Critical Context- Dirty Dancing: Feminism, Postfeminism, and Neo-Feminism-- Hilary Radner

In Hilary Radner’s scholarly essay on Dirty dancing called, Dirty Dancing: Feminism, Postfeminism, and Neo-Feminism, she talks about how the movie is about a girl becoming of age and finding out who she really is and meanwhile it is also about abortion. Radner makes some good points about what it means for Baby to become Frances in the movie.

In the beginning of the movie we hear Frances talking and she starts off by saying how everyone called her baby and she didn’t mind, but maybe should have. Radner points to feminism in two ways, “Feminism, on the one hand, might have taught Frances that she should ‘mind’ if someone called her ‘Baby.’ On the other, feminism might also have sustained her interest in the study of economics and oppression” (Radner 137). The fact that Frances really did nothing when people called her baby could indicate she was in a sense afraid to say something due to her being a girl rather than a boy. In a way she understood her place as a girl back then to not really speak out about things and just take in her gender assigned role at that time. At this same time, Frances was worried about her education and want to become somebody and help the world. We see her right away in the beginning reading a book, but we do not see that book again later in the movie. Instead, we see her take on a different activity which is dancing. Through dancing is when she really has the chance to find out who she really is and part of that has to do with Johnny. Johnny is the one who teaches her how to dance and instead of Frances worrying about her education; she starts to focus on having fun and making life long experiences. This is very similar to what Radner had to say, “The book does not return in later sequences, and the film’s joyful concluding dance appears to signify the triumph of experience over education” (137). Through all of this, Frances really becomes Frances. She goes against what people generally see her as which is the daddy’s girl that really does nothing wrong and will achieve greatness in life. But she then meets Johnny and against her dad’s approval at first, is with Johnny and has her first sexual encounter with him. Both of these experiences shape who Frances is when she is with Johnny. Radner believed dancing and Frances’s first sexual interaction with him built that relationship, “Their relationship evolves around two significant experiences that they share: the first, Frances’s initiation as a dancer; the second, her sexual awakening” (139). But all in all, this relationship leads Frances to do things that she may have never really done like going against her dad.

I really agree with mostly every point that Radner makes throughout her article. The fact that Johnny not only had an impact on Baby becoming Frances, but their relationship as a whole had an impact on that too. We see how Frances goes from a girl who didn’t speak out to one that does and also makes her own choices of who she wants to be and who she wants to be with.

Radner, Hilary. "Dirty Dancing: Feminism, Postfeminism, and Neo-Feminism." The Time of Our Lives: Dirty Dancing and Popular Culture. Eds. Yannis Tzioumakis and Sian Lincoln. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2013. 131-146.