radio in the next scene. This blending of diegetic-and non-diegetic music is trans-diegetic -- we are moved from an external viewpoint looking back at the past to an internal one inhabiting the past.

The technique draws us smoothly out of our time and transitions into the time-frame of the film.

Once again, back to the ending. ...

[The song "Time of My Life"] fades up ... and the walls between past and present that have been reinforced throughout the film collapse.

The people within the story -- the happy couple, fellow dancers, and patrons -- hear the same trans-diegetic music as the cinema-going audience, as proven by Mr. Kellerman's incredulous "You have sheet music of this stuff?".

At the opening of the film, the viewer was pulled into the past:

As the film closes, the cast is pulled into the present.

The result? Their victory becomes our victory! We share the resolution of the film with them, and enjoy their barrier-shattering unification in an inclusive way.

The breakdown of boundaries is underlined by Johnny jumping off the stage into the audience. (Note that as he jumps, the film shifts into slow motion, but the music continues at normal, non-diegetic speed.) This leap is a literal representation of all the boundaries that have been broken: between performers and patrons, working class and upper-middle class, gentiles and jews, bad boys and good girls, and vitally, breaking the boundary between fiction and our reality.

The leap doesn't just propel him into his audience -- he leaps towards the viewer, through the fourth wall and into the space of the cinema-going audience ...

At the very end of the film, the action freezes (in the past) and we are left with the slowly fading music -- their story is over, ours goes on. ...

You should read Ayers' whole article, illustrated with photographs and videos, there.

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See also my articles:

Is Dirty Dancing a Musical?

Recorded-Music Technology and the Musical Genre

Space-Time Portals in the Movie Dirty Dancing