Miscellaneous Videos - 57

Weirdos Wasting Our Time - 28

Reflection and Projection: The Symbolism of Mirrors

This article was written by a reader named Nirmala. She wrote also this blog's previous article titled Johnny gestures the "dog call" to Baby three times.

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Reflection and Projection: 

The Symbolism of Mirrors

In the movie Dirty Dancing, mirrors (and shoes) symbolize how ...

* characters perceive themselves

or

* the movie audience perceives characters

Below are some instances in the movie.

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Lisa is shallow, idealistic and egotistical

On the way to the Kellerman Mountain House, Lisa, holding her hand-held mirror, admires herself, and looks forward to her family's getaway. We get the impression that she cares a lot about her appearance and image.

Lisa admiring herself in a hand-held mirror

The mirror projects Lisa’s insecurities about her looks. Lisa seems to be egotistical and idealistic.

In a deleted scene, Lisa primps some more in a mirror in her hotel room before she goes with her family to eat dinner in the restaurant.

Lisa primping in a mirror in a deleted scene

Later in the movie, when it rains non-stop, Lisa is seen once again complaining about the rain as she is primping in front of the mirror. Perhaps, the conversation with her mother is a subconscious response of idealising her parents and their almost perfect relationship.

Lisa primping in front of a mirror in the family's hotel room

Lisa Houseman
God, I'm so sick of this rain. Remind me never to take my honeymoon at Niagara Falls.

Marjorie Houseman
So, you go to Acapulco. It'll be fun.

Lisa Houseman
Where is my bright iridescent lipstick? I know I put it in this drawer.

Lisa is already thinking about marrying Robbie Gould at this stage and fantasizes about coming back to the Kellerman Mountain House as she later confides in Baby:

Lisa Houseman
I've decided to go all the way with Robbie.

Baby Houseman
No, Lisa, not with someone like him.

Lisa Houseman
Do you think if we came back for a ten-year anniversary, it would be free?

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Baby feels embarrassed as her dance lessons begin

Johnny seems frustrated with Baby’s lack of concentration as he starts to teach her. Presented through a mirror (0:02 to 0:17 in the following video) ....

.... with beautifully decorated white-layered paper-cut flowers and peacock feathers around it, Baby is seen practising her steps with Johnny as he corrects her posture.

As the song "Wipeout" is being played, the scene shifts to an outdoor setting where Baby starts to methodically practise her steps. From a reflection of her embarrassment of her beginning stages, Baby projects a self-confident image of herself as she makes  dramatically improves.

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Baby is becoming confident and sophisticated

Like mirrors, shoes too reflect Lisa’s shallow, materialistic narcissistic self-indulgence. When her family arrives at the hotel, she gets into a fit when she looks at a worker carrying lots of shoeboxes from one of the guests. Immediately, Lisa complains to her mother that she hasn’t brought her coral shoes that matches her outfit. Lisa has brought ten pairs and is still not satisfied!

For Baby, however shoes reflect her transition from an innocent girl in sneakers into a confident and sophisticated young woman dancing in stiletto heels. Watch the following video clip from 1:30 to 2:17.

Baby even ‘steals’ Lisa’s ‘bright iridescent lipstick’, maybe with the hope of being seen as more ‘grown-up’ by Johnny. (Johnny later tells her that Frances is a’ grown-up’ name when he asks her what her real name is.)

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Johnny feels attracted to Baby and desires her

After the performance at the Sheldrake Hotel, Baby changes back into her regular outfit in the backseat of Johnny’s car. As she takes off her top, Johnny steals a glance or two at her though the mirror, reflecting his desire. He seems to be attracted to her.

When she comes in front to sit next to him, there is an awkward moment of silence and possibly some sexual tension between the two.

As they reach the staff quarters, Johnny, like a perfect gentleman opens the car door for Baby and holds both her hands just before Billy comes announcing the bad news about Penny. We wonder what would have happened then if Billy had not come rushing…

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Johnny recognizes his own disappointment

In the lyrics of the song "She's Like the Wind", a mirror reflects Johnny’s disappointment with himself and society. Baby’s father has chided him and never will accept him. Also, Johnny has been asked to leave by the hotel's management.

I look in the mirror and all I see
Is a young old man with only a dream
Am I just fooling myself
That she'll stop the pain
Living without her
I'd go insane

Feel her breath on my face
Her body close to me
Can't look in her eyes
She's out of my league
Just a fool to believe
I have anything she needs
She's like the wind

After figuratively seeing himself in a mirror, Johnny feels disappointed and humiliated.

Is Baby just an illusion to Johnny?

Is Johnny inferior due to his socio-economic status?

With a heavy heart, Johnny decides to leave Kellerman's and Baby. He tells her that "I'm out. If I leave quietly, I'll get my summer bonus."

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I hope Nirmala will continue to write essays about the movie.

Anyone can submit essays or ideas to me at MikeSylwester@gmail.com

Johnny gestures the "dog call" to Baby three times

Two days ago, I received an e-mail from a new reader, Nirmala, who wrote:

So glad to have found your blog -- just stumbled upon it today.

I'm a huge fan of Dirty Dancing. Lost count of the number of times I've watched this movie over the years and am still watching it and discovering new things.

I haven't read all of your posts yet but really happy to have found someone who takes time to analyse this movie.

I'm from Singapore, by the way. I'd love to discuss the movie.

I challenged Nirmala to contribute some of her own insights about the movie. Right away, she boldly wrote and sent me the following essay -- which all of you readers will like.

