"Dirty Dancing" as a Teenage Rite-of-Passage Film

The book The Time of Our Lives: Dirty Dancing and Popular Culture, published in 2013, edited by Yannis Tzioumakis and Siân Lincoln, is a collection of scholarly essays about the movie.

The cover of the book
"The Time of Our Lives: Dirty Dancing and Popular Culture"

I already have published four blog articles about the book and its articles:

Time of Our Lives: Dirty Dancing and Popular Culture

Is Dirty Dancing a Musical?

Straightness and Dirtiness in Dirty Dancing

Generic Hybridity in Dirty Dancing

Now I will review another of the book's articles -- "'You Don't Own Me!': Dirty Dancing as Teenage Rite-of-Passage Film", written by Siân Lincoln.

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Siân Lincoln

The book identifies Ms. Lincoln as follows:

Siân Lincoln is senior lecturer in media studies at Liverpool John Moores University. Her research interests are around contemporary youth culture, young people and private space, teenage “bedroom culture” and young people and the media.

She has recently published her first book Youth Culture and Private Space (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) and is working on her second, titled Rethinking Youth Cultures: A Critical Introduction (Palgrave Macmillan).

She has published in and guest-edited various journals, including Leisure Studies, YOUNG, Space and Culture, Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, Journal of Sociology and Information Technology and People.

Ms. Lincoln's categorizes Dirty Dancing into the rite-of-passage genre -- which I consider to be essentially the same as the coming of age genre.

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Lincoln explains why the movie affects females so strongly.

... as a rite-of-passage film that portrays a young girl's journey from adolescence toward maturity over a three-week summer vacation, Dirty Dancing acts as a microcosm of what readily occurs in the life of the average young woman during those transitional years. In this respect, the film could be perceived a a valuable resource for young girls who are able to identify in it relatable experiences and apply them to their own situations and emerging biographies.

This is because this rite-of-passage film contains a wealth of smaller and clearly identifiable rite-of-passage moments that young girls commonly encounter during their teen years, including experiencing a holiday romance, falling for an older guy, losing your virginity, defying your parent and questioning their integrity, rethinking and redefining family relationships and dynamics, finding yourself, and becoming a mature individual.

Even seemingly more trivial rites of passage, such as applying makeup for the first time and wearing outfits that flaunt your body, are the core of some of the film's scenes, underscoring further the significance from adolescence to maturity.

For this reason ... Dirty Dancing has helped many young women act in the "real" world; has taught them how to make particular decisions and how to deal with important problems (at least for young people); has given a lot of young girls hope for a better future, irrespective of the nature of their individual circumstances; and has generally provided a life-affirming scenario that has resonated with large numbers of ... young women around the world ....

Lincoln tells how she herself watched the movie for the first time when she was about 13 years old. The movie recently had stopped playing in the movie theaters and had become available on a VHS recording. She got the recording and invited five girlfriends to her home for a sleepover, so they all could watch it together and then talk about it all night.

[The movie had been] a hot topic on the school playground for months, and we were so excited to be finally watching it. I even bought a new nightdress for the occasion. ...

I instantly fell in love with it, not least because of the presence of Patrick Swayze who, for me, played the "bad boy" role perfectly. (and whom I found so physically attractive). But I also loved the music, the clothing, the film's retro aesthetic, and of course the love story between Johnny and Baby.

I distinctly remember us girls practically screaming when at the end of the film Johnny comes back to dance with Baby and he utters the immortal line "nobody puts Baby in a corner."

I'm not sure how many times we rewound that scene that night, but it was plenty.

Lincoln has published two books about "youth culture". One aspect of this culture is that young people repeatedly watch particular movies or listen to particular songs as they think about their lives. Young people commonly are able to do so in the privacy of their bedrooms. They are able to play particular movie scenes over and over.

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One particularly thought-provoking aspect of Dirty Dancing is that Baby rebels against her father. Part of the rebellion is her engagement in sexual activities. Eventually, however, her father accepts that rebellion and reconciles with her. Many girls feel such a conflict within their own families, and they are very interested in watching Baby negotiate her own similar conflict with her father.

More generally, adolescents increasingly question -- as Baby does in the movie -- the family relationships and beliefs that they had taken for granted while they were growing up.

Lincoln argues that the movie's ambiguous ending -- the movie audience does not know what Baby will do further with Johnny or with her own life -- enhances the movie's thought-provoking quality. Whatever happens further, Baby has passed rather successfully through at least those three weeks of precarious experiences. That brief success inspires the young women who watch the movie.

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To illustrate her thesis, Lincoln surveyed the 100 most recent reviews of the movie that were posted by fans on the Internet Movie Database during the years 2005-2011. Lincoln found that about 15% of those fan reviews discussed the movie in terms of their own personal adolescent maturation. Lincoln quotes several such fan reviews. Here is just one example:

The film reflects very well on the problem that a 17-year-old girl faces in the Sixties and shows that every problem comes with a solution! And in her case with help from her dad! It made me think a lot about my life and how to deal with my own problems and overcome it! Made me feel like a winner!!

Of course, much more than 15% of the people who watched the movie likewise learned similar lessons.

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I enjoyed reading Lincoln's article. As far as I know, the article is not available on-line.