Nobody puts Baby in a corner.
What makes Dirty Dancing so irresistible?
As much as we keep coming back to Emile Ardolino’s 1987 film
for the iconic romance, Patrick Swayze,
and, of course, the dancing,
Spaghetti arms!
Would you give me some tension, please?
there’s a deeper meaning in protagonist Baby’s character arc
that explains why this story has struck a chord for so many viewers
ever since its release.
What’s she doing here?
I carried a watermelon.
(whispers) I carried a watermelon?!
Frances’ progression from Baby to woman
is a symbolic telling of the heterosexual young woman’s
awakening into her femininity and sexuality.
It’s a coming-of-age expressed as coming into one’s own body.
Baby O-Oh, baby
As Baby takes ownership of her desires and physicality,
she achieves confidence, maturity and purpose.
My character really becomes a woman and becomes aware of her sensuality.
Here's our take on Dirty Dancing’s timeless insights
into the young female experience.
I’ll never be sorry.
Neither will I.
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Frances Houseman’s childlike state at the beginning of Dirty Dancing
is allegorized through her nickname: Baby.
That was the summer of 1963, when everybody called me Baby
and it didn’t occur to me to mind.
Her voiceover in the opening scene frames her as an innocent
living in an innocent time.
That was before President Kennedy was shot, before the Beatles came...
In the film’s opening scene, Baby also identifies herself
as a girl with an Electra complex,
the female equivalent of an Oedipus complex.
Coined by psychoanalyst Carl Jung, the Electra complex posits
that a girl’s initial love object is her father.
And I thought I’d never find a guy as great as my dad.
Baby shows obvious girlish affection for her dad,
gushing about him and striving to impress him.
A tragedy is three men trapped in a mine
or police dogs used in Birmingham.
Monks burning themselves in protest.
Butt out, Baby.
In the first dance class, when Penny says,
When I say stop you’re gonna find the man of your dreams!
Baby is about to move toward her dad —
and looks disappointed when Penny cuts in.
In key moments when she confronts a problem, her first instinct
is to go to her dad for help.
Could you loan me $250?
One of her big moments of crisis in the film comes when,
for the first time, her father disapproves of her.
You're not the person I thought you were, Baby.
I'm not sure who you are.
But while it’s hard for her to take her dad’s criticism,
You're not Daddy's girl anymore.
this separation from him is crucial to her growing up.
I'm so sorry, Daddy.
But you let me down too.
According to Jung, to overcome the Electra complex, the heterosexual female
must transfer her love to another, more suitable love object.
And in Dirty Dancing, Baby outgrows her fixation
on her dad by bonding with a new man — the hunky dance instructor
at her Catskills resort, Johnny.
That’s my cousin, Johnny Castle.
Baby’s journey from virginal girl to confident woman
takes place through dance, which is used in the film
to symbolically express sexuality.
Guys think that they way you dance is the way you have sex.
At the beginning of the film, while Baby is well-developed
in her intellect and ideals,
Just where do you get off telling me what's right?
You can't just leave her!
she’s removed from her own body.
Her lack of sexual experience is reflected in her inability to dance,
as shown in her awkward early attempts to participate in a meringue class
and her clumsy swaying with Neil, the grandson of Kellerman’s owner
who’s presented as a socially desirable match for her.
Maybe my parents are looking for me.
Baby, don’t worry.
If they think you’re with me,
they’ll be the happiest parents at Kellermans.
Even actual children outshine her on the dance floor.
But when Baby observes Johnny and Penny perform,
she’s immediately struck by what it looks like to connect with
and master one’s own body.
When she later observes the staff members dirty dancing
with each other, this represents her first exposure to adult sexuality.
Want to try it?
That night, Johnny gives her her first informal lesson
Watch my eyes.
Good!
and almost immediately unlocks a new looseness in her physicality.
Over the course of the story, through Baby’s dance education with Johnny,
she develops mature, sexual feelings for him
and gains confidence in herself.
It's a feeling, a heartbeat.
