Footloose (1984) – Feminist
More often than not for Review Roulette I review films that I had never seen prior so that I may expand my own knowledge of twentieth century films, watch the film fresh from the perspective chosen by the wheel, and challenge myself to sit with a film for a day or two before writing my thoughts. I think expanding our horizons is a good thing, just generally but also and especially with subjects we may feel well-versed in already, and I love this project I have made for myself that allows me to indulge in thoughts and films I may never have been prompted to otherwise, great cinema I was missing out on before without even knowing it.
That is not the case this week.
I had seen Herbert Ross’s Footloose (1984) before when I was a kid and, I’m going to say, not very cognizant because the list of things I did not register about this weird ass movie is longer than the list of songs written specifically for it (a very startling list in itself). If I am offending anyone whose favourite film might be Footloose or, more likely, someone who has a faint nostalgic love for the film and only a vague recollection of what happens within it, please turn back now. This review is not for you, don’t let me ruin the gentle fondness you have for a cute little film about a rebel with a cause saving the preacher’s oppressed daughter through the power of dance. We’ve all been Mandela Effected if you feel that way, as I did, about Footloose, for Footloose is not a sweet, low-stakes film about a little dancing and a lotta teenage romance. Footloose is a chaotic maelstrom of haphazard editing and buzzwords about the significance of grief while simultaneously denying anyone the chance to grieve at any point.
Footloose follows Ren’s (Kevin Bacon) refusal to conform to the extreme social conservatism of the small town Bomont, Utah, having moved there from Chicago. Bomont’s preacher, Shaw Moore (John Lithgow), and his wife Vi (Dianne Wiest) lost their eldest child in a drunk driving accident after a school dance, a loss felt not only by their daughter Ariel (Lori Singer), but the whole town as well, as Shaw makes it his mission to eradicate the conditions of his son’s death from reproducing. Alcohol, drugs, modern music, and dancing are all made kind of vaguely illegal – it’s like a local ordinance or something that dancing is illegal. To fight his righteous fight, Ren, who really is just a normal kid, organises a dance and fights the town council to be able to hold it.
The Review Roulette wheel landed on Feminist for our approach this week, and I think I have a rather sad point to make. Forgive me but Ariel is actually completely abandoned by her parents, and I don’t think there is a particularly “strong female character” in this film because of that. (Ren’s mom seems to be a pretty good mom, but she did inexplicably bring her son to this town to live with her cousin who hates him for being a sinner and doesn’t really do much to protect him from that guy’s angry rhetoric.)
Let’s focus on Ariel first. Ariel has an actual death wish and in a better constructed film, maybe we’d get a conversation about the gravity of her unprocessed grief for her brother. She seems to have survivor’s guilt or something of the like as she does some pretty ludicrous stunts that don’t seem to be for attention. She steps in front of an oncoming train bracing for impact and straddles the windows of two cars as a lorry barrels towards them but also completely hides this side of her life from her oppressive father. She even apologises, fear and guilt smeared on her face when he sees her dancing to music. She is lost and needs help, but none of her reckless actions seem to be cries for help from her father. Ariel is chomping at the bit to get away from him and the town and the Christofascist conservatism he is feeding them that spirals out of his control into a literal book burning. (This film is both insane and also painfully prescient (which feels real, real bad, guys)). Ariel does hold her own in a domestic violence situation with her ex-boyfriend and does do whatever she exactly wants in any given moment with the desire to be an independent woman, but her pain is clear in every action and word.
Ren suggests that Ariel should allow herself to grieve for her brother. Let’s think about that for a moment. The central conflict in this film is really between Ariel and her father, underscored by Ren at one point when he tells Ariel not to mistake his own crusade for a dance with her struggle against her father. Here is where that dicey editing really shines. It is implied that Ren and Shaw have a conversation in which Shaw comforts Ren after his own father abandoned him sometime in his past, to which Ren assumedly reciprocates the comfort in allowing Shaw space to grieve for his son’s abrupt death. I say it’s implied because all of that important work happens off-screen, if it happens at all. This happens several times in the film where the significant emotional scenes that actually further the plot are sacrificed to make room for a very long sequence of Ren dancing his feelings away in a warehouse or one in which he and Ariel’s soon-to-be ex play chicken with tractors. The emotional labour in this film is done entirely off-screen, save for one scene in which our real candidate for feminine strength makes her case.
Vi, Ariel’s mother and the preacher’s wife, has had enough of her husband’s insistence on extreme social conservatism and gently challenges him a couple times in the film. At Vi’s suggestion, Shaw considers he might be being too hard on their daughter (whom he has already slapped in front of Vi like too long ago in the film for her to be reacting to just that). We can take this gentle stand to be the strong feminine energy of the film as it is an adult voice that assists Ren’s allegedly heartwarming speech reach Shaw. We can possibly even make the case that Vi has had to process the death of her son with absolutely no support from her husband or daughter and is the only one with a sense of stability on the other side.
Ultimately though, I find it a bit heartbreaking that Vi has not had a sense of self or power in her own household to believe that she herself can speak to or help her daughter. We don’t get any scenes of Vi speaking to Ariel or having her own advice on how she grieved or even the suggestion that Vi made an attempt to connect with her daughter after the loss of her brother. For a film pushing back against social conservatism and the slippery slides of banning certain things into the dangerous narrowmindedness of book burning, we get a decided lack of push back on the socially conservative place of Vi as the preacher’s wife.
I think the film suffers a bit in its lack of an independent feminine figure and supports the idea that women, even when asserting themselves, are falling into place behind an at best mediocre man (Ren’s mom behind her cousin; Ariel behind Ren; Vi behind Shaw). I think the soundtrack of nine originals also supports this. I was blown away to learn that Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero” and Deneice Williams’s “Let’s Hear It for the Boy” are both originals written for Footloose. The former is a self-explanatory ballad of a woman waiting for a better man among schlubs to rescue her and the latter is a celebration of the most mediocre man you could possibly imagine (both songs I love, but let’s be real here).
Anyway, I had my mind absolutely shattered by this movie and I was not anticipating it at all. I had seen it before, but I think this was my first time actually watching it. I don’t like being harsh on films so let me end by saying I do think it is incredibly fun and entertaining. The dancing is fun and the music is great and there’s a je ne sais quois 80s element to it that just feels good. If you’ve made it this far and you’re curious about the absolutely unhinged editing and structure of the film, please do give it a watch and let me know what you think!
Because I’m Never Done When I Say I Am
Formalist
This film takes in medias res to an entirely different and far worse universe.