Dirty Dancing Analysis: April 2020

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12
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On Saturday, August 24, 1963, Robbie Gould recommended to Baby Houseman that she read the novel The Fountainhead. Baby rejected the book, so he gave it to Lisa Houseman later on that same day. Lisa began to read the novel that night.

Four days later, on Thursday, August 29, Lisa got mad at Baby because Baby asked Lisa to lie to their parents. The following scene was not included in the movie but is a part of the story.

This scene is a key moment in Lisa's political rebellion. By this point, Lisa had been reading The Fountainhead for four days, and so she has become cynical about goody-goody "idealists" like Baby.

The dialogue begins at 0:13 of the above video:

Baby Houseman
Listen, you just got to do something for me.

Lisa Houseman
I don't just got to do anything.

Baby Houseman
Just tell Mommy and Daddy I have a terrible headache, and I'm in bed. And "check on me" once.

Lisa Houseman
No.

Baby Houseman
Lisa, I don't have time. Do it for me. Okay?

Lisa Houseman
No. Actually, I will speak to Mommy and Daddy. They should know you've been coming and going at all hours. And there's something fishy about it. In fact, I 'm going to tell them right now.

Baby Houseman
Lisa, remember that weekend. You were supposed to stay with me when they went to Rita's wedding in Washington.

Lisa Houseman
So?

Baby Houseman

So, I'll tell them you left me all alone and instead went [unintelligible] Bay.

Lisa Houseman
But I didn't. I stayed with you.

Baby Houseman
I know. They won't believe you. I never lie.

Lisa's growing cynicism about Baby's idealism is elaborated in another scene, which takes place on the following morning, Saturday, August 31. This scene is not included in the movie but is part of the story.

The dialogue:

Baby Houseman
I wouldn't have really lied. Lisa, you know I wouldn't have really lied about your [unintelligible]

Lisa Houseman
You know, I used to admire you, Baby. I used to think:
Baby's weird. Her hair sticks out. She walks funny. She' better than me.

Before Lisa began reading The Fountainhead, she had considered Baby to be weird but had admired her apparent intelligence and idealism. Now, however, Lisa considers Baby to be a lying, sneaky manipulator.

In the first video above, Baby indeed was behaving as a lying, sneaky manipulator. However, Lisa now perceives Baby with a larger perspective. Lisa now perceives Baby as just one example of the many contemptible characters who populate society -- and populate novel The Fountainhead.

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The Art and Popular Culture website describes contemporary cynicism as follows:

Cynicism is an attitude or state of mind characterized by a general distrust of others' apparent motives or ambitions ... therefore deserving of ridicule or admonishment. It is a form of jaded negativity, and other times, realistic criticism or skepticism. ....

Modern cynicism has been defined as an attitude of distrust toward claimed ethical and social values and a rejection of the need to be socially involved. It is pessimistic in regards to the capacity of human beings to make the correct ethical choice ...

Modern cynicism is sometimes regarded as a product of mass society, especially in those circumstances where the individual believes there is a conflict between society's stated motives and goals and actual motives and goals. ...

In his bestselling Critique of Cynical Reason, Peter Sloterdijk defined modern cynics as "borderline melancholics, who can keep their symptoms of depression under control" .... One active aspect of cynicism is the desire to expose hypocrisy and to point out the gulf between society's ideals and its practices.

Social cynicism results from excessively high expectations concerning society, institutions and authorities: unfulfilled expectations lead to disappointment, which releases feelings of disillusionment and betrayal.

Reading The Fountainhead was forming a cynical attitude in Lisa. especially toward people who present themselves as idealistic reformers of society.

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The novel takes place mostly in the milieu of the architecture business in the 1920s. The novel depicts various situations in which influential people in the architecture business suppressed the development of modern architecture. These people praised classical architecture's merits, but their hostility toward modern architecture was motivated also by greed, vanity, complacency, careerism, jealousy and other personal motivations.

I figure that during Lisa's first four days of reading the novel, she reached Part 1, Chapter 12, which begins at page 138 in my own paperback edition. In this chapter, Alvah Scarret, the editor-in-chief of New York City's The Banner newspaper assigns Dominique Francon to write a series of articles depicting deplorable living conditions in several blocks of Manhattan. Alvah is organizing a three-week journalistic campaign, titled "Landlord Sharks", to embarrass and shame the owners of the buildings in those blocks.

The campaign's real purpose is not, however, to compel the building owners to improve the living conditions. Rather, the real purpose is to compel the owners to sell the buildings at a lower price to the newspaper owners' business confederates. The newspaper's leadership does not really care about the living conditions; rather it wants to lower the buildings' sale prices temporarily.

Dominique lives in an apartment in that neighborhood for a couple of weeks and then writes articles that depict the situation there frankly. Her articles blame the buildings' squalor partially on the powerful, greedy landlords and also partially on the coarse, messy residents. Her honest impartiality angers Alvah, who tells here that she has spoiled her own journalistic career prospects by downplaying her criticism of the landlords.

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For Lisa, this early chapter of the novel is enlightening. During her own life, Lisa has been exposed only rarely to criticism of poor people for causing their own squalor. Lisa's parents and sister never have demeaned poor people. When Lisa's mother has described her pwm impoverished youth during the Depression, she has described the poor as hapless victims of an economic catastrophe.

Lisa is amused that Dominique -- who has grown up rich and who now lives in a penthouse -- lived in that poor neighborhood for only two weeks and then casually wrote newspaper articles describing her neighbors there as drunken, gambling slobs who gave birth to far more children than they could raise and support.

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For sure, Baby sees Lisa reading The Fountainhead and is infuriated. Baby's fury increases Lisa's enjoyment of the novel. While reading the novel, Lisa thinks of Baby and compares her occasionally to some of the novel's hypocritical villains. For example, when Lisa reads about the editor Alvah Scarret's self-serving campaign against the landlords, Lisa wonders whether Baby's idealism likewise is self-serving.

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Lisa indeed thinks there was something "fishy" about Baby's behavior at Kellerman's. Lisa wonders why Baby was "coming and going at all hours".

Robbie has told Lisa that Baby asked him to donate money to Penny, because Penny is pregnant. Robbie explains further that Penny was so promiscuous that she does not know which man has made her pregnant. Lisa speculates that Baby's boyfriend Neil Kellerman has manipulated Baby into feeling sorry and collecting donations for Penny. Lisa thinks Baby is a naive fool if she does not recognize that Neil himself might have impregnated Penny and therefore wants to buy Penny's silence.

Lisa wonders why Baby is hanging around with Neil "at all hours". Maybe Baby suddenly has become attracted to Neil's money. Maybe Neil has hinted that he might give her a car to use at Holyoke College.

Neil talks about driving with a couple of Negro kitchen workers to the South at the end of the summer. Does Baby think about traveling along with Neil and those two Negroes for a couple of weeks? Classes at Holyoke will not begin until late September.

Is Baby sexually attracted to a Negro, and is Baby manipulating Neil into providing her an opportunity to become intimate with a Negro man during that trip?

Yikes! Baby acts like a goody-goody idealist, but she is doing something fishy. Lisa, now a cynic, recognizes that her sister Baby is a lying, sneaky manipulator and that Neil might be Baby's exploitable victim.

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This series will be continued in Part 14.

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