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The "dog call” is a hand gesture with a curled index finger beckoning or calling someone.

slideshare.net/NirmalaPadmavat/hand-gesture-of-differents-cultures

Traditionally used to attract attention in a seductive manner, Johnny is seen using this gesture three times as he invites Baby to dance with him. It’s interesting to note how this non-verbal gesture shows his feelings towards her in each scene.

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1) Love Man

Johnny gestures the dog call to Baby at 4:31 in the following video.

Thus he signals her to dance with him and teaches her to sway to the music as he takes her in his arms and gyrates his hips, pressing his body against hers, back and forth to the rhythm. Johnny is flirting with her and Baby is clearly lost in his eyes and intoxicated as she stands there shaking, swaying and stumbling long after Johnny leaves.

Six feet one weigh two hundred and ten
Long hair real fair skin
I'm long legged and I'm-a out-a sight
My, my babe I'm gonna take you out

'Cause I'm a love man
Oh baby I'm a love man
Take your hand let me holler one time aaww

Love man that's all I am now
I'm just a love man
Oh baby call me a love man
Yes I am, I'm just a love man

Let me tell you somethin' which one of you girls want me to hold you?
A which one of you girls want me to kiss you?
Which one of your girls wants me to take you out?

Go on I got you, gonna knock you all night
'Cause baby I'm a love man all right
Oh, baby I'm a love man

Let me tell ya I'm sayin' I'm just a love man, good ol' man
I'm just a love man, fancy man
I'm just a love man, good ol' man
I'm just a hot fire, good ol' man

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2) Hey, Baby

Johnny asks Baby to dance with him with the dog-call gesture at 0:05 in the following video.

This time he gestures playfully, while balancing himself on the log. When she refuses the first time, he walks up to her and gently holds and encourages her while steadying himself. He is seen to be enjoying himself, goofing around -- he is no longer the strict instructor whom we saw in the Hungry Eyes scene. Is he falling in love with her?

Hey, hey baby
I wanna know
If you'll be my girl

When I saw you walking down the street
I said that's the kind of gal I'd like to meet
She's so pretty, Lord, she's fine
I'm gonna make her mine all mine

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3) Time of my Life

Johnny proudly introduces Baby as the one who stood up for him. It’s clear that he no longer sees her as the awkward girl. He gestures to her again at 1:41 in the following video.

Before the dance starts, he gestures the dog call to her, softly kisses her and leads the dance. The movie audience could infer that Johnny has developed genuine feelings for her when he turned down the money from Moe Pressman when he requested extra dance lessons for his wife even though we know that Johnny could do with the extra cash.

Now I've had
The time of my life
No I never felt
Like this before
Yes I swear
It's the truth
And I owe it all to you
'Cause I've had
The time of my life
And I owe it all to you

I've been waiting for so long
Now I've finally found someone
To stand by me…

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Nirmala now has written a second article, titled Reflection and Projection: The Symbolism of Mirrors.

I hope Nirmala will continue to write essays about the movie.

Anyone can submit essays or ideas to me at MikeSylwester@gmail.com

Baby Houseman's Thinking About Social Justice -- Part 1

The movie Dirty Dancing indicates Baby Houseman's thinking about social justice, in the following moments.

* She is reading a book titled The Plight of the Peasant

* She intends to major in the Economics of Underdeveloped Countries

* She intends to join the Peace Corps.

* She is concerned about hunger in Southeast Asia

* She "is going to change the world"

* She rejects Ayn Rand's book The Fountainhead

* She complains to her father that everyone does not "get a fair break"

Baby is concerned that some people live more poorly than other people. Some people receive fewer, lesser opportunities and must surmount more, larger obstacles. Baby intends to devote her life to improving the equality of the world's population.

In contrast, Rand is concerned that the world's most inventive, energetic, entrepreneurial people are impeded by social and governmental controls. Rand wants society to be innovative and dynamic. Rand devoted her life to improving the freedom of the world's population.

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As an egalitarian in 1963, Baby probably would be influenced, by the time she graduated from college, by the book The Other America: Poverty in the United States, written by Michael Harrington and published in 1962. The book became a best-seller, and eventually more than a million copies would be sold.

The 1962 cover of "The Other American"

Harrington was a socialist, but he operated politically within the Democratic Party during and after the Presidency of John Kennedy. The book was important in the justification for the War on Poverty during the Presidency of Lyndon Johnson.

Michael Harrington in about 1963

In 1999, Time magazine declared that The Other America was one of the ten most influential non-fiction books of the Twentieth Century.

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In a retrospective essay published in 2012, Socialist journalist Harold Meyerson summarized the book's importance as follows:

Michael Harrington’s The Other America, the book that first documented the existence of pervasive poverty within the postwar United States — then congratulating itself for being the world’s first majority-middle-class nation — struck American liberals like a thunderbolt after its publication 50 years ago.

It became required reading among college students, particularly for that exceptional group of young people who went south, at considerable risk, to register black voters in Mississippi in the summer of 1964. It was required reading for journalists, labor activists, and Democratic reformers. It was read in the White House, where it provided at least some of the impetus for the War on Poverty. Martin Luther King Jr. joked with Harrington that “we didn’t know we were poor until we read your book.”

Harrington’s was one of three books published in 1962 and 1963 that changed the way millions of Americans thought about the world.

1) Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring exposed the threat that industry posed to nature and helped incubate the environmentalist movement.

2) Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique made the subordination of women a public issue and helped engender modern feminism.

30 Harrington’s book didn’t create a movement but had far-reaching consequences. By documenting that half of America’s seniors were poor — an easily verifiable fact that no one else had managed to notice — it laid the groundwork for establishing Medicare and indexing Social Security, thereby greatly reducing poverty among the elderly.

Like Carson’s and Friedan’s volumes, The Other America unearthed an ill that readers may have sensed, however dimly, but could not have articulated or documented until they read about it. More directly than the other two volumes, Harrington’s book was aimed at the nation’s conscience, at its sense of human solidarity and fairness. “How long shall we ignore this underdeveloped nation in our midst?” he asks at the book’s conclusion. “How long shall we look the other way while our fellow human beings suffer?” ...

Harrington begins with a chapter on the working poor, describing a typical morning at New York’s 80 Warren Street, home to dozens of temporary employment agencies, where thousands reported daily for short-order jobs in kitchens and on construction sites. He next visits a non-union, low-wage factory in Chicago. Then he looks more broadly at low-paying jobs, noting that 16 million Americans in a labor force totaling 69.6 million were excluded from the federal minimum-wage law. He moves on to chapters about agricultural workers, African Americans, Appalachia, the elderly, the alcoholic and the mentally ill, in every case beginning with on-the-scene reporting before dissecting the broader historic, socioeconomic, and political factors that created so much misery. ...

Each year, Harrington delivered hundreds of talks that mobilized his listeners in both the immediate struggles for justice and the long-term battle against capitalism. But The Other America makes no reference to socialism (or capitalism, for that matter) for fear, as Harrington later wrote, that it “would divert attention from the plight of the poor.” ....

Although The Other America eschews the S-word, Harrington’s socialism is what enabled him to see what almost everyone else had missed: that 40 million Americans in a nation of 176 million were poor. Amid what he termed the “familiar America” of new suburbs and two-car garages, the poor were still with us, but they were a hidden poor, “a great mass of people, yet it takes an effort of the intellect and will even to see them.” The new middle-class majority that had moved to suburbia bypassed the decaying inner cities on the recently built interstates, kept their distance from the African American ghettos, never encountered the migrant farmworkers, and failed to see (at least in aggregate) the millions of impoverished elderly. None of these groups had political power or a visible collective presence; they had not found a way to announce their existence. So Harrington did.

How, we may wonder at the distance of half a century, did everyone else — even the social critics of the 1950s — miss them? The answer, understandably enough, is that everyone was amazed at America’s unprecedented, and unprecedentedly widespread, prosperity. The New Deal and post–New Deal reforms were working. Unions were powerful, employment levels were high, and thanks to the G.I. Bill, vastly more Americans were college-educated. .... A handful of intellectuals — disproportionately socialists — believed that the national preoccupation with affluence obscured the country’s actual condition. ...

Harrington introduced a distinctly non-socialist concept in The Other America, that of a “culture of poverty” to which the poor were prey. Concentrated into ghettos and slums; unable to find work in thriving, unionized industries; uneducated with little hope of advancement, the new poor, he wrote, frequently led lives of disconnection, disorganization, and despair. In poor communities, families disintegrated and out-of-wedlock births increased. ...

... at the start of 1964, a somewhat startled Harrington found himself acclaimed as “the man who discovered poverty” and was asked to come to Washington to help formulate Johnson’s war. For 12 days, he was immersed in round-the-clock meetings with cabinet members and administration economists. In a string of memos, Harrington recommended upgrading the quality and availability of education and health care and instituting massive public-works programs on a Rooseveltian scale. What ultimately emerged from the White House and Congress were programs boosting aid to education and setting up community organizations through which the poor could better themselves — good ideas as far as they went, Harrington believed, but not sufficient to the problem at hand.

Most of the memos Harrington wrote were co-authored with his friend Paul Jacobs, a onetime Trotskyite who two years later was to become one of the founders of the radical magazine Ramparts. Aware that they were improbable presidential policy advisers, they puckishly concluded many of their papers with the same punch line: “Of course, there is no real solution to the problem of poverty until we abolish the capitalist system.” Harrington, who was famous for counseling radicals to work for “the left wing of the possible,” was kidding. He also meant it.

Harrington’s mission, like that of a number of writers and activists who emerged in the early 1960s, was to create a movement for justice. To the extent that he sought to create a specifically socialist movement — perhaps an impossibility on American soil — he failed, as in fact he expected to. To the extent that he sought to swell, deepen, and partially socialize American liberalism, he succeeded, at least for a time. But he had no illusions as to the depth and permanence of the challenges confronting the poor and working people. “In times of slow change or stalemate, it is always the poor who are expendable in the halls of Congress,” he wrote at the conclusion of The Other America. “There is no realistic hope for the abolition of poverty in the United States until there is a vast social movement, a new period of political creativity.” ....

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In the following interview in about 1963, Harrington is challenged by conservative journalist William F. Buckley.

Unfortunately, YouTube has only Part 1 of this interview.

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In 1967, Martin Luther King based the following speech on Harrington's book.

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History Professor Brian Domitrovic lectures about "The Myth of Equality in the 1950s" in the following video. The lecture features much talk Harrington's book The Other America.

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In the following video, Socialist journalist Abby Martin provides her own perspective on why Socialist politicians have failed in the USA.

In the following video, Socialist journalist tells how Socialism would improve the USA.

