Deconstructing Dirty Dancing [Paperback]

This is a remarkable achievement. Using a single film as a case-study, it asks the reader to re-think their own relationship to cinema, calling into question the narratives, memories and assumptions we construct through and about popular culture. This unique and innovative analysis offers a great deal to any reader, from the film studies professor to the occasional cinema goer. A must-read book or anyone interested in popular film.Dirty Dancing has quietly evolved from a film to enjoy, to one you can admire -- helped along by Stephen Lee Naish's Deconstructing Dirty Dancing. A model of detailed textual analysis, Deconstructing Dirty Dancing reveals what Dirty Dancing???s devoted fanbase has known for years: that the film tackled sophisticated, progressive themes with dignity, courage, and a catchy soundtrack. Rest assured, the political can indeed be pleasurableIt's time to take Dirty Dancing out of the corner and place it under the microscope.Renowned film critic Roger Ebert said Dirty Dancing might have been a decent movie if it had allowed itself to be about anything. In this broadly researched and accessible text, Stephen Lee Naish sets out to deconstruct and unlock a film that has haunted him for decades, and argues that Dirty Dancing, the 1987 sleeper hit about a young middle-class girl who falls for a handsome working-class dance instructor, is actually about everything. The film is a union of history, politics, sixties and eighties culture, era-defining music, class, gender, and race, and of course features one of the best love stories set to film. Using scene-by-scene analyses, personal interpretation, and comparative study, it's time to take Dirty Dancing out of the corner and place it under the microscope.Stephen Lee Naish???s writing explores film, politics, and popular culture. His essays have appeared in Candid Magazine, The Quietus, Empty Mirror, 3:AM, and The Hong Kong Review of Books. He is the author of the essay collection U.ESS.AY: Politics andl“W