Flashdance

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Flashdance, 1983
Production Company: Polygram
Distribution: Paramount Pictures Corporation
Director: Adrian Lyne
Executive Producers: Peter Guber & Jon Peters
Producers: Don Simpson & Jerry Bruckheimer
Screenplay: Tom Hedley & Joe Eszterhas (from
novel by Tom Hedley)
Cinematography: Don Peterman
Editors: Bud Smith & Walt Mulconery
Music: Giorgio Moroder
Music Editor: Jim Henrikson
Choreography: Jeffrey Hornaday
Running Time: 98 mins.
Classification: R
Tagline: What a feeling!

Cast: Jennifer Beals (Alex Owens), Michael Nouri (Nick Hurley), Lilia Skala (Hanna Long),
Sunny Johnson (Jeanie Szabo), Kyle T. Heffner (Richie), Lee Ving (Johnny C.), Ron
Karabatsos (Jake Mawby), Belinda Bauer (Katie Hurley), Malcolm Danare (Cecil), Phil Bruns
(Frank Szabo), Nicole Mercurio (Rosemary Szabo), Lucy Lee Flippin (Secretary), Don
Brockett (Pete), Cynthia Rhodes (Tina Tech, The Flashdancer), Durga McBroom (Heels, the
Flashdancer), Stacey Pickren (Margo, The Flashdancer), Liz Sagal (Sunny, The
Flashdancer), Norman Scott (Normski, The Rocksteady Crew), Marc Lemberger (Mr. Freeze,
The Rocksteady Crew), Wayne Frost (Frosty Freeze, The Rocksteady Crew), Kenneth
Gabbert (Prince Ken Swift, The Rocksteady Crew), Richard Colon (Crazy Legs, The
Rocksteady Crew).
Plot Synopsis: Alex Owens, a female welder in a large Pittsburgh factory, has had
informal training in dance from Hanna Long, a former classical dancer, who encourages her
to try to gain a place in the city's ballet academy. In her spare time, Alex works as a
showgirl in Mawby's, a down-market club, performing erotic disco numbers alongside other,
less ambitious dancers. She is attracted to Nick, her foreman, who dates her and nurtures
her desire to become a 'serious' dancer. Their affair progresses happily, until one night,
while attending the ballet with Hanna, Alex sees Nick drive off with another woman. She
throws a brick through his window, and the next day Nick explains that the woman was his
ex-wife. When friend Jeanie unsuccessfully auditions for the all-American ice show, and
friend Richie quits for a comedy career in Los Angeles, Alex decides to take her chance with
an audition for the ballet academy. Reconciled, Nick pulls strings to ensure that Alex is
auditioned, despite her lack of formal training. Resentful of his involvement, and
determined to 'make it' without his patronage, the couple quarrel furiously and Alex ends
the relationship. Seeking comfort and advice, Alex goes to visit Hanna, only to discover
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the relationship. Seeking comfort and advice, Alex goes to visit Hanna, only to discover
that she has died suddenly. Alex remembers Hanna's encouragement (and mindful of
Jeanie's fate as nude dancer in the Zanzibar club?), decides to attend the audition which
Nick has arranged, performs brilliantly, and wins a place in the school. Nick awaits with
roses, and she falls into his arms.
Notes: Flashdance illustrates a number of trends in the Hollywood cinema of the early
1980s. It marks for example a) the newly conspicuous integration of the rock music and
film industries which resulted from corporate take-overs during the 1970s (Phil Ramone
acts as music advisor); b) partly deriving from this, the tracing of a new audio-visual
aesthetic in which an over-driven music track vies with the image stream for structural
dominance; c) the re-generation of the musical genre after a period of relative decline in
the 1970s; d) the impact of music-video/advertising codes upon spatial and temporal
construction; e) the (perhaps contradictory) impulse towards re-establishing a classical
narrative paradigm; f) the self-conscious negotiation with 'blue collar' America
characteristic of Reaganism, and g) gestures towards America's 'ethnic' communities. In
more general terms the film opens out the 'personal' dimensions of the Reaganite ethos,
and explores the ways in which the New Right assigned a central importance to personal
moral standards, and the relationship of such regulatory tendencies to sexual and class
politics in the early part of the decade.