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This article will be continued in Part 2 and Part 3.

The Schumacher Couple's Happy Old Age

The two characters Sidney and Sylvia Schumacher are in the movie Dirty Dancing because someone had to steal Moe Pressman's wallet, causing Johnny Castle to be blamed and fired.

Sidney and Sylvia Schumacher following Penny Johnson
(Click on the image to enlarge it.)

The wallet could have been stolen by a single thief. In the stage musical, there is a Sidney Schumacher, but no Sylvia Schumacher. The story works fine with a single thief.

The wallet could have been stolen by a young couple or a middle-age couple.

In the movie, the wallet is stolen by a married couple that is old. I vaguely remember reading somewhere that the scriptwriter Eleanor Bergstein based the Schumachers on a true story she heard about an old couple of thieves when she was interviewing people about Catskills resorts.

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No matter why the thieves are an old couple, I am going to read some literary significance into that fact.

In the movie, there are three married couples.

Jake and Marjorie Houseman

Moe and Vivian Pressman

Sidney and Sylvia Schumacher

The first two couples are middle-aged and financially comfortable, but the husband and wife are growing apart.

The growing apart of the Housemans is more evident in the stage musical and especially in the ABC original movie. I think that the growing apart was more evident in Bergstein's original script than in the finished movie.

In contrast to those first two couples, the Schumachers are old and must steal for their living. The Schumachers are not growing apart. On the contrary, they spend all their time working together as a team of thieves. Furthermore, they seem to be rather happy as a married couple.

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Let's suppose that Johnny Castle and Baby Houseman eventually married each other. This Castle marriage would not become similar to either the Houseman marriage or to the Pressman marriage. In the latter two marriages, the husbands were breadwinners and the wives were supportive housewives. .

In the Castle marriage, Baby would become the main, intellectual, professional breadwinner, and Johnny would provide a smaller, less reliable income.

In that regard, the Castle marriage never could become similar to the Houseman marriage or Pressman marriage, but the Castle marriage might ultimately become similar to the Schumacher marriage, in which the spouses are rather equal business partners.

Suppose that Baby dropped out of her higher education and professional career to take care of the family's children while Johnny continued to pursue his dancing career. Eventually, as Johnny aged out of his dancing career, the Castle marriage would always struggle economically.

I imagine that Johnny and Baby might, for example, establish a dance school for children. Johnny and Baby would become a couple of entrepreneurs, would become rather equal partners in their family business. Although they might never become rich, they might become very happy with each other, managing this business that they loved. Their marriage might have remained very happy with each other through their old age.

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The Houseman marriage and the Pressman marriage each grew apart because the husbands became consumed by their successful professional careers, which ultimately did not involve their wives almost at all. Especially after the children left home, the wives became rather idle and self-indulgent. The wives felt economically inferior to and dependent on their husbands.  Both of those marriages might have been drifting toward divorces.

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Baby was looking for a great man like her father, but Johnny was very different from her father.

Johnny perhaps was looking for a woman like Penny, who shared his passion for dance, but Baby's passions were in social work and economic development.

Perhaps a marriage between Johnny and Baby could last happily through old age only if they eventually established a partnership in a business that they both loved and in which each contributed in an appreciated, essential manner.

The Castle marriage would be unusual but happy, as the Schumacher marriage was.

Ballroom dancers are better "dirty dancers"

Baby Houseman comes into the bunkhouse party and watches the employees "dirty dancing". Then Johnny Castle and Penny Johnson come in, and they do "dirty dancing" far better than the employees.

Baby does some "dirty dancing" with Johnny for 75 seconds (5:10 - 6:25 in the above video).

Baby comes into the bunkhouse again when she brings the $250 to Penny in the bunkhouse. Employees, including Penny and Johnny, are doing some slow "dirty dancing", but Baby herself does not do any "dirty dancing:" at all.

As the story continues, Baby becomes Johnny's dance student and learns to improve her ballroom dancing. In particular, she learns how to perform the mambo, which is a ballroom dance. She performs mambo dances at the Sheldrake Hotel and at the Kellerman's talent show.

Baby does not learn "dirty dancing" from Johnny. However, Baby herself spontaneously blossoms into a "dirty dancer" and teaches a "dirty dance" to Johnny in the "Love Is Strange" scene. As the scene begins, Johnny is teaching Baby a cha-cha ballroom dance, but then she takes over and leads him into a brilliant "dirty dance" of her own creation.

Baby's tutored, intensive practice of ballroom dancing has developed her indirectly into a creative, admirable "dirty dancer".

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Ballroom dancers are better "dirty dancers". In the first bunkhouse scene, the "dirty dancing" of the employees impressed Baby, but then the "dirty dancing" of Penny and Johnny amazed her. Since Penny and Johnny had mastered ballroom dancing, they excelled also at "dirty dancing".

Because the employees did not practice ballroom dancing, the improvement of their "dirty dancing" was limited. They never would become much better dancers than were in the first bunkhouse scene.

In the "Love Is Strange" scene, Baby showed that she had surpassed the employees in "dirty dancing" -- in her creativity and artistry of such dancing.

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The movie Dirty Dancing is indeed about "dirty dancing", but the movie teaches an important lesson about such dancing. A person who learns and practices dance fundamentals with an expert teacher will eventually become a better "dirty dancer".

