On Being Baby Houseman

Mash-ups, Muppets and trying new approaches

I learned how to be a woman watching Dirty Dancing, on VHS, every Saturday in 8th grade.

(Well, that and the music video for Paula Abdul’s “Cold Hearted Snake.”)

If you haven’t seen Dirty Dancing, it’s an iconic coming-of-age dance movie. An awkward smart girl (Jennifer Grey) goes on a family vacation in 1963, falls for a hot dance instructor (Patrick Swayze), learns to dance and grows up.

And of course I saw myself in Baby Houseman’s story. I was also a book smart, earnest Jewish girl with frizzy hair and a lot of ambition and like A LITTLE BIT of rhythm! And I figured this meant one day I got a magical summer with a Johnny Castle of my own.

This belief really did me dirty.

Particularly when I was 14 and my cousin had motivational dancers at her Bat Mitzvah. You know, the professional dancers who are there to get the party started with the pre-teens? EXACTLY like Johnny Castle and Penny were supposed to do in the movie, up in the Catskills?

I had a 3-hour crush on this one very kind college-age dancer. He was my Patrick Swayze. The love was completely one-sided, but it was as intense as some of my adult relationships.

But. I grew up, got goofy instead of sexy, did comedy improv and children’s theatre. And I resigned myself to being a Muppet, instead of Jennifer Grey.

Until.

So imagine my specific delight when I came across this 1-minute mashup of The Muppet Show and Dirty Dancing.

Suddenly, with a change of music, this sequence goes from earnest emotional climax, to transcendent goofiness. (Transcendent Goofiness would be a good Jamiroquoi album title, as long as we’re deep in the 90s.)

And this video unlocked something deep in me.

It says: you get to be both. I’m Baby Houseman and a Muppet! If you know me in life, you’re probably nodding sagely right now in agreement.

BTW this is one of my favorite genres of viral video— it’s in the same family as the Spandau Ballet Darth Vader romance cut:

…Or the trailer that sells The Shining as a rom-com, which I will not link here because I am anti-horror-movie.

Wait, what does this have to do with storytelling?

Okay. Yes, these videos are silly as hell. But they’re also brilliant little parables about the power of editing and theme for a story. What happened is less important than we think, and how we see it or how we tell it can be the game changer.

Because I actually do this kind of mashing up all the time as a storyteller!

I re-cast familiar experiences with new “soundtracks.” I try to find the silly moments in a sad story, or I find what’s real, and maybe even a little sad, behind a madcap memory. It’s another way to use story craft to reflect better, to go deeper, when I’m figuring out what a story really means to me right now.

So try it yourself.

Take an event that made you furious and try to find even just a moment of funny. Take a light cocktail party story and give it the thoughtful treatment. You might find something totally new, when you “set an old story to new music.”

Last thought: I did try that lift myself, just once in my life, with my friend Felix at a wedding. It didn’t go well and no video evidence exists.

Respectfully and enthusiastically yours,

Micaela