Thread by @ploughmansfolly

Did you enjoy my thread deboonking softcore gay porn movie Dead Poets Society, showing you that Neil’s father is the true hero of the story? Well I’m about to deconstruct another American favorite, one that looms even larger in the cultural memory… OH YES

Dirty Dancing, apart from one or two appetizing scenes, is a hideous flick that, like almost every movie made in the last 60+ years, is a propagandistic ode to gynocratic GNC flavor so-called “liberalism”, which is more aptly called something else, but I cannot discuss this now.

There is the obvious low hanging fact that the plot hinges on the “need” for an aboorshun, which the viewer is expected to assume and accept. Why not force Yale Med student Robbie Gould, the father of the unborn child, to choose between responsibility for child or death?

This would be truly trad. But I digress. The real nefariousness has to do with the main character, Baby’s, dealings with the two male protagonists: stallion dance instructor Johnny, &her father, old fashioned values American doctor, likely WWII vet, quintessential good man, Jake.

In the opening scene, Baby informs us of two crucial details: a) she is in love with her father (“I thought I’d never find a guy as great as my dad”) and b) she is a communist (“I’m was going to join the Peace Corps”). More evidentiarily, her sister later accuses her of using

“Which side of the Ho Chi Minh Trail” a man is on as her sole dating criteria. Her development arc hereafter is from naive virginoid to sexy, confident not-quite-femme-fatale. The story is 1960s female bildungsroman, from girl to woman, replete with its sexual implications

In the course of this narrative, Baby marshals her newfound sexuality to bring not only her lover (Johnny) but, crucially, ALSO HER FATHER to sociopolitical heel.

Now, the “virgin tames the wild man” archetype is as old as story itself, but here we see something different:

At the beginning of their clandestine dance lessons, we see Johnny as authoritative and serious: in a word, manly. He unsympathetically barks instructions and critiques at a visibly flustered Baby. Their relationship develops, and eventually they have sex0rz on a rainy afternoon

…when baby appears at Johnny’s bachelor pad cabin unannounced. The fact that this happens at all is transgressive to Johnny’s character: up until now we have not known him to be sexual at all. Despite the erotics of his Latin dance routines with former rockette, Penny,

We quickly discover that he has a brotherly, protective relationship with her, and is not the father of her unborn child, contrary to earlier suspicions and implications. In short, he is in control of his sexuality, and it is Baby who has to make the first move on him.

In the next scene after sex0rs, we see their roles reversed. Suddenly, Johnny has become a total simp, unable to concentrate at dance practice, a slave to his sexual desires for Baby. She repeats his earlier dance instructions back to him. He has let the cat out of the bag, twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

And Baby is now squarely in charge of their dynamic. The implications of this famous scene are amazing: he is literally reduced to an amateur dancer by his sexual incontinence. Having ceded spiritual power, his maleness itself (ie his dancing prowess) follows quickly on its heels

So that’s Johnny. What’s even wilder is what happens to Baby’s father, who can be understood as simply an older, more white collar version of Johnny. A serious yet compassionate man, characterized by old world values and self-understanding.

In the final utterance of the movie, after Baby has performed the Pachanga with Johnny on stage at the final farewell, complete with the famous “lift”, Jake tells her, “you looked wonderful up there”, with a certain glint in his eye. All prior indication of the father’s character

Is that he, at best, would turn a blind eye to such a performance by his daughter, especially given how unimaginable it would have been for the girlish version of Baby at the outset. But, like his young döppelganger, Johnny, he cannot resist the allure, and admits to its charm.

The whole thing amounts to a useful cautionary tale of the Trojan Horse that was and is the sexual revolution, offering men seemingly cost-free indulgence in their natural desires, on the ultimate condition that they but give up their role as drivers of society. Longhouse ensues.