In the movie, Johnny teaches Baby "dirty dancing" for only 75 seconds in the first bunkhouse scene. For the rest of the movie, he teaches her only ballroom dancing. Johnny's expert instruction in ballroom dancing causes Baby to spontaneously blossom, however, into a "dirty dancer" in the "Love Is Strange" scene.

The Vauxhall Holiday Park Team Show -- 2

Continued from Part 1.

The Vauxhall Holiday Park Team Show -- 1

Continued in Part 2.

Miscellaneous Videos - 56

Johnny was attracted to the Houseman family's wealth

While the Houseman family was vacationing at Kellerman's Mountain Home, Johnny Castle was feeling pessimistic about his dancing career. He feared that he might lose his Sheldrake job and a lot of money. His cousin Billy Kostecki explained to Baby Houseman one of Johnny's concerns about Penny Johnson's abortion as follows:

They [Johnny and Penny] do their act at the Sheldrake on Thursday night. If they cancel, they lose this season's salary and next year's gig.

The dancers would be penalized severely for a failure to appear for just one performance. Their salary for the entire season would be reduced significantly.

The abortion would cost $250 (about $2,000 in current dollars), an amount that Johnny and Penny together could not pay. Perhaps much of their salary was withheld from them until the end of the tourist season.

Later in the story, Johnny  remarked to Baby that he feared losing his job at Kellerman's.

I need this goddamned job lined up for next summer. My dad calls me today. "Good news," he says. "Uncle Paul can finally get you in the union."

If Johnny lost his dance job at Kellerman's, then the ultimate consequence might be that he would abandon his dancing career and become a house-painter.

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Johnny resented the hotel's vacationing guests, because they were financially comfortable, even wealthy. In particular, he resented the Houseman family, and more particularly he resented Baby. I described those resentments in a previous article, titled Johnny's Initial Hostility Toward Baby. That article included the following passage:

The Houseman family attracted Johnny's special attention and hostility because Baby was Neil's girlfriend and Lisa was Robbie's girlfriend. From Johnny's perspective, Baby and Lisa were not ordinary guests at the resort. Baby and Lisa were the girlfriends of Johnny's two main enemies [Neil Kellerman and Robbie Gould].

Furthermore, Johnny recognized that Robbie enjoyed special favor from Max Kellerman, because Robbie was a Jewish, single, medical student who was attractive to the resort's Jewish families. Therefore, if some conflict involving Robbie arose among the employees, then Max would keep Robbie and fire Robbie's enemies.

Johnny was hostile toward the entire Houseman family because he feared that some such situation might develop where the Housemans might compel Max Houseman to choose between Robbie, on one hand, and Johnny, Penny and Billy, on the other hand.

Johnny felt that the financially comfortable Houseman family could not really understand his own financially precarious life. Johnny told Baby:

You don't understand the way it is for somebody like me. Last month I'm eating candy to stay alive. This month, women are stuffing diamonds in my pockets. I'm balancing on shit, and I can be down there again.

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After Johnny became Baby's lover, he began to fantasize about joining the Houseman family. He insisted that Baby tell her parents that he was her boyfriend. He literally dreamed that her father would embrace him as a new member of the family.

Last night, I dreamt we were walking along, and we met your father. He said, "Come on," and he put his arm around me. Just like he did with Robbie.

By this time, however, Baby had decided to terminate their relationship because she realized he would not fit well into the Houseman family.

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In these circumstances, Johnny's fantasy about marrying Baby and thus joining the Houseman family was motivated largely by the family's wealth. The anxiety he felt about his precarious economic situation might be relieved by his expectation that the family's wealth might provide him a safety net in his dance career.

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Should Baby Marry Johnny? -- 3

Should Baby Marry Johnny? -- 2

Should Baby Marry Johnny? -- 1

My 1,000th Post in This Blog

This post follows up my previous post titled My 500th Post in This Blog, which was published on November 4, 2017. That was 219 days ago, so I have averaged about 2,3 posts a day since then.

In that previous post, I provided a brief history of this blog.

In this post here, I will tell about myself and about my interest in writing such a blog.

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At the University of Oregon in the early 1970s I majored in Slavic Languages and Literature, which was managed by the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages. I never had been interested in literature; I was interested mostly in the history and politics of the Communist countries. If I wanted to get a degree in that major, however, then I had to complete a lot literature courses.

In order to get my Masters Degree, I had to complete one seminar in Slavic or Germanic literature. The only seminar that fit into my schedule was on the subject of Germanic playwrights (e.g. Georg Büchner, Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg).

I had practically no interest in this subject, but this seminar ultimately influenced me more than any other class that I took at the university. The seminar's novelty for me was that all my classmates there were graduate students who majored in literature and who discussed literature enthusiastically and intelligently. This was the first time in my life when I felt captivated and challenged by discussions about literature.

Before then, I had viewed literature majors rather contemptuously, but now I recognized their intelligence and value.

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After my university studies, I joined the US Air Force, where I served 14 years. During that time, I primarily interviewed emigrants from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. I myself interviewed emigrants, and eventually I supervised other people who interviewed emigrants.

Most of those emigrants whom I myself interviewed were Russian Jews. (I was able to interview people in Russian, Czech, Polish and German.) Because of those interviews, I became rather interested in Jewish history and culture.

After the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact fell apart in 1991, I decided to leave the military. For the following ten years, I worked as a contract translator, translating historical documents about the Holocaust for the US Department of Justice's Office of Special Investigations. That office investigated, prosecuted and deported Slavs who had collaborated with Nazi Germany to persecute Jews and who later immigrated fraudulently to the United States after World War Two.

