“Nobody puts Baby in a corner.”It’s the seminal line in Dirty Dancing,itself possibly the most seminal coming-of-age romantic dance film-cum-social exploration of the mores of the post-War Jewish American upper middle class, ever committed to film. It’s spoken, or of course,by the late, great Patrick Swayze, and who plays a working-class dance instructor and dreamboat Johnny Castle (who,as you can probably tell, does not count himself among the various Sons of Israel working the dining rooms of the Catskills that summer to save up a shrimp extra money for law school). And while Castle is putatively referring to the placement of Frances “Baby” Houseman’s seat at the terminate-of-summer talent point to—this is before the gorgeous Jennifer Grey got that rhinoplasty—every single shrimp Jewish girl in the audience knew precisely what he was talking about: the metaphorical corner of marriage to a kind; unsexy podiatrist; the kind neatly-combed children and the house in the suburbs; the synagogue sisterhood casino nights. Betty Friedan’s “problem that has no name” is rendered in glorious ethnic—and therefore, or all the more guilt-ridden—Technicolor.
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