Club Friday Q&A: Culture Writer Andrea Warner On the Lasting Appeal (and Relevance) of 'Dirty Dancing'
By Stacy lee kong
Image: Chloe Krause
Like many women, I have been watching Dirty Dancing since I was a kid. Also, I strongly believe in the political power of pop culture, and even if I wasn’t super nostalgic about it, there are so many important themes in that movie, from feminism to class to reproductive justice. So, when I heard about the brilliant and hilarious culture writer Andrea Warner’s new book, The Time of My Life: Dirty Dancing (which comes out on April 9!), I knew we had to talk about it. Read on for our wide-ranging, sometimes meta conversation about the 1987 movie, its political themes and lasting appeal, but also what audiences want from movies and our complicated feelings about a story that’s almost four decades old continuing to resonate today.
I really love that you situated Dirty Dancing as a dance movie, because I feel like the discourse around it has changed a little bit since Roe v. Wade was overturned, and while the reproductive justice angle is super important, I think there’s also something to say about the genre itself. I grew up watching Footloose, Flashdance and Dirty Dancing, but ‘my’ dance movies belonged to a slightly later era, which was also maybe less overtly political—the Center Stages, Step Ups and Save the Last Dances of the early 2000s. And we’ve seen other eras of dance movies (and shows) since then. So, what do you think is the appeal of this genre, especially for women and girls?
I have always loved to dance in movies, I think because I kind of always wanted to be a dancer. But I never thought it was available to me because I’ve just always been a fat kid. I have spent my life in a fat body; I am not what one might call a ‘trauma fat.’ There’s no before and after for me—I’ve just always been a fat person. So even when I was a little kid and my sister would go to the ballet, [I didn’t]. I don’t remember if it was something I didn’t want to do, or if it was something that just wasn’t afforded to me because my body was different, but I still loved to dance, even though I never had a desire to do it professionally at all.
The dancing that I always loved was much more rooted in pop culture. We weren’t the kind of family that went to fancy dance performances or recitals or anything like that, but I really liked to see the performance of it on-screen. Later on, I ended up really loving the larger spectacle of dances that are lushly choreographed with 40 people moving in tandem—there’s just something so remarkable about that. But there’s also something really exciting about watching two people connect in a way that looks extremely intimate, extremely physical. You’re almost like a voyeur, and I think that part also appealed to me as a kid. It was a safe way for me to think about sexuality. It was a window through which I could glimpse an understanding of the tactility of bodies touching. Dance has always looked to me to be a give-and-take, a conversation between two people—and really a consent-based conversation between two people, for the most part. That has also stuck with me: the people want to be there together in the moment. I think all of that is the stuff that especially appeals to young women and young girls, actually. From the get-go, it’s implied, socially, politically, etc., that we shouldn’t have the expectation of autonomy, and dance refutes that so much. I really gravitated to that. I was not aware of it, but it appealed to me on some level.
So much of what you’re saying resonates—especially dance being a safe way of exploring sexuality. I came at it from a slightly different direction, I think. I was not an athletic kid, and I still don’t consider myself a particularly athletic person now, but I know that’s actually limiting—I have these ideas about what I can do, physically, that are not actually grounded in anything other than the fact that I preferred to read books when I was a child. Like, they’re not real! But I would often leave the theatre after watching a dance movie convinced that I could do that. I didn’t actually want to practice, of course. But I liked the idea that my body could also do those things, or maybe that I could control my body in that way, which I think is also about self-mastery and autonomy and agency. What you’re saying about the push-and-pull and how it feels consensual is also fascinating, because I haven’t ever articulated it that way to myself, but that is so clearly part of the appeal.
I mean, the idea that dialogue exists beyond a spoken word is real. That’s everywhere! We just have to identify it and see it, you know? And I think dance is such an important representation of that.
Definitely. But the thing about Dirty Dancing is, it’s not just a dance movie. I mean, it’s obviously unfeminist and misogynist to dismiss any movie as ‘just’ a dance movie, but Dirty Dancing also clearly occupies a different space. Even within that genre, it is set apart. Why do you think that is?
I think the heart of it is something that the screenwriter and co-producer, Eleanor Bergstein, did with so much intention. Well, there are two things that she did with so much intention; the first is that she made the abortion the driving plot point of Dirty Dancing. Nothing happens in that movie without the abortion, and she talks about that in a lot of interviews. She had lived a pre-Roe v. Wade life—she knew how tenuous our grasp was on reproductive rights and she wanted to put that into the film. And she did it, I think, with so much cleverness. She knew that eventually she was going to hear back from some studio bigwig or advertiser that they had to lose the abortion. And she says, ‘No, you can’t. If you take it out, the whole movie falls apart.’ Making it the foundation that you literally can’t remove is why Dirty Dancing endures, I think. That’s what makes it such a powerful movie that goes beyond ‘what it should have been,’ quote, unquote.
