I Carried a Watermelon: Dirty Dancing and Me. Katy Brand
– that stuff for women is romantic, domestic and ultimately insignificant, whereas stuff for men may be entertaining but also has ‘universal themes’ or an ‘important message’. I can’t think of another film I’ve seen that has more universal themes, or a more important message than Dirty Dancing. I’m so glad I’ve found this way of obsessing about it a little more, and a load of new people to do it with.
In its way, it is a feminist manifesto – a story with a heroine who has to defy her family, stand up for her principles, save the man she loves, and is finally lifted up in a floaty pink dress – you can still be a powerful woman in a floaty pink dress, after all. And you should never put up with being put in a corner, no matter how you’re dressed. I’m glad it came into my life all those years ago, and I promise not to neglect it again. So, I’m wearing my Kellerman’s t-shirt with pride (bought off the merchandise stand at the live show), even though it’s slightly too small. That way, a little bit of it is always close to my heart, reminding me that nobody puts Baby in a corner. Thanks for being there, Dirty Dancing – I was a Baby when we met, but just look at me now.
It was the summer of 1990, when everyone called me Katy and it never occurred to me to mind. Mainly because that was my name. I was 11 years old. The world felt new, my secondary school uniform felt newer, and as it was a weekend I was told that if I wanted to, I could stay up to watch this film I’d barely heard of on TV called Dirty Dancing.
I liked films with dancing in them – like Bandwagon, Singin’ in the Rain, and Top Hat, with Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire. My favourite films were Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music, where women on a mission turn up and sort some people out. I liked the big numbers and sassy romantic story-lines, the up-against-the-clock drive when characters put their differences aside to pull together for the Big Show, the finale. I knew I liked the old stuff best. I could take or leave Grease, frankly – it’s always struck me as a bit cold. Rizzo was all right, but Rizzo was meant to be a schoolkid and she looked like she was 45 and already on her third divorce. So even though this so-called Dirty Dancing was intriguing, I wasn’t expecting much. I could always turn it off if I didn’t like it.
Well.
I’m not sure I moved a muscle for the entire duration of the film. It’s possible I held my breath. When it finished, I went straight upstairs for I couldn’t bear to break the spell by talking to anyone. I lay in bed, staring at the glowing star stickers on my bedroom ceiling, tracing them from one to the next. I was trying to remember every moment and relive it. My body was alive with some unspecified but powerful energy. My mind was blown.
Scenes flew across my memory like shooting stars with such speed and brightness that I couldn’t keep hold of them for long. It was a feeling. A heartbeat. And my heart was beating out of my chest. The opening – the family’s arrival at the hotel – inauspicious in some respects, but with the promise of something more as porter Billy and Baby bond over unloading the bags. Then the tingle of the opening bars to ‘(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life’, played slowly on the piano, a tease of the magic yet to come, as Baby makes her way up to the main house to ‘look around’, and later glimpses Johnny being told off by Max Kellerman (‘no funny business, no conversation, and keep your HANDS OFF’). That opening dance number, where Penny and Johnny burst into the room and show what they can really do left me almost panting. The stage is set – this magnificent, talented man, pulsating with passion, but with a bad attitude, is breathing the same air as our Baby. The anticipation of what would happen next was almost too strong to handle …
And then, and then, oh and then that staff after-party – still my favourite scene – the sense of stepping into something ripe but forbidden, too good to turn back now. The dancing – like nothing I had ever seen before, raw and direct, primal. I felt hot thinking about it. And giggling and hugging myself over that line, ‘I carried a watermelon’, as Johnny curled his lip and Baby scolded herself for being so naff. I felt I could so easily be her. It was coming back to me in flashes – the impossibility of the task ahead of Baby – learning to dance to a professional standard in five days; the build-up of tension between Baby and Johnny, so perfectly paced – you knew what was going to happen, but you couldn’t wait to see it – the delicious inevitability of it. And then that sex scene – the confidence of Baby now! To pull him in, to make it happen. Could a girl really do that? Could she just go and get a man if she wanted him? I couldn’t believe it.
The twists and turns, the injustice of the stealing accusations against Johnny – I felt it burn within me, just like Baby did. She had to save him, I totally understood that – I would have done the same. The sick twist of heartbreak as he leaves her, the bleak wasteland that follows, as if life will never have colour again. And then the triumph of his return! He comes back! To find her! And to lift her high in the air, to show everybody what an amazing woman she has become. Oh god – I wanted to be Baby. I wanted it all to happen to me. I had to see it again. As soon as possible. I wanted this feeling to last forever.
But cruelly, the experience was fleeting and unrepeatable, it seemed. I had not thought to record the film off the telly as I watched it. I could not have foreseen the effect it would have on me, and now I was kicking myself. I didn’t have the resources to video everything on the off-chance that it would radically re-order my emotions and inform my destiny. Nobody had that many blank videos at their disposal, surely – where would I store them, for god’s sake? These were just some of the confused, racing thoughts zig-zagging through my overwhelmed and overheated brain. I couldn’t believe I had lived before Dirty Dancing. I couldn’t believe anything had mattered.
At first, I had to hold the memory of it within myself. I couldn’t afford to buy it, and renting a video was an occasional treat, with the choice of film very much a committee decision involving the whole family, and I didn’t detect quite the same level of enthusiasm in the house for Dirty Dancing that I was barely keeping under control. I had to wait.
Then, a few months later, I spotted it in the terrestrial TV schedule. The excitement was immense, and I made sure I was ready. I found a tape that had an episode of Tomorrow’s World on it, followed by the second half of an old football match. They would be sacrificed in order that this might become The Dirty Dancing Tape. I carefully peeled back the old sticker, and replaced it with a brand new one, on which I wrote ‘DIRTY DANCING – DO NOT WIPE’ in thick black ink. I crouched before the VCR player in readiness at the appointed time, lined it all up, and pressed record.
As soon as the film finished on TV, I immediately rewound the tape to check it. I pressed play. Please, please be there. It was. OK, for some reason, the first five minutes were missing, which was frustrating, but predictable considering our somewhat capricious video machine, which seemed to delight in mysteriously switching channels mid-record, or ending the recording early for no apparent reason, or just turning off altogether, so it had to be watched like a hawk. But the bulk of the film was there. I had done it, it was mine. IT WAS MINE. And nobody could take it away from me. I had caught the magic in a net.
So I watched it all over again. Twice in a night. It didn’t feel excessive, it felt right. Because now it was available for me to view whenever I wanted to. And I wanted to. A lot. I watched Dirty Dancing after school. Every. Single. Day. For THREE MONTHS, until my concerned father confiscated and hid the tape, and it very much occurred to me to mind.
It took me a week to find it, discreetly rummaging in every drawer, ransacking then replacing the contents of various cupboards. I have always been an obsessive person – bloody-minded, stubborn, relentless in my pursuit of what I think should rightfully be mine. I am, to put it mildly, tenacious. I knew that the confiscated Dirty Dancing tape was somewhere in the house. I felt in my bones that my dad would not be so cruel, so callous as to throw it away entirely. I understood on some level that he was trying to save me from myself – perhaps encouraging me to widen my viewing habits. Or to do some homework. But life was different