That translating work ended for me in the early 2000s. Since then I have worked in the administration of a home-health-care agency that was founded by Russian immigrants.

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I watched the movie Dirty Dancing during its opening weekend in August 1987. At that time I was divorced from my first wife and was courting the woman who would become my second wife. During that interval between marriages, I became newly interested in social dancing.

I liked the movie very much, not only for its dancing, but also for its Jewish subtext.

My second marriage ended in divorce too, and I married a third woman. In the fall of 2008, she and I were in a video store selecting a DVD to watch, and she selected Dirty Dancing. I watched not only the movie but also all the voice-over commentaries included in the DVD's extra features.

That experience prompted me to begin writing this blog.

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About twenty years ago, I began to study classic English literature -- such as the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare and John Milton.

Before that beginning, I never had read any such works -- in particular, Shakespeare's plays. Now I have read most of his plays. When I study a play, I read it carefully at least three times, along with scholarly commentaries.

I study literature this way now because of how I was profoundly influenced by that seminar in Germanic playwrights that I attended more than four decades ago. I want to develop an intellectual understanding of classic literary works. I aspire to measure up belatedly to the literature majors who profoundly impressed me in that graduate-level seminar.

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I write this blog about the movie Dirty Dancing because I want to share my enthusiasm for studying literary works. Most people who happen onto this blog perceive me to be a kook wasting my time. They browse through my blog for a short while and then go away to other, more interesting places in the Internet.

I think that I have perhaps only about a dozen regular readers at any given time. These regular readers keep reading my blog for at least a few months. As one such reader eventually abandons my blog, he is replaced by another new regular reader. Thus the number of regular readers remains at about a dozen.

If I feel that a dozen people are reading me regularly, then I feel that my effort is worthwhile. After all, even Jesus Christ had only twelve disciples.

I am 65 years old, I have no biological children, and in a few years I will die broke. I hope that my long blog about this one movie might challenge some young people to devote themselves to literary studies at a highly intellectual level. Within the concept of "literary studies", I include written literature, music, visual arts, theater, cinema and so forth.

Study the classics. Master the study of one genre or of one artist or of just one work. Then share your enthusiastic, expert understanding with other people. These are worthwhile activities that might make you happy with your own life -- a life of appreciating the liberal arts.

That's why I keep writing this blog.

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Looking into the future pensively

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The right margin of this blog had some opinion polls about abortion and about possible sequels to the movie. The Blogger developers eliminated all opinion polls, without warning, at the beginning of June.

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The Setting of "Dirty Dancing" in 1963

In a previous article, titled My Speculation About the Construction of the Story, I speculated that Eleanor Bergstein developed the Dirty Dancing story through the following series of stages.

The movie will revolve around sexy dancing

The movie will be about two women -- a professional dancer and an amateur dancer

The professional dancer gets an abortion

The movie will portray the consequences of laws that prohibit abortion

The story will take place before 1973

The two women will be Penny Johnson and Vivian Pressman

Penny will become pregnant from a non-dancer

The story will take place at a Catskill resort

The Houseman family enters the story

Bergstein decided to set the story before 1973 because that was year when the US Supreme Court legalized abortion. I speculate that Bergstein set the story in 1963 simply because that year was one decade before that legalization. Her story would depict the horrors of illegal abortion one decade before abortion was legalized.

The movie would depict the dilemma of an unmarried professional dancer -- Penny Johnson -- who has become pregnant. Penny's married friend -- Vivian Pressman -- would help Penny get an illegal abortion, but Penny would suffer various consequences to her health and career.

No seventeen-year-old girl was in the story. Rather, the two main characters were women in their mid-twenties. In 1963, Bergstein was 25 years old -- about the age of Penny and Vivian in the story.

The Vivian character was based on Bergstein herself. In her younger years, Vivian had planned to become a professional dancer, but then she abandoned her dancing career because she married and devoted herself mostly to her family. However, she spent a few weeks at a Catskill resort every summer teaching dance along with Penny.

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This all is merely my speculation. I have practically no evidence for any of it.

As Bergstein thought more and more about the year 1963, she felt compelled to point out that her story was taking place shortly before the beginning of a a major social upheaval in the USA. Soon President Kennedy would be assassinated, the Beatles would come to America, the Civil Rights Act would become law, and so forth.

Those imminent events certainly would affect Penny and Vivian, but both those women were already in their mid-twenties. By that adult age, their personalities, attitudes and ambitions were quite established. Their lives' trajectories would not be changed by the assassination of JFK and the arrival of the Beatles.

This consideration (I speculate) caused Bergstein to insert a seventeen-year-old girl into her story as the new main character. A character of such young age might look back many years later and find that her life indeed change its trajectory significantly soon right August 1963.

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In fact, American society did not change visibly much right after the assassination of President Kennedy in November 1963 and the arrival of the Beatles in February 1964. The visible change did not become blatant until 1967 -- until the so-called Summer of Love.

The 1967 Summer of Love would have coincided with Baby Houseman's graduation from college. That was the time of her life when her life would have changed its trajectory most significantly.

It was in 1967 that the Beatles released their break-through album Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

In 1967, Bergstein was 29 years old -- as were the original Dirty Dancing story's main characters -- Penny Johnson and Vivian Pressman. They were almost 30 at a time when the rebellious younger generation was declaring, "Don't trust anyone over 30!"

