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Hello and welcome to another Material Girls bonus feature that we lovingly call Material Concerns. I'm Marcel Cosmon. I'm Hannah McGrigger and we never know quite how to introduce these episodes. But we are here today with a bevy of intriguing questions about the film Dirty Dancing. Oh my gosh. And I'm going to start us off Marcel with a really, really important one, which is Has Marcel seen the movie? No, not yet. I'm very busy.
Okay, so important follow up question to that. Okay. What kind of cult did Marcel grow up in to have never seen this movie? It's called a farm. I grew up on a farm. And I didn't have friends. I didn't have friends for a long time, so I didn't have anybody to watch it with. Is it because you were on a farm? Because I was on a farm. And it only child. And it only child. Yeah. And I know. Yeah. I don't know. It just kind of missed me. It just missed me. Sometimes,
sometimes things miss you. Sometimes things miss you. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. There's whole swaths, whole genres of movie that fully missed me. And whole periods of TV shows too. I never watched any of the teen soaps. I never watched the OC or Dawson's Creek. I just didn't care. Did you watch save by the bell? No. And I also didn't watch the grassy. Yeah. Yeah. I also didn't watch the grassy. And then they rebooted it. And I tried watching. And watch that. I've tried watching
two episodes. And was like, this is very, very bad TV. It's so hard when it's the 90s and the internet doesn't exist to like know if you're missing out on something like Geistie. That's right. That's right. Especially if you're like, you know, 10 and have three friends. So like if they're not watching it, you just haven't heard of it. Exactly. Or if you're 10 and you have a half hour, 45 minute long bus ride. And so you get home with enough time to see the last three minutes of
every save by the bell episode. But no more than that. No more than that. Yeah. I remember like I didn't watch the grassy, but I did watch Catwalk. I've never even heard of Catwalk. Neve Kimbles for shows. Really? Also Canadian. It's about a band. I did watch Parti of Five. Oh, I also watched Parti of Five. Okay. None of this was the question. Oh.
Oh, okay. So there are a few questions here that I think will be fun for you to answer. And then I'm gonna say that you get to go ahead and choose the questions that you can make me answer. Okay. Because you haven't seen the movie. That's right. Okay. Great. Okay. So because this is a film set at a summer camp. It's at a summer camp. You and Andrew didn't talk about that. Why is Patrick Swazie's old ass at a summer camp? It's not a kid summer camp. It's an adult summer camp. Okay.
Yeah. Okay. It's a it's a like Jewish summer resort in the cat skills. Did talk about that. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. The cat skills. Okay. Yeah. So there's all of these activities for the campers. Yes. All day to like keep you you know entertain. Of course. During your time there. Hence the presence of the dancers because you can take dance lessons there or go see them perform. So the first question I'm going to ask you is if you attended a summer camp
like in dirty dancing for adults. What would be your perfect camp day? Okay. So I have attended a summer camp for adults once and it was with not sorry last year and every day was a perfect camp day because it was one of the most meaningful meaningful experiences of my entire life. But let's break that down a little bit. Let's talk about why. Okay. So we were super busy. So it certainly wasn't because we were just like lounging by the pool. It was because of the incredible
community of other were we counselors. We weren't like camp counselors. What were we what was our title? I mean staff. We were staff. Yeah. Yeah. So the staff were just amazing. They're just like the most amazing group of people I've ever had the pleasure of getting to know. Yeah. Like the opposite of the staff in dirty dancing. Okay. Good to know. Good to know. They're they're they're like all the waiters are like asshole Ivy Lee guys. You think they're too good for everybody else.
