Don’t know what’s happened to me – Since inadvertently revisiting the movie Dirty Dancing when writing about the Ronettes in my last post, I have been unable to stop listening to the soundtrack. I’m behaving like a silly teenager with a crush! The Patrick Swayze song She’s Like The Wind has always been a favourite of mine and the lyrics perfectly fitted the movie’s storyline. But here’s the thing – It was always a given that Johnny wasn’t good enough for Baby and that at the end of the holiday, she would head off to college and then join the Peace Corps (it was the sixties). It became clear however in the course of the movie that her father’s assessment of young men was not infallible (he disapproved entirely of the honourable dancer Johnny but was happy to sponsor the womanising student Robbie). The theme of clever, sensible, middle-class girls falling for “bad boys” is an eternal one and every generation of parents dread this happening to their daughters – Think how the Air Force Officer father of Priscilla Beaulieu must have felt when at 14 she fell in love with Elvis Presley, and moved to Graceland to live with him at age 17.
She’s Like The Wind by Patrick Swayze:
I would like for once however, to see how things would have turned out if the movie had kept rolling – Love is a powerful thing and parents are not always right. I know of many couples who stood firm against parental disapproval and have gone on to have long and successful marriages. Johnny didn’t have the great start in life that Baby obviously had been privilege to, but he was incredibly talented and personable. With the right girl by his side he could have gone far in the entertainment business, or become the proprietor of a dance academy!
We know that Danny and Sandy headed off in his systematic, hydromatic car at the end of Grease but what happened then? I would like to think they went on to great things with Danny running his own chain of “Greased Lightening” garages and the two of them producing a brood of Italian-Australian babies.
In West Side Story, Maria was never going to be allowed to have any sort of relationship with Tony from the “Jets”. Her brother, the leader of the “Sharks” would never have allowed it, but for Tony to lose his life because of it was one of the saddest and most tragic moments in film history – I am pretty sure they would have made a great couple and lived a long and happy life if family disapproval hadn’t got in the way. (I did struggle a bit with Richard Beymer’s portrayal of a tough, gang-member but those beautiful songs balanced it out.)
I have written about Buffy and Angel before and how their relationship had to end despite their “perfect happiness” but what if it hadn’t? In Highlander, the wife of the immortal Connor MacLeod, his bonnie Heather, grew old whilst he always stayed the same age – She didn’t understand why he stayed with her, but he did because he loved her, right up until her death.
Yes a theme as old as life itself, and despite wanting to hope for the best with all these relationships, would I be as open-minded if my daughter brought one of these “bad-boys” home? I would like to think that I would as I trust her judgement, but not easy, as the Beaulieus of Wiesbaden, Germany must have found in 1959 when Elvis came a-callin’!
She’s Like The Wind
(Song by Patrick Swayze/Stacy Widelitz)
She’s like the wind
Through my tree
She rides the night
Next to me
She leads me through moonlight
Only to burn me with the sun
She’s taken my heart
But she doesn’t know what she’s done
Feel her breath in my face
Her body close to me
Can’t look in her eyes
She’s out of my league
Just a fool to believe
I have anything she needs
She’s like the wind
I look in the mirror
And all I see
Is a young old man
With only a dream
Am I just fooling myself
That she’ll stop the pain?
Living without her
I’d go insane!
What's It All About? 