Category Archives: Rave

some reasons why Dirty Dancing is the best

Seriously, if I was doing this post in gifs, I’d have to include pretty much the whole movie. The watermelons! The bridge montage! The awkward “woooaaaaaaah” noise they both make on the log when Patrick Swayze almost loses his balance! (Okay, that last one wouldn’t make a great gif, but it’s one of the moments particular to this movie.)

Let’s start with the watermelons. When Baby wanders out of bounds, into the staff only area, she encounters Johnny’s cousin (does anyone remember his name?) carrying three huge watermelons. He calls her names, she makes to leave, he offers her a watermelon to carry as a peace offering.

Why watermelons? Who knows. But that one random detail gives one of the best shots of the movie – Johnny’s cousin shouldering open the doors to the staff dance hall, then juggling two watermelons – and one of the best lines of the movie. When Johnny finally condescends to stop grinding every woman in the place and come talk to Baby, the only line she can come up with is, “I carried a watermelon.”

The whole sequence could have happened without the watermelons, but wouldn’t have been anywhere near as good.

Baby’s relationship to her sister Lisa is a – hmm, I was going to say subtle, but I’m not sure anything in this film is subtle – wonderful small piece of feminism. Baby looks down on her older sister, who’s a superficial girly girl. Baby’s smart and serious – she’s going to enter the Peace Corps. So when Lisa first hooks up with Robbie, one of the waiters, Baby just rolls her eyes, because it has nothing to do with her. It’s just Lisa being easily distracted, as always.

Even when she sees Lisa storming out of the woods with Robbie, straightening herself up and demanding an apology, she doesn’t think it has anything to do with her. She even uses going to see if Lisa’s okay as an excuse to escape her awkward date, but never actually goes to see her.

But after baby falls in love, and starts having sex – after she comes to realise how important romantic experience can be – she sees Lisa in a new light. She also knows what a scumbag Robbie is, first hand. So for the first time she tries to talk to her about what sex means, and asks Lisa to think about it and be careful. Lisa doesn’t listen, of course, because why on earth should she?

After Lisa also realises, first hand, what a dick Robbie is, and sees Baby ostracised over Johnny, they start to see each other more clearly. Lisa can see that her sister isn’t all high-and-mighty anymore – she has walked into that murky, uncomfortable, human space where she lets other people affect her. They’ve both had their hearts broken.

For the final concert, Lisa offers to do Baby’s hair. Baby understands this gesture is how Lisa can show her love, show she’s sorry. And Lisa, pushing Baby’s hair back into a style, lets it go, realising Baby doesn’t need to be anything other than what she is. They will never be the same kind of person, but they’ve found a way to understand and stand up for each other.

Also, Lisa singing Hula Hana is hands down one of the best bits of the movie. Especially because it’s just background to a transformative emotional moment. (Another of those perfect details, like the watermelons.)

And then there’s the romance.

It starts out with a conventional romance vibe – a naive good girl falls for the bad boy from the streets. But gradually the dynamics start to shift. Baby lives an undeniably privileged life. She can go to university and join the Peace Corps. Not because she’s smarter or more moral than anyone else, but because she’s in a financial position to do it – and more importantly, because she’s been raised to believe she can do anything.

Her privilege isn’t sneered at, or turned into a negative trait. Johnny sees that it gives her power. It puts her in a position he’s never been in in his life. It makes her something that’s difficult for him to understand, but so seductive and inspiring. It makes him look up to her. It makes him want more.

And Johnny, the bad boy with the incredible body and dance moves, isn’t as powerful as he first appears. In that conventional romance set-up, he has all the power. He can desire her or not, choose to dance with her or choose to sneer at her. But then we realise how rich women take advantage of him. He’s a fantasy to them, not a person. He’s a weekend getting back at their husbands. He’s a break from real life.

He’s talented and passionate, but if he wants to keep his job he has to keep the guests happy. And if he steps out of line, well his dad has a place in the House Painters Union lined up for him. His world is a tenuous place.

What’s even better about the romance, though, is that Baby’s privilege does make her naive, and Johnny’s background does keep him in his place more effectively than any outside influence. These big, obvious themes are complicated.

