It’s sort of weird to write an encomium to a dude, isn’t it, on a feminist website? And yet I cried today when I heard about Patrick Swayze – and I am not a crier – and I wanted to say something to you.
I make a habit in this space (and others) of picking apart pop culture for political message, of critiquing hidden messages and strange implications. But even I have some sacred texts, and one of them was Dirty Dancing, believe it or not. Oh, I know. How insipid. How mundane. But like, I suspect, a good number of you, this was the go-to sleepover movie. I must have rented it twenty times or more. I actually watched it a couple of months ago after a particularly bad day. And you know, I suppose if I wanted to analyze what it said about gender and class I certainly could. But there are some experiences worth preserving in their pre-cerebral form.
Patrick Swayze was, I like to say, the first man I really knew as a body. I don’t mean that in the sense of objectification, per se, though there was always that too. But I really mean that, being a bookish, awkward, gangly child, with parents who were never noted for their athleticism, it took me a long time to fully, viscerally, recognize the physicality of the world. I still have trouble with it sometimes – I am an excessively verbal person, to the point of preferring myself in print to the version that walks around the real world. But the first time I watched that movie, watched his sinews saw and ripple over his bones while he showed Jennifer Grey How It’s Done – I am pretty sure that was the first time I understood that being physically present in the world could be as much of a gift as watching it go by and writing it all down in your head. And that it was an induction for a girl as introverted and classically un”pretty” as Jennifer Grey? Together with adolescent hormones that was poetry, my friends.
You may (and probably should) laugh. I still don’t know how anyone watches that last sequence without their hair standing on end, without catching their breath. Schmaltz or no schmaltz, people in that moment are living a kind of physical joy that does not, in my personal opinion, get enough cred these days. I’m often called a cynic, but I think I’m really sentimental, albeit with a frequently broken heart. I wonder if any child of today, media-savvy and street-smart as they seem, can enjoy things in the way I once enjoyed Swayze’s dancing. I know that the adult me, encountering that movie for the first time today, probably would not be able. There’s a part of me that’s crying for that, I guess, as much as there is one for a person I’d never met and don’t really know that much about, in the end. This has been a rough summer for my childhood.
This is beautiful, PSoul, and very similar to what my reaction was, seeing his body and his moves in Dirty Dancing around about 4th & 5th grade. I was like, “What is THIS?!?” I too will never be cynical enough to hate that movie. It’s just too big a part of my own coming of age.
I remember my mom watching the movie on TV and calling me in to watch the final scene for the first time. She said, “Doesn’t he remind you of Uncle ____?”
It’s too late to call my mom, unfortunately.
This is great, Pilgrim.
I didn’t actually watch Dirty Dancing until my third year of college, but I immediately fell in love. The part where Johnny and Baby crawl across the floor while singing “Love is Strange” to each other? I still think it’s one of the sexiest scenes ever. It will definitely warrant a rewatching sometime soon.
Sadness! For what it’s worth, I first saw Dirty Dancing ~5 years ago in my mid-teens and was enchanted by the idea of a gawky Jewish girl (aka me) being able to dance. Patrick Swayze is just amazing in that movie, and the amount of, as you say, physical joy that he taught to Jennifer Grey is one of the reasons I let myself dance freely today.
As Baby would say in shul: may his memory be a blessing.
Sometimes I can’t get away from how much pain exists in the world.
You musn’t apologize for loving Dirty Dancing. It’s one of the few (so, so few) movies made for girls that GETS that girls don’t want to be saved by the hero, they want to save the hero. They want to be the hero. This is what we need more of.
I just totally lost it over at People’s tribute to his 34 year marriage to his high school sweetheart.
I saw Dirty Dancing in the theater five times, which is my all-time record for movies. I too was a gangly, cerebral girl, and everything you wrote – beautifully – is spot on.
Dearest Pilgrim Soul,
I actually *did* critique what Dirty Dancing said about gender and class. I wrote a 50 page paper on this movie and other 80s coming-of-age films.
Dirty Dancing is the only one I can still watch without cringing.
RIP, Patrick Swayze. We’ll keep Baby out of that corner.
I love Dirty Dancing and always will. And I always felt that Baby came out of it rather powerfully, even though she was called Baby. She stood up to her controlling father, shouted Johnny down when he was snippy with her, took control of her sexuality (I think that love scene is one of my faves because she approaches him, she instigates the whole thing), she does quite a bit and does it her own way. I love Patrick and think his death is a great loss.
omg the sheer joy of movement in dance makes me weep…sometimes I see people dancing who can make sparks fly from their heels and I wish for it so bad I would trade just about any other talent. RIP Patrick Swayze.
And it’s one of the few movies that deals with abortion in a realistic and positive way.
Hard week for celebrity deaths-Jim Carroll and now this.
This is a lovely essay–beautifully written and just a perfect tribute to Swayze.
I didn’t know he died. Reading this blog and the comments have made me teary eyed. I fell like watching it right now.
Every summer my best friend and I used to re-enact the scene in the water where he tries to hold her up (plank form) above his head. We never had the upper body strength or balance to pull it off, but we had a lot of fun trying.
I loved Dirty Dancing as well, but, because I am a professional potter, Patrick Swayze will, to my mind, forever be The Man Who Made Pottery Sexy.
May he be happy in the next world.
Thank you for this beautiful post.