You may have gathered from past ruminations on murder shows and evil cartoon cobras that I was not particularly censored in my viewing as a child, and you’d be right. (That doesn’t mean I ran wild: in the days of network TV, just having a child-sized bedtime prevented you from seeing a lot of things—and when Mom figured out those things included The Twilight Zone, I got a dispensation for that, too.)
In fact, the only thing I remember anyone specifically not wanting me to watch was 1983’s Flashdance, and given that one of my parents would later painstakingly explain the “dickless” joke from Ghostbusters on the way back from the theater, it may have been less about censorship and more about being unwilling to take on the annotation.
Happily, Netflix has offered Flashdance on streaming, so I spent part of New Year’s Eve remedying a years-old gap in my education.
The Premise: Spunky, insecure Alex (Jennifer Beals in the role that made her famous) welds by day, dances at the world’s coolest strip club by night, and dreams of being a professional dancer. Also, she has an adorable dog.
Flashdance is one of those movies people know from the pop-cultural collective unconscious even if they’ve never seen it: the off-the-shoulder sweatshirt, the bucket of water splashing down, the dance moves, the amazing soundtrack. What I hadn’t realized was how pretty the movie would be, though it’s no surprise with Adrian Lyne as director. Even the steel mills have a faint halo, buildings are lovingly filmed, and the scene where Alex panics in the dance academy has her moving through practicing dancers who threaten to engulf her like the clockworks of some gorgeous, terrible machine. Even the strip-club scenes (a club where none of the dancers ever completely denudes, and where elaborate costumes and themed dance routines are allowed to flourish) resemble early music videos.
None of that completely disguises the fact that Flashdance is a basic triumph-of-the-underdog movie with a bit of bildungsroman and fairy tale thrown in, but it does help the movie rise above that. To my surprise, this isn’t leaving my streaming list anytime soon.
The Verdict: An emphatic yes. I wish I’d made an effort to see this a lot sooner.
Might go well with: Rocky, Amélie, but probably not lobster.
Next time: How do you solve a problem like Maria Connor MacLeod?
