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| Daniel Wikey |
University of California at BerkeleyWikey's article includes the following passages.
Bachelor’s Degree, Anthropology and Religious Studies
Highest Distinction -- 2012
Emphasizing in cultural anthropology, folklore, and mythology, with additional coursework in French language classes and in ancient Christianity.
My honors thesis ("Man as Magician, Man as Machine: Narrative, Wonder, and Politics in Twentieth-Century Lie Detection") delved into the crossover between comic books, the lie detector, and séance culture in the early 20th century.
Activities and Societies: Berkeley Student Food Collective, Cooking Club, Dundes Folklore Archive Research Program
... If one looks deeper, one sees that it [the story] follows almost precisely the ten-step heroic initiation process. Main character Baby’s heroic journey from girl to womanhood, and therefore the main parts of this paper as well, can be divided into three sections dealing with separation, liminality, and reintegration. By comparing Baby’s tale with Greek myth, we learn that, far from simply being a movie about achieving one’s dreams, Dirty Dancing is a primal tale of an arduous and difficult journey from sexual ignorance to enlightenment, filled with symbols representing Baby’s metamorphosis into a sexually awakened adult. ...
During a late night walk, Baby is invited to a private party for the resort staff (the hero’s “call to adventure”), asked before entering: “Can you keep a secret? Your parents would kill you.” Baby must cross a bridge to get to the house where the party is being held; the first of the numerous images throughout the film that symbolize her transition from one stage of life to another.
Upon reaching the party, she discovers that the dancing that goes on behind the scenes is much more intimate and passionate than the polite dancing she has been accustomed to. At first hesitant to join in, not comfortable dancing in such a manner — refusing her hero’s call — she is persuaded to dance with the group by an attractive dance instructor named Johnny. Like the followers of Dionysus, revelers who undergo enthusiasmos and ritual madness to rejoice in a way that is exciting but slightly raunchy, the dirty dancers Baby encounters are celebrating their sexuality and even their humanity and being alive, breaking the so-called “rules” and allowing themselves to let their inhibitions go.
Though in many heroic epics heroes had otherworldly aid in completing their quests (Odysseus had Athena, Gilgamesh had Siduri), Johnny’s filling of the “supernatural aid” position for Baby differs from such examples in myth.
Though Athena helped Odysseus disguise himself to his wife’s disrespectful suitors and ultimately succeed in reclaiming his kingly power, she never establishes a personal relationship with him. She is a god and he is a mortal — Homer chooses to keep her omniscient and him strictly dependent, relying on her for help.Johnny, on the other hand, will become a friend (and much more) to Baby, distinguished not by his position as a religious entity but by his higher understanding of dance technique. Although Johnny may not be an actual god or mythical figure, to Baby, he might as well be. Johnny is her ultimate man. Besides being physically god-like in appearance, he is respectful and kind, causing Baby to become all the more enamored with him.
With the connection growing quickly between Johnny and Baby, Baby becomes more and more willing to prove herself to him to gain his favor, wanting to show him that she is ready — ready externally for his dance tutelage, and internally for a quietly hoped for romantic relationship. .... She proves herself [to] Johnny, who asks Baby to fill in for Penny at their next scheduled dance gig — crossing the enumerated “first threshold” and being well on her way to becoming a dancer.
Perhaps the most important sequences in the film are the tests and trials Baby must undergo on her way from girl to both dancer and woman. The obvious events that fall under this heading are of course the intensive dancing lessons Johnny teaches frantically to Baby to be sure they are ready for the performance in time.
One move in particular proves difficult for Baby to accomplish — a lift. Though it sounds simple enough, the balance and coordination required for Baby to stay in the air without tipping over is challenging. Johnny comes up with the idea to practice it in the lake nearby, another image of Baby’s transition — the lifting of Baby from under the water’s surface mirroring the baptism process performed on actual babies that symbolize their initiation into the parent’s religion. Baby comes close to holding the position, but she falls and splashes into the lake, showing that though she is close to achieving womanhood and dancing glory, she is not quite through with her learning process.
This is the second instance of water imagery in Dirty Dancing — the first being the long and narrow bridge crossed by Baby to reach the dirty dancers at their party. ...
While crossing the bridge to the dirty dancers’ party early in the film, she wears a loose-fitting dress that goes past her knees and shows nothing below her neck. But in this stage, in a training scene with Johnny, she wears a white T-shirt rolled up at the sleeves and cut off at the midriff (showing her belly button) as well as tight jean shorts, showing off her womanly figure. It is fitting that she wear differing garments while dancing;
Baby mirrors the Dionysian revelers in ancient Greece that dress in celebratory wear to worship Dionysus. Adolescent girls at Demeter’s Brauron sanctuary in ancient Greece, like Baby, also left childhood clothing behind — quite literally in their case, leaving their girlish garments at Brauron before returning to their homes changed; initiated into womanhood.
All heroes must voyage to the underworld and come to terms with their own mortality; although in Baby’s case she does not physically travel to the land of death, she experiences how death could potentially affect her — namely, how being a woman means that one has to come into contact with death and return to survive. Penny returns from the abortion weak and trembling, seemingly on the verge of death. ...
Baby’s somber realization that with maturity comes responsibility is an important growing experience. Though she says “I’m scared…of who I am,” having accepted and understanding life’s burdens, she is now truly ready for the final stages of her quest.