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Anachronistically, Dirty Dancing features one 1967 song -- "Love Man", performed by Otis Redding.  This particular song is significant in the story because plays when Baby tries "dirty dancing" for the first time.

This song evokes not the year 1963, when the story takes place, but rather the year 1967, when the social upheaval became blatant.

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Below is a list of the movie's period-piece songs that were released no later than 1963.

Be My Baby -- released in 1963

Big Girls Don't Cry -- released in 1962

Do You Love Me? -- released in 1962

Stay -- released in 1960

Wipe Out -- released in 1963

Hey, Baby -- released in 1961

Some Kind of Wonderful -- released in 1961

These Arms of Mine -- released in 1962

Cry to Me -- released in 1962

Will You Love Me Tomorrow? -- released in 1962

Love Is Strange -- released in 1956

You Don't Own Me -- released in 1963

In the Still of the Night -- released in 1956

Except "Wipe Out", all these songs were middle-of-the-road, melodic, lyrical, romantic songs that would have fit easily into the popular songs of the complacent, conformist 1950s. None of the above songs express any social protest or rebellion.

For that reasons, the above-listed songs are apt, because they do characterize the our society that was pleasant and prosperous but was becoming ripe by the mid-1960s for an upheaval. The continuing prohibition of abortion was -- in many people's opinion -- a symptom of social and political stagnation.

In 1963, plenty of popular songs did express social protest, but they were the songs of the American Folk Music Revival.

In 1963, Baby Houseman was not complacent; she wanted to change the world. However, her sister Lisa, just a year or two older, was complacent.

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The setting of the story in 1963 was a factor in the movie's box-office success in 1987. People who themselves had been 17 years old in 1963 were about 41 years old in 1987. The movie's audience included many middle-age adults who remembered nostalgically their own teenage lives in the early 1960s.

Suppose Bergstein had set her story in the year 1955, when she herself was 17 years old. The movie audience would not have included so many people who personally remembered their own teenage lives in the mid-1950s.

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I speculate that Bergstein set her story in 1963 merely because that year was ten years before the Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973. Bergstein worried that Ronald Reagan, who had become President in 1981 and who began his second four-year term in 1985, would appoint new Supreme Court justices who would make abortion illegal again.

Bergstein wanted her story to remind people about the problems that had been caused by the prohibition of abortion just ten years before the legalization.

Bergstein's original story was about the effects, in 1963, of the abortion prohibition on two women in their mid-twenties. One woman had abandoned her dance career to marry and raise a family, while the other woman had continued to pursue a dance career. The latter woman became pregnant and wanted an abortion, and so the first woman helped her get an abortion.

As Bergstein thought about the year 1963, however, she recognized that it was a year when a major social upheaval was imminent. Bergstein decided that she could improve her story if her main character would declare plausibly that the year 1963 would become a turning point in her life. Such a declaration was more plausible if the character were 17 years old (rather than 25 years old) in 1963.

Therefore Bergstein introduced the 17-year-old character Baby Houseman into this story that takes place in 1963. That new character brought along into the story the Houseman family, with its various dynamics and conflicts.

The Penny character remained about the same, but the Vivian character was disassociated from Penny and from the abortion. Vivian became even a villain in the story.

The year 1963 was the social calm before the social storm, which became blatant in 1967. The Catskill resort society of 1963 became a "lost world" after 1967.

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On one hand, Bergstein's story depicted the year 1963 as a bad time -- when abortion was illegal and so even professional women in their mid-twenties, such as Penny Johnson, suffered the consequences of that illegality.

On the other hand, the story depicted the year 1963 as a time of great fun and even triumph for Baby Houseman. The movie reminds us about some of the popular music of the early 1960s. The movie reminds us also about beautiful clothing fashions and supportive family life of that period.

Very importantly, the movie reminded the 1987 movie audiences about ballroom dancing, the popularity of which had declined greatly after 1963. The movie is not really about "dirty dancing". The movie is really about ballroom dancing.

Baby Houseman's Perspective on Vivian Pressman

During the preparation of the talent show, Baby Houseman watches Vivian Pressman talking quietly with Johnny Castle.  As Vivian walks away from Johnny, he looks back toward Baby, who pretends that she had not been watching Vivian and Johnny.

Then Johnny follows Vivian to a table where she is standing by her husband, Moe Pressman, who is playing cards with some other men. Johnny talks briefly with Moe and then walks further away.

Moe offering Johnny money to give Vivian a dance lesson

Baby has not been able to hear Johnny's conversations with Vivian or Moe. However, she is able to see that Moe gives some money to Johnny but then takes it back. As she watches Johnny walk away further from the card table, she sighs and smiles with apparent relief.

Although Baby cannot not hear the conversations, she understands, from what she saw, that Vivian wanted to arrange a paid dance lesson but that Johnny declined the offer.

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That scene takes place on Saturday, August 31. Baby had become sexual with Johnny in his cabin on the night of Thursday-Friday and had returned to his bed in his cabin on the afternoon of Friday.

Early on Saturday, Baby and Johnny do their "Love Is Strange" dance. Then Neil Kellerman enters the room and upsets Johnny's dance plan for the talent show.

While walking outside, Baby and Johnny talk. He says that if he loses his job at Kellerman's resort, he might have to become a house painter.

In my last essay, titled  Good news -- Uncle Paul can finally get you in the union, I argued that this conversation about Johnny possibly becoming a house painter causes Baby to realize that her relationship with Johnny must end after her family departs from the resort. She does not, however, tell Johnny about her realization.