Simultaneously, dance becomes a means of learning femininity —
the art of projecting her womanly grace and power through her body.
Oh come on ladies, God wouldn't have
given you maracas if he didn't want you to shake ‘em!
Baby studies this by imitating Penny, a more mature female Baby looks up to.
I think you’re a wonderful dancer.
As Penny supports Baby’s dance education,
standing behind her while Baby partners with Johnny,
she symbolically transfers her womanly knowledge to Baby.
When Baby successfully replaces Penny as Johnny’s partner
in the mambo performance, this marks a key step
in her learning to perform her womanhood through dance.
In this process, Baby undergoes a physical transformation —
changing her hair, starting to wear makeup,
Take that stuff off your face before your mother sees you!
and gradually exposing more of her body.
Yet it’s crucial that her metamorphosis represents realizing herself
and coming into her own powers and desires,
rather than altering herself to please her partner.
Her new appearance reflects a woman who is increasingly
comfortable in her own skin.
If you love me, you have to love all the things about me.
Later in the film, this change in Baby is contrasted with her sister Lisa’s
continuing disconnect from her own body.
While it’s announced from the start that Lisa is preoccupied
with markers of traditional femininity,
Mom I should have brought those coral shoes!
she doesn’t get this empowering physical education
over the course of the summer.
Near the end, Lisa’s talent show practice and performance
have a comic absurdity to them, stemming from how she remains
cut off from her physicality.
(singing) You can wackle while I walk away
And while Baby’s self-assurance is answered with the love of a partner
who gets and respects her, Lisa’s failure to know herself
is reflected in her wanting to have sex for the first time
with Robbie, an insincere Yale student who isn’t at all the respectable,
nice guy she thinks he is.
I've decided to go all the way with Robbie.
Oh Lisa, no, not with someone like him.
It should be with someone that —that you sort of love.
Baby’s and Johnny’s dance relationship
ultimately leads to actual sexual consummation,
but it’s striking that Baby actively seduces Johnny
more than the other way around.
Dance with me.
Contrary to common social anxieties about women losing their virginity
and men taking women’s virtue by deflowering them,
Baby seems to gain power after she’s had sex —
because she’s done so on her terms with a person she loves.
You’re the one.
Soon after their sexual relationship begins,
Johnny calls her by her real name
Frances — that’s good, that’s a real grown-up name.
—reflecting the way that he respects her as a grown woman
and, unlike everyone else, doesn’t see her as a baby.
She even leads Johnny and playfully bosses him around
when they dance, showing off her new dominance and empowerment.
You're invading my dance space.
This is my dance space.
That's yours.
Likely in part due to its being inspired
by female screenwriter Eleanor Bergstein’s real experiences,
I was called baby until I was 20.
Dirty Dancing captures an authentic female perspective
of the joys of first love.
And although the film is directed by a man,
the camera frequently exerts a female gaze,
the shots visually expressing the pleasure Baby takes
in Johnny’s body and her own, inviting the viewer to participate
in her desire for and enjoyment of him.
Come here, lover boy.
Thus one of the most appealing aspects of Baby’s transformation
and sexual awakening in Dirty Dancing is that —
unlike in countless stories about young women —
these are presented as truly empowering.
She learns to know and express herself through dance, and sex.
Although no literal marriage takes place in Dirty Dancing,
the film’s iconic final scene serves as a metaphorical one.
Johnny takes Baby from her father to publicly dance with her.
So I'm gonna do my kind of dancin' with a great partner.
Their friends and family look on and cheer with an enthusiasm
more typical of a wedding crowd than of a talent show’s audience.
Baby’s father gives his blessing when he apologizes to Johnny
for misjudging him.
When I'm wrong, I say I'm wrong.
And while until now Baby’s Electra complex
has implicitly put her in competition with her mother
for possession of the father,
Are there still starving children in Europe?
Uh, try Southeast Asia, Ma.
in this final scene the mother-daughter relationship
also enters a more positive phase.
Baby’s mother stands up for her
Sit down, Jake
and expresses pride in her Baby’s growth
I think she gets this from me.