The moment when Baby comes to Johnny’s hut and asks him to dance (have sex) with her, his face is amazing. (I don’t care what anyone says – Patrick Swayze brings it in this movie.) He’s so completely terrified. He wants so badly, he’s burning up with hope, but he doesn’t know how to trust it.

Baby, much as we love her and believe in her, is just one more privileged woman enjoying the fantasy of Johnny.

The romance doesn’t actually happen until the moment Baby tells her father she’s been sleeping with Johnny. Until that moment she could leave, leave Johnny’s heart in tatters, and no one would be any the wiser. Until that moment she’s playing at being in love. It’s also the moment she proves she’s not just going to ride out on her white horse and save the world from on high – she’s actually going to act on her convictions, and get her hands dirty. The world, when you really engage with it, is a messy place.

And how great is it that when they say goodbye they don’t pretend they’re going to be together forever, or even see each other again? It’s just this beautiful thing, that neither of them will ever regret.

And lastly, there’s that incredible call from the heart, when Johnny’s walking away, and Baby calls out his name.

So if you’ve made it through this love-fest: What are your favourite bits of the movie? Or do you, travesty of travesties, not like it?

Puberty Blues

I feel a little bit smug. I’ve been watching a couple of bloody brilliant Aussie TV shows, and for once the rest of the world has to wait! (And here’s hoping other countries have the sense to buy these shows up.)

One of them finished last night, and the ending was so perfect I had that same glow-y feeling in my chest I get from a really great book.

Puberty Blues is about two best friends, Debbie and Sue, growing up in Cronulla in the 70s. Cronulla is an outer suburb of Sydney in an area famous in the 70s for its surfer tribal culture and more recently for the racist riots in 2005.

I tried to express, recently, the idea that a historical context allows us to explore female empowerment in a more emphatic way – but also lends itself to the kind of female empowerment that has nothing to do with finding love.

Puberty Blues is a subtle, impressive example of what I was trying to come to grips with.

Debbie and Sue are desperate to get in with the cool kids, and they eventually manage it by being a bit naughty and a bit mean, and mostly by catching the eye of the boys. Being someone’s girlfriend has nothing to do with liking or even knowing – it’s all about status and belonging.

Girlfriend duties include: sitting on the beach for hours watching the boys surf; buying meat pies and chiko rolls for the boys to eat when they come in, when you will also hand them their towel; and lying back to let him root you. Oh, and bringing the Vaseline – very important not to forget the Vaseline.

The casual rape culture depicted is absolutely chilling. It’s there subtly in the girls’ expectation of sex: it is not something you enjoy, it’s something you lie back and take. And it’s there overtly in the girl lying in the back of a panel van, a catatonic lack of expression on her face, while the boys climb in and out by turn.

Seeing that unsettles Debbie and Sue, but it doesn’t particularly stand out to them as wrong, or as having anything to do with them. The way they react to it – by not really reacting at all – is what makes it so chilling. They have no context to understand why it unsettles them.

They enjoy being the cool kids and having boyfriends. They also begin to experience the way a girl’s worth comes entirely from her boyfriend. The way a girl becomes a laughing-stock in a second if she goes against her boyfriend’s wishes – all ties of loyalty and friendship cut.

Again, they don’t consciously rail against this stuff. They don’t understand it, even while they don’t like it.

Sue starts to feel more and more restrained and angry inside her relationship. Finally, when her boyfriend’s a complete asshole to her in front of everyone, she says, “You’re dropped.” She doesn’t mean to – didn’t even know it was going to come out. It’s that part of her she doesn’t understand – the part that’s unsettled and angry – acting for her. But she doesn’t go all girlpower I’m-better-off-without-that-dickhead. She doesn’t understand herself or her actions and still craves the social belonging that comes with a boyfriend.

Debbie is dropped by her first boyfriend for being frigid (turns out all the Vaseline in the world can’t make up for really not wanting to have sex), then falls in love with the beautiful Gary. In heart-stopping, world-stopping first love. Sue asks Debbie over and over again to tell her the story of how she and Gary sat in her room and just talked all afternoon. Just talked.

