Every so often Hollywood makes a film that perfectly crystallizes the inversion of values that has taken place in America since the 1960s. “Dirty Dancing” — made in 1987 but set in 1963 — perfectly illustrates the newfound bias against clean-cut, Ivy-type guys who wear madras jackets.
Set at a summer resort in New York’s Catskill Mountains, the movie is a powerful piece of countercultural propaganda that, through the medium of cable television, repeatedly brainwashes American women into thinking that uneducated hunks in leather jackets are preferable to college boys in oxford-cloth buttondowns.
Johnny, played by Patrick Swayze, is poor and dresses in all black. He is the film’s hero. Robbie (pictured) wears white bucks and tennis sweaters. He is the film’s villain.
Robbie is a Yale med student working a summer job at the resort. Evidently planning to study gynecology, Robbie has no less than three dalliances during the course of the film.
While Robbie has the collegiate look, he’s no rich kid: Not only is he forced to work as a waiter to pay for med school, his sense of superiority, unsupported by high birth, must seek its justification in the novels of Ayn Rand. At one point Robbie spouts a cynical remark about the superiority of the select few, then whips out a tattered copy of “The Fountainhead.” He’s promptly called a sleazebag.
At the end of the film the resort owner laments how the business has survived two World Wars and the Great Depression, but that he isn’t sure he’ll make it through the ’60s. “It all seems to be ending,” he says. “You think kids want to come with their parents and take foxtrot lessons?” — CC
This is a great article. It’s so true in American movies. It makes me think that the movie directors/writers were picked on, bullied or had some issues with the clean cut “ivy style” type of guys when they were young, and so they wanted to get these guys back by making them look evil in the movies….another swayze movie that shows this bias is “the outsiders.” The Greasers are the poor class and fight the preppie “Socs”. The Socs are portrayed as huge jerks and evil villains, and the movie tries to show the poor Greasers as cool, heroes, etc.
After living life, I hope most kids realize that these movies are fake…and people SHOULD emulate college type, educated people rather than punks who try to destroy civilized society
The barbarians arenot at the gate, they are among us, and have been for a long time. Anything that can help to slow their progress and create a reaction deserves our praise and support. Thanks again, Ivy Style, for fighting the good fight.
Thanks, though I feel I should clarify that I actually identify with the Patrick Swayze character.
For example, I didn’t go to Yale medical school, but I have worked as a ballroom dance instructor. Also, whenever I lock my keys in my car, I have a tendency to smash the window rather than call Triple A.
Lest I be accused of linguistic barbarianism, allow me to state for the record that I know that there’s no such word as “arenot” in the English language…at least not yet!
My apologies.
Apparently, my eyes are not as good as they once were.
I ditto the comments by Bermuda.
I understand the enduring reality (and wisdom) of “De gustibus non est disputandum.” And I have lived long enough to know that there are natural- shouldered jerks and polyester-shirted gentlemen. That said, the Ivy/Establishment style never fails and never betrays because it is so rooted in a long-proven, quiet practicality, quality and sensibility which imparts its own authority. That very authority makes it the inevitable target of those (movie makers, it seems, chief among them) who are, in Nat Henthoff’s penetrating phrase, “class voyeurs” — always busy playing the politics of envy and resentment. Thanks, Christian, for pointing out “Dirty Dancing” as a prime example.
Nice article for several reasons A. for highlighting the class envy politics of hollywood as well as B. the inherent wank tendency of your average so called ‘meritocrat.’ This particular villain is perhaps so nasty because of his own crisis of confidence. In my experience real pretension usually arises for individuals who don’t necessarily have the foundation to back up their presumptuously haughty airs.
You’ve approached, but have not quite hit, the target. It’s not just “bias against clean-cut, Ivy-type guys who wear madras jackets” that Hollywood and the rest of the mass media promote; it’s bias against traditional values, Western civilization, and, ultimately, white people themselves. Although this movie is only a minor player in this overarching motif, if you look at society at large, you will see this is a significant thread running through it.
Tom: Have you read this book “The Rise of the Colored Empires”?
Nick: Why, no.
Tom: Well it’s a fine book, and everyone ought to read it.
So, let me get this straight: A guy in an oxford and weejuns is a guy with values. A guy in a leather jacket on a motorbike is devoid of values and wants nothing more that to destroy Western civilization?
This may be the most trite article I’ve ever read!
I think you’ve got it, Jef.
The preppy rich kid is pretty much the archetypical nemesis of every John Hughes or other 80s teen movie. It’s quite a simple device from a narrative point of view to pit an outsider who is challenging the old guard as the hero (who has to get everything on his own merit), and the representatives of the established privileged class (who live the easy life off daddy’s money and social networks) as the villains. This fits well with American notions of class and meritocracy, individualism and ‘revolutionary/rebellious’ political and economic values.
That said, John Hughes did a better job than many of his peers who used the trust fund preppy as main rival to the hero for the attentions of the girl by often playing with the fraught nature of cross-clique romance, often featuring the ‘sympathetic’ rich kid (Blane in Pretty in Pink, Watts (Mary Stuart Masterson) in Some Kind of Wonderful, Jake in Sixteen Candles, Claire in The Breakfast Club).
whats the comedie, where this actor on the picture played??