The other part is that she was so dedicated to the music. That came first for her. Dirty Dancing is written around these three things—abortion rights, music and class. She’s writing a dance film, but she is doing what dance has done for her in her own life, which is take her outside of the different social and political hierarchies that exist in her world. Lots of other dance films that we’ve talked about have other important social and political messaging, for sure. Flashdance has something to say, Footloose has something to say… but none of them say it with the same pointed articulation as Dirty Dancing.
And I guess the other thing is that she sticks with Baby’s view. There’s one scene where Johnny goes to talk to Baby’s dad. But otherwise, we are entirely from Baby’s viewpoint the entire way through. She’s making a statement that a 17-year-old girl’s life is valid, interesting and deserving of this hour-and-45-minute film. I can’t even believe it but that still feels like a statement today, almost 40 years later.
That is the sad thing. I was thinking about the continued resonance in positive, political, feminist ways. But for these themes to continue resonating, it does require the world to disappoint us. I think sometimes there’s this idea in culture, that I also buy into, that it was all a plan. As if Eleanor Bergstein knew that it was still going to resonate all these years later. But I feel like you make this type of art with the hope that it’s not going to be relevant in four decades. And yet.
Well, I often think that most people who are making art have no concept of legacy or longevity. We maybe say to ourselves, ‘I hope this lasts,’ but we don’t know what that looks like so we make something that feels important to us in the moment. And I don’t think there’s necessarily one formula that made this a surefire hit in any way, shape, or form. Sometimes the cosmos just has to have everything aligned and it works. Though, I do think having somebody like Patrick Swayze, who was honestly happy to get out of the way, is kind of also very important to the success of the film. We don’t necessarily spend a lot of time with Johnny’s motivations, but we get great glimpses of them in the ways he interacts with the women characters in the film. And Patrick Swayze doesn’t really get the credit for that. He’s a great dancer—I could watch him move his hips all the time. But the other pieces that he brings to it were really fascinating.
Agree. And this brings me back to what we were saying earlier about the politics of this movie. I think you said you were nine when you watched Dirty Dancing for the first time? I was probably around the same age, maybe a little bit younger and back then, a lot of the politics were not immediately clear to me. I could understand that something was important or something was bad, but I actually forgot the abortion plot point for a long time! You re-watched this movie tons and tons of times over the years, though. So, do you remember a moment where the politics and the larger, deeper, heavier themes became clear to you? Or was it a gradual unfurling?
I think it was a gradual unfurling. But they were definitely clear by the time I was in high school and early college and I was going to things like Rock for Choice and thinking about abortion rights and becoming a little bit more activated politically.
My first weekend away at university, Dirty Dancing was on in the common room and I remember watching it among so many other 18- and 19-year-olds from across the country who I didn’t know, and seeing the Penny story line in a different way. You are kind of feeling it hit differently when you’re watching it in a large group of mostly, but not all, women. It’s not necessarily that it was super clarifying about what I wanted to do with my writing or anything like that, but it’s when I started to really understand the ways in which my rights as a person could be embedded in the pop culture that I enjoyed. It was 1997, so we should have felt pretty secure in what our reproductive rights were at the time, but I just remember it starting to mean more in that moment. Though, I don’t know if it fully hit until a few years later, when I was at Rock for Choice, or even a year or so after that, when I went with my friend for her to have an abortion. These things kind of layer and layer and layer upon each other.
Totally. I think for me a lot of times it’s connecting the dots. It’s like, ‘Oh, yeah—this thing is about this thing, is about this thing, is about this thing.’ And it takes time for those connections to actually gel in your brain. I (obviously) strongly believe in the way that pop culture plants seeds. That’s why I feel like we have to pay attention to it, because sometimes they’re planting good seeds about the importance of bodily autonomy and sometimes they’re planting terrible seeds about how bodily autonomy is not that important, actually. I’m curious how you felt about the way the narrative around Dirty Dancing has shifted recently, though. Because while I’d watched this movie a lot of times and liked it and could quote the iconic lines, I truly hadn’t remembered the importance of the abortion plot until Roe v. Wade was overturned and a tweet went viral reminding people that the movie was always about reproductive justice. It really reframed the way that I thought about this movie that I hadn’t watched in years, probably.