Terrible. And they're the fuck do the daughters. So the activity that was the most meaningful for me having never attended a real summer camp and never been a camp counselor never anything like that was in the evenings after all the campers went to bed. Some of us would just gather over by the fire and we would just hang out and we would just we'd just be silly. We just talk and share and that was really nice. And we sang songs on the last night or maybe every night. I don't
even remember there was a guitar and there were songs and there were kazoo's. Yeah. So that. Do I wish I'd use the pool? Yes. If I could go back in time I would have said Marcel if you don't deliberately make time for the pool you will not use the pool. I wish I had done that. And then you'll regret it. Okay. I do need to be this guy and offer a slight clarification which is that the kazoo's and the singing and the guitar playing happened with all the campers before they
went to bed. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah. I did the whole time isn't real. And I couldn't agree more. It's just not real. But that was like there were these amazing massing alongs with all of the campers and like yeah. Smoormaking and all kinds of just lovely like camp vibes. And then we would like put the fire out and walk all the campers back. Yeah. Up. And then we come back. But okay. But here's what was so special about that to me as a person who's been to numerous
campfires but never been to a camp. Nobody got like shit faced. You know. There was no like oh how embarrassing so and so is wasted. It was a it was a it was a dry camp where it's supposed to have alcohol. You know this is all going to be public right. Yes. But I haven't said anything wrong. My point is that it felt like the kind of opportunity that like some scenario would end up with like people getting like trashed and being sloppy. Yeah. Instead it was just everybody was just having a good
time. Yeah. And it was really really very lovely. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. And as it turns out it seems like it is going to be a one-off. And that's another sad. And an indication of how hard it is to run a camp. So one more camp-related question. Okay. Which is if you were going to run a session out of camp what activity would you run hypothetically? Well it definitely wouldn't be like an intro to gender affirming care for kids. That's a funny joke because that's what I did that. That's
what you ran at camp. I did that. I did that. In dirty dancing one of the activities is that all of the women get to try on wigs. Okay. Yeah. I mean you know. Sure. We're there we're some of the camp attendees like orthodox is that was it. You know what? I just have to watch the movie. A great point that I did not consider. I have to watch the movie because I don't know I don't know the context. Yeah. Okay. What would I run if I could if I could run anything? If I could run anything
I would do a talent show. Good. Yeah. Dirty dance dance with a talent show. Ah perfect. Yeah. Yeah. I wouldn't be in the talent show just to be clear. Yeah. Man. I love a talent show. I'd emcee it. Yeah. You would and you'd be very good at it. Thank you because that's my talent. Okay. Hannah. I have some questions. Throw me some substantive dirty dancing related questions. Okay. Have you seen the remake released a few years ago and if so what did you think?
It happened. Okay. Which is surprising. I will say only because it stars Rommala Garei who I love a great deal. She is in the mini series adaptation of the Crimson Petal in the White which is an excellent book but I kind of think like an even better adaptation. It's really, really good. That's fun. It's set in Victorian England and it is about Rommala Garei plays the
main character whose name I can't remember. Who's this sex worker who becomes a live-in mistress for the sort of upwardly aspiring businessman and ends up being about a kind of emerging friendship between her and his wife who has been diagnosed with hysteria and is essentially being like yellow wallpapered. And it's like really interested in the way that sex work and marriage in a patriarchal culture are similarly unfree. It's really well done. And then she was also Emma in a BBC
mini series adaptation that I also really love. So I really, really like her. So I'll watch it at some point. Yeah. Some of the question askers didn't enjoy it so they were looking for some thoughts. Some affirmation. You know what? I understand from Andrew Warner that it is bad. Okay. Okay. And much like my stance on Jurassic Park which is that the original movie is
a masterpiece and everything that came after is pretty much trash. Andres Stance is like the original dirty dance is wonderful and every subsequent remake stage adaptation sequel etc has been pretty much garbage that seems to like miss the point of the thing it's adapting. That happens. It sure does. It happens. Oh yeah. Okay. Okay. Hannah. Well since dirty dancing is a masterpiece and not unlike the first Jurassic Park what moment gives you the most joy in the movie?
I think the moment that I like the most is there is a scene where Johnny is teaching baby the dance routine that they have to do. And he's been like really focused on just like teaching her how to dance because like she starts knowing absolutely nothing. So it's been like whoa really basics. Okay. Yeah. She has no dance experience and she steps in to cover this performance because Johnny's partner his childhood best friend needs to get an abortion. That's right.
