Movie: Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1985)
Written by Hillary Augustine Vandenbos (crafted with Martha Hopler)

I (Hillary) have watched this movie about 10 times over the last 10 years. I love to watch movies about dancing, especially movies that play off an MTV-theme where video, dance, music, and rhythm are combined for entertaining midday viewing (perfect timing for after school vegging out). Dancing does something to my soul—unfolding areas of me that conversation rarely taps.

It was fun for us (Martha and Hillary) to watch this movie together. Martha quickly and keenly pointed out that this movie represents a pre-American Idol era. Many years before the saucy Simon, charming Paula, and jovial Randy graced the stage of modern-day Hollywood, this movie captures competition, judging, and hope that “greatness” can come to teenage girls. Janey, played by Sarah Jessica Parker and Lynne, played by Helen Hunt, desperately wish to “break out” of their strict Catholic School tradition to dance in Chicago on Dance TV. The movie’s lightness and fun is helped by trickles of Cyndi Lauper’s 1983 song, “Girl’s Just Want to Have Fun” (written & originally recorded by Robert Hazard in 1979).

As we reflected on this movie, it became evident, yet again, that the mother’s voice (like many of the 80’s type-movies) is silent and her physical presence is missing in action. There is a mothering void which reverberated inside of our souls in the form of a question: Where is the mother?

Janey attempts to converse with her parents in the beginning of the movie that ends with her mother leaving the room. The mother’s exit leaves Janey nervously fidgeting as she explains her desire to dance to her father. It is a painful interaction. The father sternly responds, “Negative,” further explaining in military language the dangers of Chicago. He quickly speaks of the need for reconnaissance work to scope out the “enemy territory” of the big city.

The defensive posture of the father is too much for Janey’s dancing request. As the movie unfolds, we are given more insight when Janey’s mother reveals that dancing was part of their past. Hmmm… Mom, we needed your voice in this father-daughter interaction. We needed you to wonder aloud about your daughter’s dancing spirit that might have resurrected something in the family and in your marriage. Like a good wine and cheese combination, we needed the paring of the mother-father voice, not the dominant, isolation of Sergeant Father. But nevertheless we are left with a stern, scared father and an absent, scared mother.

A further look at some of the main characters reveals a gaping “mother” hole which begs many questions and delivers few answers. Jeff Malene, Janey’s dance partner, played by Lee Montgomery, comes from a family where no mom is present and all we know is that she was “there” at one point. “There” meaning, Jeff’s younger sister, Maggie, mentions “missing mom” and that’s all we get, folks. Yep, mom is gone and we, the audience, get nothing more than a morsel of hope that details of the story will follow, but to no avail. Mom’s story is nonexistent and no further explanation is given.

Natalie, played by Holly Gagnier, is a rich-snob in the movie. She sabotages, manipulates, and tugs at our injustice nerves. She seeks to win the Dance TV competition with money, power, and status. Of course, we know nothing about her mother. In her life, we don’t even get a crumb of detail. Neither she nor her father (J.P. Sands) mentions anything about a mother.

So, why is this movie worth seeing?

Because, teenage girls are resilient and exploratory and somehow they attempt to pick up where pieces of their family’s story is left off or broken. For instance, did Janey know her parents used to dance? The energy, creativity and liveliness of Janey and Lynne are contagious and captivating. Their journey to Dance TV is made together.

In a poignant scene, Janey’s father chops off the tree limbs outside Janey’s bedroom window. You see, Janey, has been sneaking out at night to rehearse for Dance TV and her physical avenue for escape are the tree limbs which so conveniently bridges her uncontrollable, exploring soul to the outside world of dance. This girl wants to dance AND she will. However, what the father does not realize is that a girl’s desire to get out is from within. The ability for a girl to be free is from within.

Janey wants more than the prison of her home. With out the tree limbs, she still has her friend Lynne and she has her bedroom window—both represent access to the outside world. With her persistence and Lynne’s ingenuity to drop a rope from the top of the house, the girls make one last effort to secure their spot on Dance TV.

The ending is predictable. Although Janey’s parents are excited when accomplishment is granted (you can guess what happens), the family’s celebration is separate and trivial because they all missed the journey. They did not engage in Janey’s progression.

Somewhere along the way, the parents stopped dancing. The mom stopped speaking and the “family tin man” locked up, needing a few squirts of oil and a heart transplant. Janey unconsciously attempted to grease the locked up joints of the family by pursuing her dream, but she did it in secret because too much family stuff needed to be dealt with to see a daughter dance.

• What would it have looked for the mother to have engaged with Janey by driving her to dance rehearsals? (i.e., eliminating the need for what could be seen as bad behavior)
• If winning by any means becomes the goal, how does it impede or enhance relationship?
• How do girls/women have fun? (i.e., How do we get seen? How do we get heard?)