With Joe Biden transcending into the “working man done good,” attention has been turned once again to the blue collar nature of Pennsylvania. A state that has always been associated with its steel mills, Pittsburgh–where Flashdance takes place–is to this day nicknamed The Steel City regardless of the absence of any mills still existing within its city limits. In 1983, however, despite the steel crisis that began in the 70s, the industry remained prevalent enough to warrant the almost believability of Jennifer Beals playing the part of a welder named Alex Owens.
As her first credited appearance in a film (with a small cameo in 1980’s The Bodyguard before that), landing this lead was a major coup for Beals, who had always felt on the outside looking in because of her biracial appearance–her mother was Irish and her father was black (long before Mariah Carey stepped onto the scene). But it was perhaps this “outsider,” “poor working girl” quality that caught the eye of casting. Playing an eighteen-year-old, Beals’ age at the time–nineteen–was also helpful to her candidacy as an authentic character… even if no one batted an eyelash at how gross the obvious age difference between her and her love interest/boss, Nick Hurley (Michael Nouri), was. After all, he’s “mature” enough to have an ex-wife already–an uppity blonde named Katie (Belinda Bauer).
For Alex, the ideas of marriage and stability seem like concepts as foreign to her as actually achieving her dream of being accepted to the Pittsburgh Conservatory of Dance and Repertory. And even though she’s a welder by day and a “flash dancer” by night at a club called Mawby’s that puts on a cabaret act most evenings, she hasn’t dared to dream beyond this level. After all, one has to admit that her self-sufficiency at such a young age–living in a huge loft of her own with a pitbull named Grunt–is already so much to be proud of. That is, until she watches those around her lose sight of their own dreams. For just because it’s Pittsburgh doesn’t mean people aren’t aspirational. In fact, it’s precisely because of the town’s dreariness that everyone is seeking a way out, or their own scheme for success. Like Alex’s friends at the club, Jeanie (Sunny Johnson) and Richie (Kyle T. Heffner), each chasing their own ambitions as well. In Jeanie’s case, her goal is to become a professional figure skater as she practices diligently when she’s not waiting tables at Mawby’s. As for Richie, he plans to one day up and leave for L.A. to pursue standup comedy–hoping to make his current status as a line cook a thing of the past.
Another “aspirational” type of the neighborhood is Johnny C. (Lee Ving), though his pursuits are much more hyper-local as he opens a strip club near Mawby’s called Zanzibar. Exotic indeed–at least around these parts. With Alex keeping her head to the ground at both jobs in order to save up enough to pay for tuition at the repertory, the thing she can’t seem to acknowledge is that the real reason she’s keeping herself so busy is to avoid ever having to actually audition. Her mentor and grandmotherish figure, Hanna Long (Lilia Skala)–in the absence of a “real” family–is the one who keeps driving her to put her unsharpened talents to the test.
In the interim, there are plenty of opportunities for Alex to flash her ass for the cash, literally (as immortalized by the famous water cascading scene at the beginning of the movie). Accordingly, director Adrian Lyne’s association with the “erotic” would be established with Flashdance, though, via the films that followed, Jennifer Beals taking her bra off with her shirt still on would be looked upon as child’s play compared to the likes of 9 ½ Weeks and Lolita. One of the writers of the script (co-written with Tom Hedley), Joe Eszterhas, would also go on to create more erotic fare, including Basic Instinct and Showgirls.
The fortuitous timing of the film (in terms of its message against a white privilege backdrop) was also marked by the fact that it was the first producer collaboration of Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson (before the drugs did him in). As major power players of blockbusters throughout the 80s and 90s, their chauvinistic lens is all over the movie. To that end, the lore behind casting the three frontrunners for the role, Beals, Demi Moore and the little known in the present Leslie Wing, rings true. For apparently Michael Eisner simply polled a legion of the most “laddish” on the lot by inquiring, “I want to know which of these three young women you’d most want to fuck.” The fact that Beals was chosen speaks volumes about the white male fetish for only getting his hands “dirty” if it’s through an “ethnic woman.” Joe Biden and Kamala Harris naturally being the latest example of such. And Beals indeed served her purpose as portraying someone “working class.” Not just because the setting was Pittsburgh, but because she was a non-Caucasian woman neglected by her family in her early years.
The notion that Flashdance was released during a time when the concept of the American dream was being re-peddled anew is not without its dichotomy. For the Reagan years were a particularly discriminatory period for women of color–lest we forget Reagan’s rampant use of the term “welfare queen,” in addition to calling the welfare system in America “a creator and reinforcer of dependency.” At the same time, pop culture seemed to want assure the non-white, non-upper classes of the U.S. that not all hope was lost just because the government and society at large had once again openly shunned them. Jennifer Beals in Flashdance was a beacon of this “promise” that the “American dream” truly could be for all (the unspoken asterisk of that “all” being people with at least some “white heritage” in their blood). Not just yuppies already born into a trust fund.
Hence the Irene Cara theme song, “Flashdance… What a Feeling,” featuring the lyric, “Take your passion and make it happen”–this would become the tagline as well. In many regards, the sentiment is not unlike Ivanka Trump suggesting people “Find Something New.” For yes, we can come up with all the “catchy” phrases in the world but it won’t change that a person can’t “make” anything happen without at least some of the resources afforded to those already ahead in the rigged game called life. Alex’s privileged boyfriend is also there to remind her the only thing standing in her way is herself–not, oh say, the fact that she was born into shit circumstances.
So it is that he warns her, “When you give up your dream, you die.” Well, Alex takes the white man’s wisdom to heart and decides to go to the audition he secured for her despite not wanting to… the initial aversion being that she didn’t get the opportunity on her own merit. In this regard, Flashdance only reiterates what has already long been known and accepted: without a connected person of influence, you’re probably going nowhere but the steel mill. And maybe the “cabaret,” if you can stay fit enough. Sure, every now and again, the system likes to flog and make examples of people such as Lori Loughlin, or even Donald Trump, but in the end, the song remains the same. And it’s not “Flashdance… What a Feeling.”
