Want to experience the crushing passage of time? Dirty Dancing was released thirty-five years ago, on August 21, 1987. It remains one of the most enduringly popular films of the 1980s, a foundational text in the contemporary romantic drama canon. But it’s also an artifact of 1980s nostalgia, as Baby Boomers who spent their adolescences in the mid-century began to pine for the “simpler times” of their childhoods while transitioning into middle age. (The Catskills resort that inspired Dirty Dancing just burned down, because the universe has a cosmically awful sense of humor.) The Eighties saw a wave of Fifties’ and Sixties' inspired films such as The Outsiders, Peggy Sue Got Married, Stand By Me, and of course, Back to the Future. Of these, Dirty Dancing stands out as a film set in the 1960s, but with decidedly post-60s sexual politics. Dirty Dancing is unapologetically horny, a celebration of sex and artistic expression as sex, with famously pro-choice politics.
The entire hinge of the plot is the dancer, Penny (Cynthia Rhodes), nearly dying from a botched illegal abortion, forcing her dance partner, Johnny Castle (Patrick Swayze), to find a new partner for the ballroom dancing circuit. I was probably too young when I first saw Dirty Dancing, because I didn’t quite understand why Penny was “sick”. My sixteen-year-old babysitter, Carla, had to explain it to me, and I couldn’t really fathom not just going to the hospital if you needed help. What lingered most strongly in my mind was the notion that what happened to Penny was unfair, that she should never have been “sick”, and that Robbie (Max Cantor) was a slimeball and that it was doubly unfair he got to walk away unscathed while Penny was “ill”. Looking back, Dirty Dancing was my introduction to pro-choice beliefs, that lingering sense of unfairness in the back of my mind as I grew up and learned about reproductive rights.
It's hard to imagine a major Hollywood film so prominently featuring a pro-choice storyline like that today. Were Dirty Dancing remade today, Penny would break her ankle, or otherwise be injured to keep her from dancing. Sure, sometimes pro-choice films get made now, but they’re usually independent films like Never Rarely Sometimes Always, which can’t even catch a break during indie-friendly awards season because reproductive rights have become so divisive in American culture. In fact, a new film on Netflix, Look Both Ways, features a split-narrative in which the protagonist both does and does not have an unplanned pregnancy, and that film never presents abortion as an option for its young heroine. Characters can say they’re pro-choice all you want, filmmakers, but if a young woman confronted with an unplanned pregnancy doesn’t even google “nearest clinic” in the year 2022, your film is not pro-choice. And yet, way back in ye olden days of 1987, the oil in Dirty Dancing’s story engine is a pro-choice plot showing the dangers of unsafe abortions.
But of course, that’s just Penny’s storyline. The film centers on classic Shy Girl Frances “Baby” Houseman (Jennifer Grey), the upper-crust daughter of a society doctor, and Johnny Castle, the timeless Bad Boy Who’s Not So Bad from the wrong side of the tracks, but he’s self-made and respectful of our heroine when it matters (unlike Robbie, the so-called “good guy” who has all the right socio-economic markers yet disrespects women). Baby is awkward, uncomfortable in her own skin, unawakened and stifled by society’s strictures upon “nice girls”. Johnny is her opposite, an outwardly sexual creature who revels in the physical world. Their relationship comes with shades of Romeo & Juliet, crossing class lines and forbidding parents, and Grey and Swayze—rumored to dislike each other during filming—have swoony chemistry that makes for many memorable scenes of arguing and dancing, including the epic training montage that is all sexual tension and sublimated desire.
Dirty Dancing withstands the test of time, though, aging into an ever-more progressive audience, thanks to its unapologetic horniness. The sexual politics of the film are negotiated on the dance floor, where women and men enjoy themselves equally. “Dirty dancing” is something young people teach themselves “in basements back home”, a clear illusion to sexual exploration, as if the literal gyrating and grinding on the dancefloor isn’t painting a graphic picture (meanwhile, the out-of-touch parents dance the graceless bunny hop, they’re all having terrible repressed Puritan sex). As Baby becomes a better dancer, her relationship with Johnny deepens and becomes sexual, because she is connected to her body and her sensuality and gains the ability to express her wants and desires. She changes from the maladroit “watermelon girl” to the woman who coyly beckons her lover closer.
The sexual politics of Dirty Dancing extend beyond its pro-choice stance, presenting a world where sex—dance—can be bartered and sold, but also shared equitably. The key to unlocking mutual pleasure is through freedom of expression. It’s only when Baby is offered a chance to learn to dance that she discovers her own sexuality. Johnny and Baby have a goal of dancing successfully together, which becomes the foundation of their relationship. Working toward that mutual goal results in them sharing in mutual pleasure, but Penny, who had a secretive and “not dancing” relationship with Robbie, is left physically and emotionally harmed by their encounter. Dance stands in for sex literally and figuratively, as the film shows a way of understanding sex as a positive give and take between partners working toward the same goal—pleasure.
Dirty Dancing features a timeless romance and a lead couple with compelling chemistry, plus all those memorable dance scenes, but it endures because it is unabashedly pro-sex. Even the abortion subplot is not presented as a deterrent to sex; the issue is not that Penny never should have had sex, it’s that Robbie should have supported her better. And by anchoring its sexual politics in modes of artistic expression, Dirty Dancing remains appealing to successive generations seeking to understand coming of age and sexual awakening and finding empathy and understanding in the dance allegory. It’s a romantic film, but it’s also a horny movie that doesn’t shame young people for being horny. “Nobody puts Baby in a corner” is as much about Johnny recognizing Baby as his partner as it is not putting Baby on a shelf, to be a sexless trophy wife for a sleazoid like Robbie. Baby is a sexually liberated woman, and all because she learned to merengue.