But even the beautiful Gary is only a fucked-up kid, dealing with life outside of school.

Debbie and Sue have seen the reality of what it takes to be a cool kid, and they start, tentatively, to see the world on the other side of school – a world that’s bigger than just the cool kids and the outcasts.

They start to realise that the superpower they have is each other. In a world where all ties can be cut in a second if you act out of turn, they have the kind of loyalty that can get them through anything.

They see the girl in the back of the van again, the boys climbing in and out to take turns. They still watch her from a distance, and vow to each other that the world would have to go through one of them first, to get at the other. Then they realise: That girl doesn’t have anyone to stand between her and the world.

And then they realise: Maybe she has us.

It’s such a superhero moment when they decide to walk over. “We’ll just get up and walk,” they tell each other. They challenge those boys who are the gods of this small world, and they get the girl out of there.

They’re so high on what they’ve done – so disbelieving and amazed – that they want to do it all over again. So they do the next best thing. They go down to the beach, with a surfboard, and run into the water, where girls are not allowed to go.

The cool kids sitting on the beach call them every name they can think of, but Debbie and Sue just laugh back at them and say, “Get us a chiko roll!”

The girls, watching fully clothed from their “girlfriend” stations, watch with contempt but also with a kind of dawning confusion. And awe.

Debbie and Sue are a product of their culture. They don’t have the means to stand outside it and understand it. This made their eventual liberation so much more powerful than if they’d been on a crusade from the start.

Their liberation came from acknowledging that their own feelings about the world are the only compass they need. That they get to say what’s wrong and right.

This is how I want to use the historical context for my heroines. Not to have them understand right from the start: I am oppressed, and my fellow-women are oppressed! But to have their experience and their knowledge not match up. For that to be an unsettling thing, and for their anger and frustration to become more than they can keep inside. And when it comes out it’s not necessarily going to be comfortable, and they’ll probably want to take it all back.

In the kind of society Debbie and Sue are growing up in, the love of a teenage boy cannot empower or liberate them. But their friendship with each other can.

be bold, be uncompromising

I’ve just finished the second book in Dunnett’s House of Niccolo series, which means – and I should be getting used to this by now – my heart is broken. Actually, the sensation’s a little bit more like having someone slam the heel of their hand into your sternum hard enough to shatter it.

This quality of Dunnett that is heartbreak but feels less of the heart and more like shock comes from the fact that she’s 100% uncompromising. She’s such a hardass she doesn’t even give the pain anywhere to land.

Last weekend the Melbourne Romance Writers Guild was lucky enough to have Anne Gracie give us a workshop on how to get your book noticed in the slush pile. She talked about really books. You know, really funny, really dark, really passionate. It’s the only way to describe what makes an editor read a well-written manuscript with a plot and competent characterisation and go, “Meh.” Probably wasn’t really anything.

This is something Cat and I talk about a lot. Going fully into an idea and pushing it to its furthest, deepest end. Not being scared of the places your id wants to go. Actually, we’ve refined that one to the point where if one of us is blushing and reluctant and freaked out in response to an idea, we know we have to go there.

As Anne Gracie put it: Don’t flinch away. Be bold.

Then there’s Dunnett.

We’re told to put our characters in a tree then throw rocks at them, but while Dunnett’s characters are busy fending off the rocks she’s razing the land underneath them, so that they have no home to come back to when they find their way down.

She simply does not flinch away. And she pulls it off by having these uncompromising moments happen within a gripping, breathless, joyful, gambolling narrative. It’s not all bleak doom. But when those moments come – she gives no quarter.

I can’t give any specific examples, because they’d all be massive spoilers, but try on something like this:

Think of the one person who gives meaning to why your character does what they do. Who is the sun in your character’s universe? Now kill that person. Now take away every outlet for grief your character might have. Now surround them with people who will take them apart if they are vulnerable for a second. Now make your character clearly, deeply aware of the impact of this death. Now make every one of their best qualities useless in the face of it.

The woman has nerves of steel. There’s no way I can do, yet, what she does.