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The DVD Wrapup: Footloose, 54, Vanya on 42nd Street… More

18.05.12

When the first “ Footloose ” was released, in the middle of the enlightened 1980s, people outside the Bible Belt were shocked to learn that towns like Bomont, Utah, actually existed. How dare a town ban dancing and loud rock music? The next thing you know, integrated schools in the South would be allowed to accede to parents’ demands and outlaw integrated proms and homecoming dances. In fact, as we would learn in Paul Saltzman’s documentary, “Prom Night in Mississippi,” just such an outrage was common practice throughout the South, ever since the courts mandated the integration of public schools. Indeed, things hadn’t really advanced much in this regard since the period and place chronicled in John Waters’ original “Hairspray” – 1962 Baltimore – a comedy that assayed the confluence of dancing and intolerance. I’m not sure how the current candidates for the presidency stand on the subject of limiting such creative expression, as dictated by the Bill of Rights, but surely one or two of them, at least, could find a way to link dancing to premarital sex and abortion, if pressured by their benefactors on the religious right and other social extremists. I can’t imagine that the producers of the new “Footloose” had such questions on their minds when they decided to move the updated edition from Utah, the home base of Mitt Romney’s church, to the heart of Newt Gingrich’s Georgia. If they expect us to take the issues presented in both iterations of the movie seriously, however, the question might eventually have to be asked. After all, it’s become sport in some districts to cancel proms in the face of being forced to allow gay, lesbian and transsexual couplings.

Source: Movie City News