Many heroes’ quests are importantly altered by a temptress that can either lead them to stray from their journey’s path (Calypso, holding Odysseus on her island) or boost them to victory (Circe advising Odysseus on his return voyage home). Baby’s story, however differs from these myths in that it is told without a seducer or seductress.
The closest correspondence one can find in the movie happens to Johnny .... when lonely housewife Vivian Pressman sets her sights on Johnny. ... Though she is both beautiful and beguiling, he continues to reject her. Like Gilgamesh, whose turning down of Ishtar’s advances results in punishment (the sending of a great bull from heaven), Johnny’s refusal results with a penalty as well. The temptress Vivian goes to his superiors at Kellerman’s and accuses him of stealing. ...
Baby’s ultimate boon [is] her reaching of womanhood. ...After making love, Johnny asks Baby her real name. “Frances,” she says. “Frances,” he echoes back, “that’s a real grown-up name.” No longer needing the immature label of her childhood nickname, Frances has completed her transition into womanhood.
The final part of the movie is devoted to Baby’s symbolic “reintegration,” proving to her parents and other characters in the film that she has achieved adulthood. ... By appearing with Johnny in front of her family and friends, she not only reveals her relationship with Johnny to the world but also asserts her independence by “dirty dancing” — showing that she has become a woman.
Her father doesn’t take it all too well at first. Earlier in the movie, when he sees her beginning to wear makeup, betraying her Baby-like image, he says “Take that stuff off your face before your mother sees you.” Her father must now realize that he is not the only man in his daughter’s life from now on, and must come to terms with the fact that his daughter is a sexual being like himself.
Like examples in Greek or Arthurian myth in which the hero’s redemption with their father results in the father’s death and the hero’s aggression of their new-found power, Baby’s maturation, to look at it in a Freudian aspect, “kills” her father by showing him that she has become a sexually awakened woman. This makes it impossible for him to be with her, as she is his daughter, and will never be interested in him. ...
Baby does not die or become immortal to achieve apotheosis, but she does achieve a god-like status by being lifted into the air by Johnny during the movie’s final dance. He slowly lifts her up, a spotlight illuminating her head, as the music swells .... showing the triumph she has achieved from making it through the liminality of her journey’s trials — gaining knowledge of what is means to be mature — before becoming the adult she is now. She is literally looked up upon by the audience — having made it through her journey, she is raised into the sky, symbolically representing her now semi-divine status from achieving her transformation. ...
The subject of adolescents and their journey to maturity fascinates human society, for it is a transition every functioning adult has made, and every child will have to make. Baby herself ends the film having learned more about her own nature, about both good things that come with maturity (romance, responsibility) and the bad (the downsides of romance and responsibility).
People enjoy watching her trouble-filled journey into adulthood. ... Through her accomplishing of her task, each viewer leaves with the feeling that they, too, can gain knowledge and reach a more mature understanding of their own lives.
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The Wikipedia article about liminality includes the following passages:
In anthropology, liminality (from the Latin word līmen, meaning "a threshold") is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of rituals, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the ritual is complete. During a ritual's liminal stage, participants "stand at the threshold" between their previous way of structuring their identity, time, or community, and a new way, which the ritual establishes. ...=====
Arnold van Gennep, who coined the term liminality ... explores and develops the concept of liminality in the context of rituals in small-scale societies. ... He placed a particular emphasis on rites of passage, and claimed that "such rituals marking, helping, or celebrating individual or collective passages through the cycle of life or of nature exist in every culture, and share a specific three-fold sequential structure".
This three-fold structure, as established by van Gennep, is made up of the following components:
* Preliminal rites (or rites of separation): This stage involves a metaphorical "death", as the initiate is forced to leave something behind by breaking with previous practices and routines.Van Gennep considered rites of initiation to be the most typical rite. ... In such rites of passage, the experience is highly structured. The first phase (the rite of separation) requires the child to go through a separation from his family; this involves his/her "death" as a child, as childhood is effectively left behind. In the second stage, initiands (between childhood and adulthood) must pass a "test" to prove they are ready for adulthood. If they succeed, the third stage (incorporation) involves a celebration of the "new birth" of the adult and a welcoming of that being back into society. ...
* Liminal rites (or transition rites): ... The rite "must follow a strictly prescribed sequence, where everybody knows what to do and how" [and] everything must be done "under the authority of a master of ceremonies". ... This middle stage "implies an actual passing through the threshold that marks the boundary between two phases, and the term 'liminality' was introduced in order to characterize this passage."
* Postliminal rites (or rites of incorporation): During this stage, the initiand is re-incorporated into society with a new identity, as a "new" being. ...
Quail Bell Magazine provides the following mission statement:
Quail Bell Magazine is a place for real and unreal stories. Our readers are curious, creative, and compassionate fairy punks who are citizens of the world. All members of The Quail Bell Crew respect and embrace all cultures, excluding only the sexist, racist, homophobic, and otherwise unkind and uncompromising. ...======
Quail Bell Magazine encourages original thought, open dialogue and community-building through content that explores the relationship between The Real and The Unreal. We value the arts, history, folklore, and other oddities often not mentioned in mainstream magazines. ...
See my series of articles about Baby Houseman's Heroic Journey.
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