As Ryan and Kellner note (1990, p.109) Flashdance belongs to a group of Hollywood films
which engage class, and in so far as they evidence a desire for a transcendence of
working-class life 'potentially threaten the class system.' Their analysis implies an almost
liberal status for the movie, on the basis of its centring of a female protagonist. But the
film's most conspicuous feature is its circumscription of female possibility, and its
remarkable investment in traditional patterns of patriarchal relations. Individual triumph is
imbued with a sense of concession, and the film climaxes with an outright celebration of
self-realisation through self-suppression. As in so many other movies of the period, what's
striking about this trope is its absolute explicitness, the relentlessness of the plotting and
the seductive work of the image in producing consent to a preferred reading, to which the
film offers little serious resistance. Put starkly, the film begins with potentially progressive
images of women in a traditionally male-dominated work place (a steel mill) of a kind
which few more liberal films of the 1970s could muster, only to negotiate its heroine's
translation into an utterly traditional feminine space of aesthetic contemplation (the ballet).
The positive quality of this trajectory is apparently self-evident; from a world of
compromise, frustrated ambition and lack, Alex is re-located in a world of selfdetermination, self-fulfilment and abundance. That such a translation is achieved through
the agency of her male employer, despite early insistence on self-determination (Veze,
1983, p.74 talks of Alex as a modern day Isadora Duncan), introduces levels of irony which
the film is reluctant to examine in detail (its final freeze-frame image of Nick handing Alex
a bunch of red roses summarises the power-relations involved). Rather than opening out
these contradictions, or giving its protagonists space to reflect upon their implications, the
film works to orchestrate a narration which substitutes pace for spatial coherence and
sensation for meaning (the movie's advertising slogan was 'what a feeling!').
Central to the process of Flashdance's persuasion is the film's highly-developed sense of
visual style. Almost every image involves significant aesthetic investment, whilst the editing
scheme works to generate impact, often defining/emphasising the cut. Immediate reference
is less to particular filmic traditions (Veze, 1983, p.75 cites Bertolucci's The Conformist as
an influence) than to fashion and glamour photography (long lenses, low light levels,
silouhette, reduced use of fill-lighting, use of directional soft-lighting) and above all to the
music video (routines staged 'in the round', photogenic industrial settings, mobile camera
etc.). The film earned its cinematographer an Academy Award nomination as Best
Cinematographer, and its style was widely regarded within the industry as marking a shift
towards more personalised visuals in the industry. Ironically enough, Lyne describes his
own preferences (Fisher,1984, p.62) for as 'natural' a look as possible (!) something which
the film itself hardly seems to bear out. In this context, the significance of the visual style
lies perhaps in its sheer richness of detail and its reverence for surface texture and
carefully staged reflections.
Music and dance play key roles in securing the ideological consent of the audience, and are
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Music and dance play key roles in securing the ideological consent of the audience, and are
again suggestive of the strongly affective dimension of much Reaganite entertainment. The
early 80s saw a significant renewal of the musical genre, and many non-musical films also
placed significant expressive weight on 'sampled' scores. In common with a number of
similar movies of the period Flashdance introduces a collection of contemporary dance/rock
hits whose lyrics function narrationally, commenting upon events in the image stream.
Whilst such a strategy may encourage ironic readings elsewhere, in Flashdance the function
of such discursive 'overlaying' is usually to seal the meanings ascribed to events by the
narration, and evidenced by the visual. Such a strategy exemplifies beautifully Andrew
Britton's (1986, p.4) emphasis on the 'solipsistic' qualification of narrative characteristic of
Reaganite cinema at its most confident. Appropriately enough, such lyrical commentary is
usually weakly-motivated (little of the music is diegetic), and its consequent effect is very
much to reduce critical distance, secure our emotional induction into the fiction, and
indicate sensations whose 'truth' is recognisable/comprehensible despite/against
logic/reason. In a similar way, dance dramatises the transitions involved in Alex's progress
from welder to ballerina, and choreography becomes suggestive of the film's deep
ideological structure.