Honestly I was so gobsmacked by Roe v. Wade even being overturned. I’d like to think that I’m not super naïve about things, but I just really thought something would persevere—logic, humanity, morals, ethics, anything. But I was also kind of thrilled that people were giving Dirty Dancing its flowers in this way, because I think a lot of fans have noted that this movie was their very first glimpse of reproductive rights, abortion as healthcare and thinking about who can access abortion safely and equitably. I think we’ve had some of these conversations come up before—when Obvious Child came out and people were talking about that as an abortion film, there was a bit of conversation about Dirty Dancing being an abortion film as well. But Roe v. Wade was that big moment, because so many people hadn’t really clocked it before.
On some level, it feels validating to have people take a movie that is so often dismissed and understand why it has this kind of endurance. Because it’s not just the soundtrack, it’s not just Baby and Johnny, it’s not just a summer love story, it’s not just the dancing. It’s not just any one thing. All of it needs to be there. Because we’ve seen sequels and stage shows or different aspects of the Dirty Dancing universe, and none of those things match the real magic of the original.
Yes, 100%. I feel like the theme of this conversation has been complexity, so: in the book, you recount a story about how Jennifer Grey hadn’t nailed the lift in rehearsals, so in the scene where she performs it and nails it, it was real—she finally did it in the movie, but also in real life. I think when we praise a movie, it’s often because it feels real, which is so interesting because we don’t always feel comfortable with what that means in our actual lives, you know? Not to say this movie is messy, but in many ways, the feelings that are represented can be a bit messy. I’m especially thinking about the relationship between Baby and her dad. The way that evolves is not neat and tidy, which also feels pretty true to life. So, why do you think we simultaneously crave real from stories, but also have a hard time with complexity and nuance in our actual lives?
I don’t think we know what to do with failure. We don’t know how to have confrontations. We don’t know how to de-escalate situations. We don’t do well with conflict. I think about this for myself and my own life all the time. There are a lot of times I am just not brave enough to have those conversations. That’s one of the big things about being real—it really does come down to being brave and being vulnerable and being just okay with things not feeling good for a while. I think of that confrontation Baby has with her dad. I mean, Jerry Orbach and Jennifer Grey are so perfect in this moment. I cannot watch that scene without crying. I have seen this movie so many times, and I’ve literally cried every time! This moment is a kind of moment that probably has to happen in so many parent-child relationships. You have this, for lack of a better term, ‘come to Jesus moment’ where you accept the fact that you call out your parent on their hypocrisies, and challenge them to let you have your own, and apologize for failing them, but also hold try to hold them to account for the ways that they’ve failed you. Those are complicated, big, messy things. And the reality is we all fail each other all the time, and it sucks—and this movie makes space for that.
I also think that feels quite unique, still. In so much of our storytelling, an innocence-to-experience trope is often paired with a rejection of what came before, and I really like that this felt like more of an evolution. To know that you could choose your own way but that doesn’t have to mean the loss of people who you love and who love you? I found that quite powerful. Because it requires Dr. Houseman to see Baby as a fully-fledged human being with complexity and nuance and agency for that to work, right? We see a model of respect that is thematically held up by the rest of the movie.
Yes, and I think that’s something you’ve really nailed—how the whole movie respects all of the characters that weren’t respected.
Last question: what made you want to write this book at this time?
It was in the pandemic and I had just spent a really long time working on my first book for middle readers, which was really research-intensive and labour-intensive, and I didn’t want to lose steam. My friend Hannah McGregor, who is a brilliant writer and scholar, had just sold her book, Clever Girl, which is the next book in the Pop Classics series. She actually sold hers before I pitched mine, and I was like, ‘I’m so excited. You’re writing about Jurassic Park.’ Pop Classics books don’t have the biggest word count in the world, so they get to be sort of something that’s a little bit tighter, a little bit more controlled, a little more focused. And I like the challenge of writing about myself, but also not writing about myself, you know what I mean? So I just thought about what I could potentially write an entire little Pop Classics book about, and there were lots of different things that I’m obsessed with that, but I just decided that it had to be Dirty Dancing at this point in time. I just felt like it was really important. So I pitched it, and Jen Sookfong Lee, who is a brilliant editor and brilliant writer, was very supportive. And then it coincided with Roe v. Wade.
A terrible coincidence, but one that is kind of convenient.
Terrible coincidence, kind of convenient. And then it got announced that they were going to make an official Dirty Dancing 2 and that Jennifer Gray was involved, though the strike shifted all of that, so who knows what’s ever going to happen. I have no idea. But I think I’m always going to appreciate playing in this world. Even if some of the expansions and re-imaginings had been truly heinous. I just go back to, it makes me appreciate the original so much more. It is perfectly imperfect in its own way, and I wouldn’t change almost anything about it.
The Time of My Life: Dirty Dancing is available now!
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