I grew up in a small, conservative town in Oklahoma. My family attended a conservative, evangelical-ish church. My parents were conservative and religious, though I’ve since come to realize they weren’t quite as conservative as many folks in their social circles were at the time. I was allowed to listen to rock and roll music, and we watched all kinds of movies, sometimes even Rated-R movies.
My memory is fuzzy but I believe they did not allow my brother, who is four years older than me, to go to school dances. Dancing leads to sexy thoughts which leads to actual sex, or so the thought went. By the time I got old enough they had loosened up on that idea, but I actually had no desire to go to dances. I was way too shy to ask a girl to one, and even if I did, I didn’t know how to dance.
Footloose is a movie about a teenaged boy named Ren (Kevin Bacon) who moves from the big city of Chicago to a small, mountainside, Midwestern town. It is more or less run by the local Preacher (John Lithgow) who instigated a town ban on dancing of any kind. Now, in this scenario dancing doesn’t lead so much to sexing (though certainly, that is still on the reverend’s mind) but to drinking and that leads to death. Or at least it lead to his son’s death when he did some drinking and driving.
So Ren comes to town, and he’s the new kid so he gets picked on by the bullies, one of whom challenges him to a game of chicken on tractors. There’s a little trouble at school, too, which turns Ren into a troublemaker in the eyes of the preacher. But he also makes a friend with Willard (Chris Penn) and the preacher’s daughter Ariel (Lori Singer).
Did I mention the town has banned rock and roll, too? Like all bans of this sort, they don’t do any good and the teens listen to rock and roll, drink beer, smoke cigarettes, and have a little sex. But what they don’t do is dance. At least not in an organized fashion. Queue Ren and his righteous fight to have a school dance.
Though it was a big hit when it came out in 1984 I only just saw it this weekend. I did have the soundtrack though, and it’s killer. I don’t think my parents outright banned me from watching it, but I do remember hearing discussions about how us kids shouldn’t watch it because it promoted dancing and disrespecting authority. Someone also complained that the theme song by Kenny Loggins promoted skipping church to go dancing and having fun.
Had I been interested in seeing the film, I no doubt would have found a way, but it just didn’t look that good to me. Watching it now I can firmly say it is a very dumb film, but also ridiculously fun.
They don’t hammer too hard on the morality of the film, and Lithgow plays the preacher with some nuance and, eventually, some heart. Mostly it is a film that wants to be a musical and loves to do dance montages.
Two of my favorites include Ren getting frustrated by the preacher and running off to some warehouse where he proceeds to drink, smoke and do an amazing dance all by himself. Later, when he learns Willard can’t dance he teaches him. And we are treated to this lovely montage of those two teenage boys dancing together (one might think this film is very gay – one might not be wrong).
I don’t think it is too much of a spoiler to say that the teens get their dance. What I love about the final dance scene is that it isn’t some carousing, dirty dancing affair. No, the teens do a little line-type dance and then mostly just dance by themselves. It is very chaste, just some kids having fun.
And that’s the film. Really pretty dumb, but tons of fun to watch.
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