Right. And so he's teaching her I mean the two of them Penny and Johnny are teaching her totally from scratch. And so it's been a lot of like learn even like where your arms go and what the steps are and what the rhythms are. And then he's beginning to teach her the routine. And there's this sort of montage of one of the moves is he's standing behind her her back is to his chest and he's supposed to run his hand sort of centrally down the side of
her body. I think I've seen that. But every time he does it it tickles. And so she keeps like Christ she's supposed to be being all like elegant and sexy and every time she keeps like cracking up and it's Jennifer Gray is so perfect in it like it's such an encapsulation of how profoundly charming her performance is. But I also find it one of the sort of the most compelling scenes between the two of them. Where like you really get a sense both of like the playfulness of young
love and also the awkwardness. And like it's just it's such a charming moment that for me makes a lot of what follows feel earned because I find the chemistry between the two of them so convincing I've been watching a lot of romance movies lately because we're recording the new season of hot and bothered. And I got to say chemistry between the leads cannot be taken for granted. No, no, it's not always there. You know, I feel like I was having this conversation with you
and somebody else it was about season two of Bridgerton. And you and the other person were talking about the chemistry that the two leads have and how it was so powerful. And I remember watching it and sorry everyone who hasn't seen it yet almost wishing that I hadn't known that because already knowing that they were going to have chemistry sort of like had me like jumping the gun like anticipating the chemistry in a way that I think often these sort of slow burn romances like you
have talked about before there are expectations in the genre. And so like anybody who knows that this is a romance is going to know that these two characters are going to fall in love. But it made me wish that I had never encountered a romance before so that I could like just yeah totally have my mind blown you know really good examples of a genre kind of do that don't they they almost make you wish you didn't know the genre so that you could be surprised by it all over
again. Yeah. Have you watched the first half of the new season? I have. Yes. I've been keeping out of the discourse I got to say. Yeah. But like when it started I was like you guys are really going to have to convince me on pen and calling like I have not seen this chemistry at all in the previous seasons. And I got to say they did convince me. I was very surprised at how distasteful I found calling. And I feel like this season was supposed to show us that he is a romantic lead
and it had very much the opposite effect for me. I was like oh he went away and became a douchebag pen. I think I was supposed to be a douchebag at the beginning and then like come around yeah okay. The idea is that he's being like a real like I just came back from abroad and like boy do I have a bunch of it and then like as he falls for her he changes right so the like turning scene I think
is supposed to be that scene where he's sitting with his bros in the club. Oh yeah. He's been like trading fuck stories with and then he just breaks down and is like don't you hate that we have to pretend to not at all take seriously the most important relationships in our lives. And they're all like what? I think like I think that's supposed to be a turn where previously he's been an asshole and now he's like genuinely feeling something for somebody and it's like oh this is how I want to
like talk about women anymore. Yeah I think that that's fair. I would have liked it if he just changed his sideburns though to give us a visual cue that he was no longer going to be a douchebag you know. It's so hard to tell that somebody isn't a douchebag anymore when they sell the sideburns. They're just like particularly pointy in this way that I'm like supposed to know. How dare you. How dare you. Yeah and I was also I guess now we're talking about Bridgeton season 3
but I was also ungovernable. Ungovernable. I was also quite taken with Penelope's makeover because I was really like what are they going to do. You know you know how makeover stories are awful and it really felt like instead of her becoming someone else it felt like her finally getting to be herself and I really okay I really like that and a number of times was like I thought that this character was beautiful before but I did not know that she was sexy. I
didn't know. I'm gonna stop us here and say okay I actually want to talk about Bridgeton more with you but let's put it on the picture on episode. Oh good idea okay yes you want more if you want more. You know I love to pay wall. Same as we keep girl boss gaslight. Subscribe to hear us talk about Bridgeton. Gatekeep girl boss gaslight and grizzly bears. Yeah I wish I'd come up with that but it's a tick-tock. Ah damn meme. No it's quite funny. Yeah I know it really is the youth are
very funny. They are. God love the youth you know. God love. Okay ask me a couple more questions about dirty dancing. The ostensible topic of the sport itself. Okay hey Hannah were you ever influenced by the clothes or fashion of the movie? For example baby or Johnny or the other dancers. Oh my god only on my most recent viewing. So I until relatively recently really struggled to see fashion on thin bodies and imagine it on my own body. And so the fashion that has inspired me
