…ready to pop…

Dirty Dancing (the 1987 movie)

Patrick Swayze, Jennifer Grey

Director: Emile Ardolino

100 minutes

Oscar for Best Music, Original Song: “The Time Of My Life”

I want to go deeper than the “ugly duckling/Prince Charming/red hot final dance” story—for me, highlights of the film are Baby’s naiveté, and her ingenuous embrace of the very hot Johnny, and her eager awareness of her rising woman’s heat…

Some context: in 1987 many Dirty Dancing viewers would have been more than slightly discomfited by the matter-of-fact abortion episode, and perhaps nonplussed by Baby’s casual deception to come up with the $250 to pay for it. Wowee. It’s great to help out a friend of a friend and all, but that seems like a baffling stretch for a timorous young girl of Baby’s obvious unworldliness.

On the other hand, Baby’s hormones are ready to pop.

You know, you really can say “dirty dancing” in a nice way.

Alone with Johnny, in the prelude to intimacy scene, Baby suddenly opens up: “I’m scared of everything…I’m scared of who I am, and most of all I’m scared of walking out of this room and never feeling the rest of my whole life the way I feel when I’m with you.”

That’s a heartbeat. You felt it, too.

Here’s hoping that you’ve had a moment, an embrace, a volcanic new feeling of desire that you feared you would never feel the rest of your whole life.

I have.

And now I know I didn’t have to be afraid.

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Book review: Tales from Shakespeare

the summaries by Charles and Mary Lamb…

click here

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Seeing far: Selected poems with 47 free verse and haiku poems,

and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)

and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”

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Dirty Dancing (1987) (movie review)