So I caught a chunk of the movie Footloose on TBS the other night, and had a few comments on my reaction to it.
I don’t quite remember how I thought of the movie when I originally saw it (several years ago, I can’t be more precise than that, unforutnately), but I do know how I thought of it once it had been internalized (i.e., just prior to a few days ago). If somebody had asked me to summarize the movie, I would have given them something like this:
Ren, played by Kevin Bacon, is a teenager who moves to a smalltown in the midwest during his senior year in high school. He is a gymnast whose principal form of self-expression is dance, and is more enlightened than the rest of the town, who ignorantly insist on banning dancing because of an accident that happened several years ago when dancing and booze got out of hand and several youngsters, including the preacher’s son, died in a tragic car crash. Ren comes into town and makes the uptight town realize that dancing is not intrinsically bad; on the contrary, it is a healthy, natural, important part of a normal life. In the end, the town elders come to their senses, and somewhat reluctantly, albeit definitely, allow a senior prom. The plot thickens when a romance develops between Ren and the preacher’s daughter, who is also a senior in high school, and abandons her boyfriend for Ren. It is above all, a movie about the excesses of asceticism combined with a statement of the superiority of urban over rural and young over old.
However, now I would consider this a rather simplistic view of the film. Ren (who I now realize to be brilliantly portrayed by Kevin Bacon) is not the messiah of the small town who nearly gets excommunicated for making sense. Instead, he is nothing more than a teenager with at least a decent sense of obedience, but who refuses to compromise on some things. He is no better than anybody else; he merely happens to be right about the central issue. The preacher, on the other hand, is not a closed-minded zealot. He is a grieving father afraid of losing his daughter in both cliché and non-cliché ways, and he does what he does out of error, not malice or generational animosity.
The movie is not about enlightenment or young versus old or urban versus rural. It is a movie about grieving, about letting go, about release. Dance itself is an art form structured upon of release (jumping through the air, releasing your body to musical movement, etc.), as is (at least according to the movie) parenting.
Finally, I want to point out the following bit of dialogue from the movie without commenting on it. During the prom, the preacher and his wife go out to see the spectacle (and perhaps just a little bit to check up on every one, though they keep their distance from the physical dance). The town cop rides up and talks to the preacher (played by John Lithgow, I’ve been remiss in pointing out). (NB: I’m paraphrasing)
Cop: You did a good thing, reverend. (Referring to his backing of the school dance).
Reverend: I’m still not sure it was the right thing, (name).
Cop: Comes close.
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