Dirty Dancing is radical: here's why.

In the following video, video essayist Leena Norms reviews the movie Dirty Dancing. The video is about 19 minutes long and is quite intelligent. Norms' YouTube channel provides almost 300 of her video essays. It seems that the largest portion is reviews of literary works.

In this video essay, Norms lists six elements of Dirty Dancing that make the movie "radical".

1) The illegal abortion

2) Baby's "female gaze" toward Johnny

3) The critical treatment of Baby's altruism

4) The "soft masculinity" of several male characters

5) The female characters' respectful treatment of each other

6) The critical but healthy father-daughter relationship

Norms says that her own thinking about the movie was significantly influenced by her reading of a book, Life Moves Pretty Fast: The lessons we learned from eighties movies (and why we don't learn them from movies any more), written by Hadley Freeman. (I think I should read that book.)

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I watched a few other video essays by Norms.

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How I Choose What to Read

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The Secret Women Who Inspire Me -- My Top Five Female Characters Ever

The top five female characters are Edna Pontellier, Maria Von Trapp, Elphaba Thropp, Olympia Binewski and Evie Walton.

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10 years on YouTube: what I've learned (brutally honest tips/advice)