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. ...======
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 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).
Now I will put my own spin onto that comparison between Dirty Dancing and mythological stories of heroic journeys.
I do not think that Eleanor Bergstein consciously used the Heroic Journey genre as a model for Dirty Dancing Rather, I think that the Heroic Journey comparison provides a thought-provoking way to think about the Dirty Dancing story.
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Ancient society was an aristocratic society, in which elite status was mostly inherited by birth. In order to demonstrate that elite status was also deserved by merit -- not merely inherited by birth -- stories were told in which a young aristocrat traveled far away and excelled in an environment where he and his family were not known. There, using his own wit and strength, the young aristocrat accomplished great feats. Eventually the young aristocrat returned home, more experienced, wiser, and ready to assume his governing position within his aristocratic family.
The Wikipedia article about the Hero's Journey begins as follows.
In narratology and comparative mythology, ... the hero's journey is the common template of a broad category of tales that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, and in a decisive crisis wins a victory, and then comes home changed or transformed.
The study of hero myth narratives started in 1871 with anthropologist Edward Taylor's observations of common patterns in plots of hero's journeys. Later on, others introduced various theories on hero myth narratives such as Otto Rank and his Freudian psychoanalytic approach to myth, Lord Raglan's unification of myth and rituals, and eventually hero myth pattern studies were popularized by Joseph Campbell, who was influenced by Carl Jung's view of myth. In his 1949 work The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell described the basic narrative pattern as follows:
A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.Campbell and other scholars, such as Erich Neumann, describe narratives of Gautama Buddha, Moses, and Christ in terms of the monomyth. While others, such as Otto Rank and Lord Raglan, describe hero narrative patterns in terms of Freudian psychoanalysis and ritualistic senses. ....
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| Image from the Wikipedia article |
The Wikipedia article argues that the Heroic Journey genre comprises three main parts -- Departure, Initiation and Return. Each such part typically comprises various subparts, which Wikipedia lists as follows.
Departure=====
The Call to AdventureInitiation
The hero begins in a situation of normality, from which some information is received that acts as a call to head off into the unknown.
Refusal of the Call
Often when the call is given, the future hero first refuses to heed it. This may be from a sense of duty or obligation, fear, insecurity, a sense of inadequacy, or any of a range of reasons that work to hold the person in his or her current circumstances.
Supernatural Aid
Once the hero has committed to the quest, consciously or unconsciously, his guide and magical helper appears or becomes known. More often than not, this supernatural mentor will present the hero with one or more talismans or artifacts that will aid him later in his quest.
Crossing the First Threshold
This is the point where the person actually crosses into the field of adventure, leaving the known limits of his or her world and venturing into an unknown and dangerous realm where the rules and limits are unknown.
Belly of the Whale
The belly of the whale represents the final separation from the hero's known world and self. By entering this stage, the person shows willingness to undergo a metamorphosis. When First entering the stage the hero may encounter a minor danger or set back.
The Road of TrialsReturn
The road of trials is a series of tests that the person must undergo to begin the transformation. Often the person fails one or more of these tests, which often occur in threes.
The Meeting with the Goddess
This is where the hero gains items given to him that will help him in the future.
The Woman As Temptress
In this step, the hero faces those temptations, often of a physical or pleasurable nature, that may lead him or her to abandon or stray from his or her quest, which does not necessarily have to be represented by a woman. Woman is a metaphor for the physical or material temptations of life, since the hero-knight was often tempted by lust from his spiritual journey.
Atonement with the Father
In this step the person must confront and be initiated by whatever holds the ultimate power in his or her life. In many myths and stories this is the father, or a father figure who has life and death power. This is the center point of the journey. All the previous steps have been moving into this place, all that follow will move out from it. Although this step is most frequently symbolized by an encounter with a male entity, it does not have to be a male; just someone or thing with incredible power.
Apotheosis
This is the point of realization in which a greater understanding is achieved. Armed with this new knowledge and perception, the hero is resolved and ready for the more difficult part of the adventure
The Ultimate Boon
The ultimate boon is the achievement of the goal of the quest. It is what the person went on the journey to get. All the previous steps serve to prepare and purify the person for this step, since in many myths the boon is something transcendent like the elixir of life itself, or a plant that supplies immortality, or the Holy Grail.
Refusal of the Return
Having found bliss and enlightenment in the other world, the hero may not want to return to the ordinary world to bestow the boon onto his fellow man.
The Magic Flight
Sometimes the hero must escape with the boon, if it is something that the gods have been jealously guarding. It can be just as adventurous and dangerous returning from the journey as it was to go on it.
Rescue from Without
Just as the hero may need guides and assistants to set out on the quest, often he or she must have powerful guides and rescuers to bring them back to everyday life, especially if the person has been wounded or weakened by the experience.
The Crossing of the Return Threshold
The trick in returning is to retain the wisdom gained on the quest, to integrate that wisdom into a human life, and then maybe figure out how to share the wisdom with the rest of the world.
Master of Two Worlds
This step is usually represented by a transcendental hero like Jesus or Gautama Buddha. For a human hero, it may mean achieving a balance between the material and spiritual. The person has become comfortable and competent in both the inner and outer worlds.
Freedom to Live
Mastery leads to freedom from the fear of death, which in turn is the freedom to live. This is sometimes referred to as living in the moment, neither anticipating the future nor regretting the past.
A major difference between the Heroic Journey genre and Dirty Dancing story is that the latter's main character is a female. Therefore I will switch the word Hero to Heroine and Goddess to God.
=====The Meeting with the God
This is where the heroine gains items given to her that will help her in the future.
The Man As Tempter
In this step, the heroine faces those temptations, often of a physical or pleasurable nature, that may lead her to abandon or stray from her quest, which does not necessarily have to be represented by a man. Man is a metaphor for the physical or material temptations of life, since the heroine was often tempted by lust from her spiritual journey.
The ThoughtCo website has published an article titled The Hero's Journey, written by Deb Peterson, a learning and development consultant who also teaches creative writing. Her article begins as follows:
Understanding the hero's journey can make creative writing class, literature class, any English class, easier to ace. Even better, chances are you'll enjoy the class immeasurably more when you understand why the hero's journey structure makes for satisfying stories.======
When I teach the hero's journey, I use Christopher Vogler's book The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers. Vogler draws from the depth psychology of Carl Jung and the mythic studies of Joseph Campbell, two excellent and admirable sources.
Jung suggested that the archetypes that appear in all myths and dreams represent the universal aspects of the human mind. Campbell's life work was devoted to sharing the life principles embedded in the structure of stories. He discovered that world hero myths are all basically the same story told in infinitely different ways. That's right, one story. Study the hero's journey, and you will see its elements in the greatest stories, which are usually the oldest stories. There is a good reason they stand the test of time.
As nontraditional students, or students of any kind really, we can use their remarkable theories to understand why stories like The Wizard of Oz, E.T., and Star Wars are so beloved and so satisfying to watch or read over and over. Vogler knows because he is a longtime consultant to the movie industry and, specifically, to Disney.
In my following posts, I will largely use the Wikipedia article and Peterson's article as a guide to my own comparison between the Heroic Journey genre and the Dirty Dancing story.
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Continued in Part 2.
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