Initially Alex's dancing at Mawby's occupies a space between the erotic excesses of the
Zanzibar (pictured as purgatorial scene of heat, flesh and violence) and the sanitised
graces of the classical ballet (the performance she attends with Hanna depicts the form as
little more than a display of linked tableaux), with its choreography offering only a slightly
formalised version of the aerobics exercises performed in private (she confides in Nick,
'sometimes I just can't wait to get out there, so that I can disappear'). The avowed
'privateness' of Alex's dancing (stressed in promotional material: 'Something Happens
When She Hears The Music... It's Her Freedom... It's Her Fire... It's Her Life!!!') helps
sanction its construction as spectacle for an insistently voyeuristic camera, which at the
same time works hard to underline the physical stresses involved (Auty, 1983, p.188, talks
of 'aspiration through perspiration'), and to resist the establishment of clear sightlines/points of identification with and between spectators/dancers. Alex's 'popular' dancing
thus represents a compromise between longer- and shorter-term goals, and between ideals
and realities. But the conflicting needs it expresses are not opened out (why does Alex
need an audience? what are the lacks that only applause can satisfy? why does Alex ask
Hanna specifically how it feels to receive a bouquet at the end of a ballet performance?).
As such Alex's dancing triggers doubts about the nature of the (highly circumscribed)
empowerment it suggests (her confessions link her sexuality with her dancing). Even such
abstract compromise is something of which Alex is clearly uncertain, and it takes little
effort on her part to relinquish self-help principles, equate enterprise with opportunism and
'have it all', in the arms of her suburban lover.
Precisely how the film allows its audience to believe that Alex can 'have it all' is
fascinating. The audition scene at the ballet academy provides the ultimate example of the
elisions involved; after a nervous false-start before the selectors, she embarks upon a
classically-informed interpretation of the film's title track. The number's melodic
introduction synchronises readily with a catalogue-like assembly of balletic set-pieces; then
a sudden change in rhythm triggers a string of moves culled from street-dance, rap,
musical theatre and the night-club scene. As the pace of the performance increases, the
interviewing panel is shocked, surprised and to the conspicuous delight of one female
member, excited and exhilarated. Alex's dance becomes more spontaneous, its pleasure
irresistibly infectious, and its meanings self-evidently authentic. In a moment of feverish
utopianism, the routine climaxes in an aerial 'dive' which (aided by slow-motion and the
repetition of its arc from varying camera set-ups) seems to defy gravity itself. The
implications are clear. By being 'herself' and dancing 'her way' Alex demonstrates her
ability/potential; by fusing 'improvisation' with the traditions of classical dance she breathes
new life into a conservative tradition, closing a space between the popular and the elite; by
allowing her admission to the academy, an organ of the establishment, the academy in
turn demonstrates its openness to innovation and democracy of spirit. Accommodation
between styles, generations and classes is achieved through the authenticity of 'feeling'
itself.
The maintenance of coherence through exhilaration is however an exhausting process (as
Alex's work-outs demonstrate), and not surprisingly, the 'high' of the audition is quickly
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Alex's work-outs demonstrate), and not surprisingly, the 'high' of the audition is quickly
relieved of a potentially compromising lapse into bathos: an ellipse-producing cut between
the crescendo of the dance and reconciliation with Nick, overlain with what had begun as
the diegetic accompaniment to Alex's dance seals tight the ideological knot; Alex has
succumbed, (but) Nick has produced roses, Alex has danced on her terms, (but) thanks to
Nick, the academy has accepted Alex (but) she has lent it the energy of 'street life'. The
movie ends with a freeze-frame and a resumption of the film's title theme which effectively
secures a connection between the dance and her life with Nick, holding out the promise of
maintaining the 'high' into the more uncertain space of a relationship already compromised
by differential class- and gender-power. Flashdance then allows a woman to realise a
dream of truly fairy-tale dimensions, and relishes its 'entertaining' production of that
possibility. As Fisher notes 'while Flashdance is an 80s story; it has a lot of 'old Hollywood'
in it!' (Fisher, p.62)
References
Martyn Auty, 'Review', Monthly Film Bulletin, vol. 50, no. 594 (July 1983) p. 188.
Andrew Britton, 'Blissing out: the politics of Reaganite entertainment', Movie, no. 31/32
(Summer 1986) pp. 1-42.
Bob Fisher, 'Don Peterman and Flashdance', American Cinematographer, vol. 65, no. 4
(April 1984) pp. 59-60,62,64.
Robert Veze, 'Photography for Flashdance', American Cinematographer, vol 64, no. 5 (May
1983) pp. 72-76,109-113.
Ian Craven, University of Glasgow, 1993

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