Dirty Dancing: Lighting and the Complexity of the Voluntary versus Familial Obligations

As Diane Jeske wrote of in the reading, Family, Friends, and Special Obligations we are bound by our relationships to others, from familial to romantic to platonic, all affect our interactions with one another. Dirty Dancing explores such relationships through a simple plot, and predictable characters. There is not only the dichotomy of class, but also special obligations to those defined as family.

The film begins with the introduction of Frances “Baby” Houseman reading next to her sister, who instead studied her reflection in a mirror – though sisters, clearly different in taste. After all, at the beginning, Lisa is the one who asks flippantly for Baby to lie about her whereabouts to their parents. Baby does not refuse, but seems to disapprove as she asks why she must do this. Lisa doesn’t give a worthy reason, only offering a pretty view as her explanation.

There are moments foreshadowing the main conflict of the movie – that of Baby’s romance with the dance instructor, Johnny Castle – such as Baby being “sawed in half” by the camp’s magician, similar to how she will be torn between two worlds of family and lover. But perhaps the most subtle yet also in-your-face foreshadowing is the use of lighting. Lighting is used throughout to represent emotional states, but in particular during moments of emotional intensity, ie the “illegal” party where Johnny and Baby first meet or the moment after Baby is forced to admit in front of her father that she has been with Johnny all night. For more information regarding color usage in lighting, please see here: https://www.learnstagelighting.com/how-do-i-use-color-effectively/.

As seen above, Baby is painted in a pink light bordering on red, backlit by blue. This helps the audience read the relationship developing and the parties involved– associating Johnny with the pinks and/or reds of passion, as introduced earlier with his and Penny’s dance. However, Baby is associated with the cooler blue tones, indicating her quiet nature, but here, in this moment, she is intrigued by Johnny, bathed in a brief whirlwind of passion while they dance.

Using lighting not only indicates emotions during a scene, but the relationships that will form obligations later. Such as Baby’s burgeoning love leading to her helping Penny and standing up for Johnny, as well as her relationship with her father turning their scenes frigidly blue as seen below.

The lighting serves as visual reference for the audience to help read emotion and relationship, mood and tone per scene, from Baby’s conflicting love for father versus partner, meeting expectation or upsetting it, with red splashed on the screen as she is frustrated while learning the dance that will affect her relationships for the rest of the film. The lighting becomes brighter, warmer, surrounding Baby and reflecting her newfound confidence, joy, and love. It turns softer, calmer, nearing sadness as she wavers between admitting her love of Johnny to her father or keeping their love secretive.

Diane Jeske writes of this conflict between voluntary and involuntary relationships, special obligations supposedly for the involuntary familial such as the expectation of a certain sort of boy that Baby and Lisa should fall in love with, one that is well-educated. However, Baby feels strongly for her voluntary relationships, risking the familial by lying, hiding, and then eventually hurting her family with her relationship with Johnny. If we assume that the familial relationship is one of certain special obligations ranked higher than the friendships we enter into, why is it that Baby is willing to risk so much to help people she barely calls friends, especially before Penny’s botched abortion? What is it about her relationships that would indicate she would pick Penny and Johnny over her previously perfect father-daughter relationship?