Hokey Family Vacation Setting Made 'Dirty Dancing' a Hit

"Dirty Dancing" is turning 20 this month and what once appeared to be a flash-in-the pan chick flick is fast attaining the status of "Casablanca."

Made for $3 million and originally slated for a one-weekend theatrical release before heading to video, the movie has grossed over $200 million — so far. A commemorative DVD is coming out and a stage version is breaking records in Europe. The show is headed to Toronto this fall and Broadway in 2008. Producers want the rights in Dubai.

Why such universal appeal?

Is it the dancing? The soundtrack? The Cinderella story, where the plain Jane sister gets the prince — or at least the sweaty hunk in tight pants? (Works for me!)

My friends, the story's hidden power lies in all of those, but also in its setting: the Catskills, once the Mecca of hokey family vacations.

"By setting the film in such a family-oriented place, it makes the transgressiveness" — the breaking of cultural taboos — "even greater," said psychiatrist Harvey Roy Greenberg.

Vacations are always about transformation. We leave home hoping, in our heart of hearts, to leave our old selves behind, too. We want to try being someone new.

That's a lot harder to do, however, when one is vacationing with one's family. After all, parents usually have a pretty firm notion of who their children are, and usually it's not "darling moppet on the brink of a frenzied sexual awakening with a guy in tight pants."

Most parents want their children to stay children, or at least obedient, and that was one of the appeals of the Catskills.

"People went up there for romances," said the head of the Catskills Institute, Phil Brown.

Romances with the non-Jewish staff, however, were verboten. Those workers came from a different social class, as well as a different religion. When Baby (Jennifer Grey) stumbles upon this group dirty dancing, the thrill hits her like a pelvic thrust. And yet she still wants to be daddy's good little (upper-class) girl. She's torn.

The fact that in the end she gets both — a sizzling pas de deux with Patrick Swayze and the eternal love of her proud papa (Jerry Orbach) — is what makes the movie so powerful. It's the heartwarming tale of a girl who teaches her parents the evils of prejudice (see: Disney, Every Movie Ever Made By). But it's a coming-of-age tale, too, complete with fantastic (albeit allegorical) sex in front of a crowd of people (see: Premium Cable, Every Movie After 2 a.m.). It's two, two, two great movie formulas in one!

And the family vacation setting just intensifies it all.

"There's something about vacation time, at a resort, with your family, that's a bittersweet time in our lives," said Jake Ehrenreich, an entertainer who started out in just such a place.

Maybe in Dubai they don't know a whole lot about the Catskills. But they do know about children longing for their parents' approval even as they're pulling away. And so "Dirty Dancing" will live on.

Lenore Skenazy is a contributing editor at the New York Sun. To find out more about Lenore Skenazy (lenore@lenoretown.com), and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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