Shabbat Goy: Driven into a corner

Had ‘Dirty Dancing’ really passed me by because I was expecting something a little more...racy? Or was it that I’d missed the underlying Jewish subtext to the film, which might now make a bit more sense in the context of my subsequent personal history?

By AKIN AJAYI
Dirty Dancing 521 (photo credit: Pepe Fainberg)
Dirty Dancing 521
(photo credit: Pepe Fainberg)
So I’m standing by the DVD player, a copy of Dirty Dancing in my hand. Just slot the wretched thing in, I tell myself. Settle down with the can of Pringles brought along to ease the pain and get over with it. But it’s not so simple. The survival instinct in me won’t allow it to happen just like that. It’s been more than 20 years, but something deep within me still remembers the trauma from the first time around. But it has to be done. Let no one say that I have not suffered because of the Jewish people.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me explain.
Late ’88. Just after the Second Summer of Love, as they called it in England. I’d just finished high school, and like most teenagers I wanted to be a part of the fun.
I wanted to dance all night in abandoned warehouses, to be chased by disgruntled policemen through fields. I wanted to see the sun rise with a smile on my face.
I was vaguely aware that there was the awkward business of prohibited drugs involved, but I was young and foolish. I just wanted to live the life.
The only problem is that when you have a strict 11 p.m. curfew, doing these things is just a little bit difficult.
So I decided that I’d do the next best thing and try to experience the hedonism of the moment vicariously. But I was a young man of limited imagination; for some reason, I thought that the best way to go about this was by visiting the local video shop and borrowing a couple of films about this epochal moment in cultural history.
Yeah, pretty lame. But what has this got to do with Dirty Dancing? Or the Jewish people, for that matter? I’m still not sure if the clerk at the video shop misheard me, or if he was just willfully spiteful. Either way, when I asked him if he could recommend a film about rave culture and the Second Summer of Love, he popped a copy of Dirty Dancing in a brown paper bag.
“Enjoy,” he called after me with a wink and a grin. He was older than me, perhaps 19 or 20. He knew about these things, I told myself. He was possibly a part of the scene, even. It all felt wonderfully transgressive.
There’s no point going over the next 100 minutes of my life, other than to say that whatever I do, I will never get them back. They were quite possibly the worst I have ever spent watching a movie. I was thoroughly shortchanged – even the dancing wasn’t dirty. If you remember the film, I’m sure you’d agree that its target audience was teenage girls with perms. Needless to say, I was not – and presumably will never be – a teenage girl with a perm. My taste in films – then, as now, gratuitous violence and nudity – didn’t particularly match this demographic.
It was a truly traumatic experience.
So now you understand my issues with the film. You may even share my pain. But what about the Jewish angle? Worry not, I’m getting there.
The other day, I was talking about films with my better half. Now, Mrs. Goy was once a teenage girl, but her taste in films never quite grew up with her. Which is to say, she is forever trying to get me to watch crappy romances from the ’80s, like Pretty Woman. And Dirty Dancing.
“Why on earth would you want me to watch the wretched thing again?” I asked her.
“Well, you’re the one interested in all things Jewish,” she retorted.
This is true, up to a point. I won’t go so far as to say obsessed, but certainly filled with curiosity – making up for 30 years of indifference before she turned up in my life.
Making up for lost time and all that. But what did that have to do with Dirty Dancing? She looked at me askew.
“Don’t you know?” No, I didn’t.
Dirty Dancing, it seems, was set in a Jewish vacation camp.
Who knew? I wasn’t sure that I believed her. It’s the sort of cunning trick that she plays on me from time to time. So I check, and lo and behold, she is right. The summer camp is a Jewish summer camp. The guests are Jewish guests. Dear Patrick Swayze, God rest his soul, isn’t Jewish, which makes his flirtations – real or imagined – with Baby all the more transgressive.
“You’re imagining things,” Mrs. Goy cuts me off. “You’re reading meaning into the film that wasn’t there in the first place.” It’s a danger, isn’t it? Seeing things differently once you discover the Jewish connection.
Of course, these things cut both ways. On the one hand, I know any number of people who have a heightened interest in the accomplishments of the Members of (your) Tribe. They give nods of pride at discovering that some anonymous somebody-done-well is actually another Jewish brother or sister.
Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But the flip side – well, I don’t need to spell out the flip side, do I? Either way, I’m more than a little curious now. Had Dirty Dancing really passed me by because I was expecting something a little more... racy? Or was it that I’d missed the underlying subtext to the film, which might now make a bit more sense in the context of my subsequent personal history? Well, there was only one way to find out.
And what can I report? That it was dreck, just as bad as it was first time around. But it did clear up one thing that had been bothering me for years. Jennifer Grey should have left her nose alone. The rhinoplasty wrecked her career.
Or is it transgressive to suggest that she looked better with her Jewish nose? But this is neither here nor there. I didn’t need to suffer so much just to tell you that, did I?