Notably, Baby has carved out a distinctive life for herself
through a partner who’s different from her dad —
a muscular dancer of a working-class Irish background
instead of a slim, highly educated Jewish doctor.
Still, in the most important ways, he is that guy as great as her dad
she was searching for—someone caring, with an intact moral compass,
unlike pretty much every other man
Baby interacts with in the film, and thus a worthy replacement
of her father as a love object.
You looked wonderful out there.
Given that Baby is still very young and this summer of love
doesn’t guarantee an eternal commitment,
we can also read the figurative marriage
at the end as between Baby and her own awakened sexuality.
When Baby at last pulls off the big lift she's struggled with,
this success marks the happy completion
of her development into the woman she truly is.
There are two kinds of help here.
Baby’s and Johnny’s dancing also allows them to cross
an invisible but very real divide between them: class.
Oh them, they’re the dance people.
They’re here to keep the guests happy.
The difference between the two sub-societies at Kellermans
is represented through their dancing.
The wealthy guests’ dancing comes across as silly, disjointed,
and devoid of emotion, while the working-class staff
use dirty dancing as a form of joyous self-expression and connection.
In Baby’s eyes, this difference immediately sets the Kellermans’ staff
above her and her circle, I envy you
in the sense that they’re in possession of an important
self-knowledge which she and her fellow guests lack.
Where’d they learn to do that?
But the other guests, Kellermans’ management,
and the students of prestigious universities
who wait tables as a summer job look down on the entertainment staff
as distinctly below them.
Well, if it isn’t the entertainment staff.
Even the phrase dirty dancing encapsulates how the staff’s
dancing talents are viewed — as something appealing, tempting,
transgressive, but ultimately, low, wrong, not respectable.
While the guests lust after Johnny and Penny,
they also treat the staff as no more than sexual objects —
They're slippin' their room keys in my hand two and three times a day
—different women— I understand, you were
just using them, that's all.
No, they were using me.
who are demeaned and discarded when no longer useful.
Look, I know these people.
They are rich and they're mean.
When Johnny shoots down a married female guest’s advances,
she accuses him of stealing to try to get him fired,
while Robbie leaves Penny out in the cold after getting her pregnant,
making her feel she has no option but to seek a dangerous illegal abortion.
I didn't blow a summer hauling bagels just to bail out some little chick
who probably balled every guy in the place.
Robbie and Neil explicitly voice that they’re better than others
because of their social status and wealth.
And he said to her, "What does he have that I don't have?"
And she said, "Two hotels."
Like in a number of 80s teen movies, the class entitlement in Dirty Dancing
is so extreme it’s almost cartoonish.
That’s okay Baby I went slumming too.
I’m known as the catch of the county.
It’s also exclusively white in its focus
(despite the fact that dirty dancing itself
descends from African-American musical culture, there’s only
one speaking black character in the entire film —
an always-smiling background employee.)
Lots of changes though, Max.
Still, there’s enduring truth in the depiction of how
these rich snobs view people who have less as being less-than.
Some people count.
Some people don’t.
Robbie justifies his dismissing certain people as worthless
by pointing to the writings of Ayn Rand,
Read it.
which champion individualism to an extreme that disdains
prioritizing the welfare of the collective.
Our country, the noblest country in the history of men,
was based on the principle of individualism.
It was a country where a man was free to seek his own happiness.
That is what the collectivists are now asking you to destroy.
Neil talks down to everyone, despite being less experienced,
less creative and less knowledgeable than most
of the people he gets to boss around, purely thanks to nepotism.
I've been working with the staff kids
on a cross between this Cuban rhythm and this soul dancing.
Whoa, woah.
It’s way over your head here.
While courting Baby, he condescends to her and feeds her cheesy lines.
I like to see your hair blowing in the breeze.
He also constantly repeats her nickname Baby
as if he really relishes seeing her as one.
I’m sorry you had to see that, Baby.
Sometimes in this world you see things you don’t want to see.