has mostly been fashion that I see on fat bodies. Gotcha. Which is great like I really love supporting companies that make clothes for fat bodies and that show them on fat models and I love following fat people on Instagram and seeing the way that they're styling themselves and that has been taking pleasure in looking at fashion on fat bodies has been like really really central to you know my own relationship to my body and to clothing. But it's really only recently that I've
started to like look at things and be like oh I can do that. And on this most recent rewatch I was like maybe I need to get into body suits because there's this scene where baby wears this like sort of apricot body suit and jorts. Jorts. Yeah I was like that's pretty fucking hot I gotta say. Less influenced by Johnny who is frequently wearing dance shoes. So like black leather shoes with heels. And just the highest pants. It's so high. I fucking love high pants. It's one of the
many tepid takes that I have. I just like a medium rise. That is a little take. It is such a lukewarm take. But I think it in part has to do with just my body shape. That like on skirts they will stay up at my high waist but pants that go all the way up that high like unless I really belt them they like slowly fall down and like a he wearing belts. You know yeah because they're a prison for your waist. And you know finding the right belt is as you know Marcel and I went into
like 73 stores. The metrotown mall in Vancouver trying to find her like reasonably priced and not absurd belt and it truly was impossible. What was spectacular was when we went into winners and Hannah discovered these Michael Cors belts that had at the belt buckle these giant mk initials and she was like you gotta get this you have to buy every single one of these is good for initials. I'm really trying to convince Marcel that in her 40s her look is gonna be wearing belts with
huge buckles with her initials and she was having none of it. I know I am a real party pooper. This is important for everybody to know I might sound fun but I'm not not an ounce of whimsy in this bitch. Not even a little. Oh my god. Oh my god. Okay. I'm gonna answer one of these questions. Okay one of the questions is is baby even really in a corner it's really more of a niche. And I need to say that Andrea was quite ill at the time that this book came out. Our podcast was one of the only
pieces of media that she did about the book. She is much better now. She's recovering. Much more collective relief but to celebrate the book a small group of close friends went over to her apartment and we watched her de dancing together. And the question of the degree to which baby
is there is not in a corner became extremely central to every watch. She's in like she's sitting in a circular table with her parents with her back to the wall and right beside their table there's this kind of like butt trists like a column that kind of sticks out from the wall a little bit. But it's not another wall perpendicular to the wall her back is to. It's just a little fucking rich people. A little sticky little sticky outie part. So like rich people in their sticky
outie wall parts. Is it a corner if it's not where two walls meet what's the definition of a corner. I mean he means it metaphorically. Like he means that you don't see how remarkable she is and you underestimate her. But from an architectural perspective I'm not sure what constitutes a corner. Okay good good. Yeah. Yeah. Good. These are the hard hitting questions people come to us to answer. That is right. Hey marketers advertisers and business owners. Find yourself chatting up the same
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podcasts with Acast. Head to go.acast.com slash closer to get started. Okay I have a really interesting question here. Not that they're not all interesting but this one had me go. This film is often held up as an example of the female gaze. Do you agree with this reading? My immediate follow up before you even begin to answer that Hannah is is there such a thing
as a female gaze? Okay. So part of what this question and Marcel's addendum is referencing is Laura Mollve's iconic work on the way that the camera operates in film as the viewers gaze and that operates in ways that assume certain things about who the viewer is. So there's a lot of examples of like classic films that are assuming a male gaze and you can tell by the way that the camera treats male bodies and female bodies differently. So while you'll encounter a male character
face first, you encounter female characters. But first. Yeah. But first or like from the feet up and the camera scans them, positioning you as somebody sort of ugly them and looking them over. And so a lot of feminist film theorists are really interested in this question of like, well is there something innately masculinized about the gaze of the camera or is it possible to reverse that
that male gaze? And I will say this movie certainly, I think clearly intentionally attempting to do so in terms of the story is told through the eyes of baby and the camera moves like it is baby's gaze. Specifically. So when you encounter like the first really sort of like sexed up scene like what? I mean it actually gets sexy kind of from the start. But there's the scene where baby has helped to carry some watermelons up to the staff cabin. Does she have one in front of each tit?