Johnny wants the resolution to continue, and so he gets mad because Baby will not introduce him as her boyfriend to her father. Johnny walks away angrily.

Baby finds Johnny at Penny Johnson's cabin and apologizes to him. Robbie Gould walks by and remarks that Baby is "slumming" in her relationship with Johnny.

Later on Saturday, Baby, Johnny and others are preparing for the talent show. Baby watches Johnny talk with Vivian and then with Moe and then walk further away.

The preparations for the talent show continue. Johnny has just given Moe a pirate hat and told him to get ready to rehearse his pirate act.

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At this point in the story, during the preparations for the talent show, Baby feels relieved because Johnny will not spend time later giving Vivian a dance lesson. Rather, Johnny will spend maximum time with Baby alone. Johnny and Baby will spend the entire night together in his cabin.

During the preparations for the talent show, Baby saw Johnny talking with Vivian, but Baby could not hear that Vivian said to Johnny:

This is our last night together, lover. I've got something worked out for us.

Did Baby recognize and care that Vivian was Johnny's lover?

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A week earlier, Baby had heard Max Kellerman describe Vivian as a "bungalow bunny".

Max Kellerman telling the Housemans
that Vivian Pressman is a "bungalow bunny"

While Max was talking, Johnny and Vivian were dancing. At first she is wearing a white fur wrap, but she drops it onto the dance floor as she continues to dance.

Johnny dancing with Vivian, the "bungalow bunny".
She has just dropped a white fur wrap onto the dance floor.

The fur wrap and the dialogue indicate that she is wealthy and pays Johnny for dance lessons:

Vivian Pressman
Hi, Max. Aren't my dance lessons starting to pay off?

Max Kellerman
(Addressing Vivian)
You look great, Vivian! Terrific!

(Addressing Jake and Marjorie)
That's Vivian Pressman, one of the bungalow bunnies. That's what we call the women who stay here all week long. The husbands only come up on weekends. Moe Pressman's a big card player. He'll join our game.

(Addressing Vivian)
Moe coming up on Friday?

Vivian Pressman
Friday.

Max Kellerman
(Addressing Vivian)
He's away a lot. I know. It's a hardship.

The remarks about Moe's long absences suggest that Vivian is available for sexual adventures while she stays in the area.

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On one occasion when Johnny and Baby are in bed together, he tells her that wealthy women at the hotel entice him with valuable gifts and sexual pleasures.

... women are throwing themselves at you and they smell so good. They really take care of themselves. I never knew women could be like that.

They're so goddamn rich, you think they must know about everything. They're slipping their room keys in my hand two and three times a day -- different women --

.... They were using me.

Baby certainly assumed that Vivian was one such woman.

During the preparations for the talent show, Baby saw Vivian approach Johnny and talk quietly with him. Then Baby saw Moe offer Johnny money and assumed that Moe was offering to pay Johnny to give Vivian a dance lesson.

Baby might have assumed also that Vivian intended to use the dance lesson as a means to get into a sexual encounter with Johnny. Baby herself wanted intended to get into a sexual encounter with Johnny that very same night.

Keep in mind, though, that Baby intended (in my opinion) to end her relationship with Johnny. In that regard, Baby might have felt no resentment about Johnny's continuing relationship with Vivian. It was only during this Saturday-Sunday night that Baby wanted Johnny exclusively for herself.

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Since Vivian did not get to spend time with Johnny during that Saturday-Sunday night, she got into a sexual encounter with Robbie. This encounter was discovered by Baby's sister Lisa.

Since Lisa previously had confided to Baby that she herself intended "to go all the way" with Robbie during that Saturday-Sunday night, Lisa surely told Baby on Sunday that she had found Robbie in bed with Vivian during that night.

When Baby heard this news about Vivian from Lisa, Baby might have figured that Vivian was not Johnny's lover, but rather Robbie's lover. If Baby figured so, then she no longer considered Vivian to be her rival for Johnny's time and affection.

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 After Baby and Johnny do their dance performance at the talent show, everyone joins in the dancing -- except for Vivian. At 4:15 in the following video clip, Vivian walks alone and angrily out of the room.

Exactly why is Vivian angry? Surely Vivian knows that Johnny has many other lovers besides herself. Perhaps Vivian is angry only because she had planned to enjoy a sexual encounter with Johnny after the talent show, but now she sees that he has been captivated by Baby.

If Baby happened to see Vivian's departure from the room, she perhaps did not perceived any relationship to herself. Baby might have assumed mistakenly that Vivian simply was sneaking out to meet with her lover Robbie.

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In general, Baby never was concerned much about Vivian. Baby probably assumed that Vivian was one of the wealthy women who slipped her room key into Johnny's hand, but Baby did not know that for sure.

Baby did know that Vivian was married to Moe, who was spending this weekend at the resort and was even participating in the talent show. If Baby gave any thought at all to the possibility that Vivian might cheat on her husband later that evening, after the talent show, then Baby would assume that Vivian intended to cheat with Robbie, not with Johnny.

Anyway, Baby does not intend to continue her relationship with Johnny seriously after her family departs from the resort in a few hours. Perhaps Baby hopes that Johnny ultimately will get together with Penny.

Baby is much less concerned about Vivian interfering with Johnny than the movie audience is concerned about Vivian. interfering with Johnny. The movie audience knows somewhat more about Vivian than Baby knows.

Miscellaneous Videos - 55