Ultimately, it’s entitled jerks like Robbie and Neil —
with their empty priorities and inability to appreciate
what’s valuable in others — who prove themselves
to be inferior human beings.
Get outta here, you’re not worth it.
But what’s truly damaging about the elite’s constant assertions
of their superiority is that they work to make people
like Penny and Johnny feel like they’re not enough.
I’m sorry about the way my father treated you.
While the older, more experienced Johnny
may seem at first to be the more powerful of the two
in this romance, as the story goes on it’s underlined
that young Baby is in fact in a position of power over him,
due to her class privilege.
Last month I'm eating jujubes to stay alive.
This month, women are stuffing diamonds in my pockets.
I'm balancing on s*** and as quick as that I can be down there again.
As much as Baby worships him, Johnny feels that he’s not good enough
for Baby because of the low self-esteem
that’s been drilled into him by this world.
The reason people treat me like I’m nothing is because I’m nothing.
And while Johnny pretends not to care about the opinions
of these rich people, he has a clear chip on his shoulder
Fight harder, huh?
I don't see you
fightin' so hard, Baby, I don’t see you running
off to Daddy telling him I'm your guy.
and privately longs for Baby’s father to respect him.
I dreamt we were walking along and we met your father and he
said “Come on” and he put his arm around me just like he did with Robbie.
This is why the key moment when Baby proves her true love
for Johnny is when she publicly declares
that she was with him, in front of her dad.
He was in his room all night.
And the reason I know
is because I was with him.
This moment leads to Baby also directly challenging
her father about the flaws in the classist worldview
he’s implicitly passed down to her.
You told me everyone was alike and deserved a fair break.
But you meant everyone who is like you.
Ultimately the film underlines the simple but important lesson
that we need to treat people with decency and respect —
wherever we fall on the class ladder,
but even more so if we’re in a position of power
over others who have less status.
Somebody who's taught me that there are people
willing to stand up for other people no matter what it costs them.
As much as she matures, in another important sense,
Baby remains an innocent throughout the film.
This character’s childlike idealism is in fact her superpower.
Are you going to major in English?
No.
Economics of underdeveloped countries.
I'm going into the Peace Corps.
Her uncorrupted baby-like perspective allows her to challenge the hypocrisies
and cruelties which others accept in her elitist society.
No, it's not the way it is!
It doesn't have to be that way!
I've never known anyone like you.
You think you can make the world better.
So what makes Frances become a truly exceptional young woman
is that, in her heart, she remains the same principled person
she’s always been, while her newfound confidence
allows her to become a more effective actor
in the world — executing her ideals
to fight what’s wrong in her society.
Why not fight harder?
Make them listen.
And the happy ending of the film doesn’t lie
just in Baby’s and Johnny’s love story, but also in the feeling
of a class-free utopia they manage to usher in, as both guests and staff
rush the dance floor, interacting together in a natural, egalitarian way.
Lisa, too, shows signs of following in her sister’s footsteps.
In addition to realizing that Robbie’s a jerk
and appreciating how Baby has blossomed,
You're prettier your way.
she ends the movie dancing with Johnny’s cousin,
starting to learn how to move organically in her own body.
Even more important than her physical and sexual education
over the course of Dirty Dancing is Baby’s moral one.
The dance instructions she (and we) learn from Johnny
symbolize important values— like independence
and self-responsibility within partnership,
This is my dance space, this is yours dance space.
I don’t go into yours you don’t go into mine.
faith and trust,
you'll hurt me if you don't trust me, all right?
and courage.
Good, now hold the position.
Hold it.
Good.
Don't break it!
Don't break!
Like any good teacher, Johnny is tough—
Head up.
Lock your frame.
Lock it.
because to find the best dancer we have within,
we have to be pushed and challenged.
Don't put your heel down.
don't put your heel down!
So after all these years, and however old we are,
we can still grow up along with Frances
by internalizing the wisdom in these Dirty Dancing lessons,
in our bodies and our souls.
Most of all I'm scared of walking out of this room
and never feeling the rest of my whole life the way
I feel when I'm with you.
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