Publishers Weekly
04/01/2024
Pop This! podcaster Warner (Rise Up and Sing!) presents an animated ode to the 1987 film Dirty Dancing. Using her personal connection with the movie as a springboard to explore its themes and appeal, Warner recounts how watching Dirty Dancing on VHS the year of its release, when she was nine, spurred her sexual awakening and “helped shape my burgeoning feminism.” It’s the film’s feminist sensibility that Warner celebrates the most, lauding the movie’s refusal “to moralize sex as bad” in its depiction of protagonist Baby Houseman’s lust for her dance partner Johnny Castle. According to Warner, the subplot revolving around Baby’s friend Penny’s need for an abortion is similarly forward-thinking, portraying the procedure as “necessary, life-saving healthcare.” Elsewhere, Warner details how Eleanor Bergstein drew on her memories of learning to mambo on vacation in the Catskills as a teenager while writing the screenplay, and offers a song-by-song breakdown of the soundtrack (she calls “Be My Baby” by the Ronettes “flawless” and finds Tom Johnston’s “Where Are You Tonight?” “unexceptional and inoffensive”). Though Warner faults Dirty Dancing for lacking Black and Hispanic characters while heavily featuring Black and Latin music and dance, her tone is mostly laudatory, electrified by the enthusiasm and admiration of a true fan. It’s a fun commentary on an enduring pop culture touchstone. (Apr.)
From the Publisher
It’s a fun commentary on an enduring pop culture touchstone.” — Publishers Weekly
“Film studies and Dirty Dancing fans will find this monograph useful.” — Library Journal
“Many people consider Dirty Dancing an absolute masterpiece, and The Time of My Life’s revisit is the deeper dive into Ardolino’s film that we need. Andrea Warner is a down-to-earth, funny, and competent feminist arbiter of culture. What she has to say about Baby in Dirty Dancing is equally apt as a description of her own critical capacity to nail it in the here and now.” — PopMatters
“When Dirty Dancing showed up on cable, I watched it only half-heartedly, but Andrea Warner’s The Time of My Life brilliantly explains how wrong I was. With memoir, music criticism, reception theory, and feminist politics, she foregrounds how vital a movie this was and especially (but not only) how its depiction of abortion and bodily autonomy has today become even more radical.” — Steacy Easton, critic and author of Why Tammy Wynette Matters and Daddy Lessons
“Andrea Warner is a gift to pop culture commentary, and The Time of My Life is even more proof. Through her rich and thoughtful analysis, Warner reminds us that Dirty Dancing is more than a love story, it’s an absolute triumph, just like this book.” — Anne T. Donahue, author of Nobody Cares
“I had the time of my life reading Andrea’s smart, funny, and insightful take on Dirty Dancing. Meticulously researched, this book expertly explains how Dirty Dancing is more than just a dance film or a love story. Like Baby, this book should never be put in a corner.” — Lisa Whittington-Hill, author of Girls, Interrupted
“What Andrea Warner has achieved here is masterful: taking an iconic cultural touchstone and inviting readers into a timeless conversation on how it marked not only her own life, but also our collective hearts. The Time of My Life is heartbreaking and sweet, thoughtful and radical.” — Niko Stratis, culture writer
Library Journal
03/29/2024
Music journalist Warner (Buffy Sainte-Marie: The Authorized Biography) adds her entry to ECW's "Pop Classics" series, which critically assesses why pop culture phenomena (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Twin Peaks, and more) matter. She passionately extols the legacy of the 1987 movie Dirty Dancing, starring Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze, and examines the way it explored themes of feminism, activism, and reproductive rights. Inspired by the adolescence of screenwriter Eleanor Bergstein and set in 1963, Dirty Dancing tells the coming-of-age story of idealistic, middle-class teenager Frances "Baby" Houseman, who falls in love with one of the Catskill resort's dance instructors, Johnny Castle. When Johnny's dance partner, Penny, needs an illegal abortion, Baby defies her physician father's expectations by asking him for money to pay for it and for medical assistance for Penny after the procedure is botched. Warner says Baby was the hero she needed, and she describes how the movie shaped her own self-identity, her desire to change the world, and her feminism, especially urgent after Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. VERDICT Film studies and Dirty Dancing fans will find this monograph useful.—Denise Miller