No, she's just got one. She's got one. She has carried watermelons. She just comes across because it's not the male gaze. Exactly. It's already been established that like when she sees a staff member struggling to carry things, she goes to help, which like distinguishes her from the other rich guests. And so she sees this guy trying to carry like three watermelons up a flight of stairs and she's like,
I will take one of those watermelons. And then they go up and there's the staff party and everybody at the staff party is, you guessed it, dirty dancing. And in that scene, it's like baby discovering that this exists in the camera. Lingers on the bodies in a way that is very clearly the way her gaze is lingering on the bodies. But there's lots of other similar moments including that in most sort of two person scenes between baby and Johnny. Johnny is shot slightly from below because she's
shorter than him. So you literally see him the way she would be seeing him. So like the camera is really centering her perspective. Which I was really interested. Yeah, definitely. So the reason I was asking about whether or not the female gaze exists is because I am fully on board with Laura Mulvey's like intervention in film theory. And I think naming it the male gaze is intentional and deliberate. I don't even remember if it's like a book or an article. I don't think that she's
essentializing the gaze as male. I think she's talking about the patriarchy. Yeah, she's talking about power and sexualizing women. Yeah. Yeah, it's not about biological essentialism. Yes, that's right. And so for that reason, whenever I hear people talk about the female gaze, I'm always a little bit like, but I don't think that that solves the problem. I think that there are a lot of different ways that we might name and identify the ways that
the camera works to show us whose perspective it is representing. And my lukewarm take is that maybe there are other names that might be more descriptive. This gaze is called definitely. Well, this gaze is called baby. Baby's gaze is called baby. And I think that's really key, right? That like it's not meant to be every woman's gaze because part of what's important is that baby sees Johnny differently than a lot of the other women do. A lot of the other women at the camp see him
as our objectifying him. Yeah. You know, see him as a person to be used because he is working class in their wealthy. Yeah. But baby's not objectifying him. She's fascinated by him and she's turned on by him. Yeah. But it's not about deshumanizing him. And so, you know, I think seeing that like the camera is centering her gaze and rendering her the subject of the film is more accurate than just sort of a generalized like, ah, the female gaze. Totally. Totally. Yeah. I remember when the
first season of Outlander was airing and people talked about the female gaze. And I was like, but these are scenes of sexual assault. Why does the camera think that they are sexy? Why is the camera representing this experience in this way? There's a huge disconnect between what's happening and what the camera wants us to think is happening. And if that's the female gaze, I won't fucking out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I often feel that way about gender though. People are like,
this is a woman thing. I'm like, I would like to be excluded from the narrative. No, thank you. Thank you. Very good. Very good. Very good. Oh, okay. I'm the topic of being excluded from narratives. Yes. I would like to be excluded from the rest of this episode by which I mean, I think this episode is coming to a close. Oh, okay. Was that a perfect segue? Yeah. It was. It was history. It's amazing for me. But yeah. But we're gonna keep talking. And guess what, we're
gonna talk more about Bridgerton. Oh, goody. But we're gonna do it over on the Patreon. Over on the paytree on. We're ready. We're ready folks. We are becoming capitalists. We're there. We're preparing ourselves. Marcel, you want to meet me over there? Yeah. Yeah. I do. I do. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Okay. Marcel, all right. Thanks for listening everyone. A cast powers the world's best podcast. Here's a show that we recommend.
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