Dirty Dancing

I'm sitting watching Dirty Dancing for about the 100th time in my life. I loved this movie when I first saw it in like second grade for the music, dancing, and romance. I think I always, on some level wanted a man like Johnny Castle to sweep me off my feet.

Now though, that I watch the movie as an adult I am drawn and facinated by the socioeconomic plot of the movie. The things I never saw as a kid, or if I saw them never fully understood them.

1. Robbie Gould giving Baby a copy of "The Fountainhead" so she would understand that some people matter and some people don't. Hillarious!!! I don't think that this is exactly Ayn Rand's thinking but it is close enough.

2. The first impression of Baby that the poorer servent class are all fornicating animals. She is initally scared of the people dancing that she encounters dirty dancing. It isn't until she is sexually aroused by Johnny that she accepts that behavior in others.

3. "Its not for anything illegal is it?" When I first saw Dirty Dancing I didn't really know or understand that abortion was so recently illegal and what the woman's movement was really about. Thank you Jane Roe.

4. I have read that Dirty Dancing is based on a true story but I alway had problems believing that anyone as sheltered as Baby actually existed. We are to believe that she is progressive, well-read, activist type whose dream it was to join the Peace Corps and yet, she didn't know when she was 18 that there are people in this world that didn't live her lifestyle or that there are abitous climbers and money grubbing swindlers. This never made allot of sense to me. But as I get older I realize that people like Baby are all around us. They choose not to see the problems of this world because they are comfortable in their own lives. And even if they see the problems they never believed they could be so close. Not everyone is Robbie Gould but most people have their heads in the sand and are happy to keep them there. These people may even see the problems of the world but never can comprehend how their failure to act prevents real change.

PS... I still love the dancing, music, and romance... NOBODY PUTS BABY IN A CORNER!!!