I almost didn't write this post because, though I loved Patrick Swayze, I couldn't, at first, define exactly what was loveable about him, aside from his impossible and drool-worthy shoulder to hip ratio. But in thinking about it, I came to a slightly more nuanced understanding that makes me dare to define something I once thought was undefinable. What was completely and utterly attractive about Patrick Swayze was the contrast between his look and his essence. Though he played many roles, the ones he will be most remembered for were Johnny Castle in Dirty Dancing and Sam Wheat in Ghost. In both of these, he was a romantic hero who, though he has plenty of opportunity to do otherwise, takes a higher path and is victorious in doing so. He had a certain masculine bravado and a bad boy look to him. His perfectly chiseled male physique, the downward slant of the outer corners of his eyes, his strong chin, and his roughly hewn nose all gave the impression of a contained masculine strength that he used when appropriate but belied the purity and essence of his flaming--and surprisingly gentle--heart.
His sensitivity of spirit was portrayed through performance in his dance ability which, while not as virtuostic as an Astaire or as otherworldy as a Michael Jackson, was exquisite in its own way, expressive but still masculine, tender but still strong. And it was portrayed in Patrick Swayze himself in various virtually unmarked ways from his longtime devotion and dedication to his wife to his simple and innocent defense of his friend Mel Gibson during Gibson's seemingly indefensible, anti-semtic, manic breakdown a few years back. This was the defining characteristic of his Johnny Castle, who was a raw male sexual energy lured into the most base uses of that life-force. But it ultimately revealed its nature in its desire to be loyal to and hooked to the higher virtue of an innocent idealist like Baby. In Sam Wheat, the famous "ditto" in place of "I love you" was the pentultimate male stoicism, but it is revealed to be full of passion and virtue in his disembodied state. Any illusion that "ditto" was a cop-out was fully destroyed by the end of his journey.
In Johnny Castle, you see the pent up rage against injustice and prejudice, yet he contains it (barely) and is eventually vindicated in peforming his final dance and winning the love of Baby and the respect of her father. In Ghost, Sam Wheat takes that masculine stoicism and pent up anger (toward Carl the predatory theif who betrayed his friendship) and, unable to realize it through violence against him because he is disembodied, turns that dammed up energy into a flaming heat that manifests in loving Molly, and, in so doing, brings justice far more satisfactorily than if he's been allowed to thrash Carl limb from limb in the first place. Certainly, these are themes developed first by writers, but it was Swayze whose masculine energy mixed paradoxically with a pure and innocent lover's heart, that made these characters so memorable. That vulnerability contained within such a sharply male and impentrable physique is portrayed poignantly in his exit line in Ghost:
It's amazing Molly, the love inside, you take it with you. See ya."
He seems about five years old when he says that line. And I mean that in the best possible way.
This paradox in Swayze can be seen in earlier incarnation--in The Outsiders his Darrel Curtis is an older sibling burdened with the care of his younger ones. Though you can see the pent up energy that makes him desire to live a more carefree and reckless, young, male lifestyle, he forcibly rechannels that energy toward those he loves, selflessly and for their benefit. He does not assume that role because it is the only choice he has; he assumes that role because he actively chooses to "do the right thing" despite his very real and experienced masculine desires.
And there is one other poorly remembered role, nestled unobtrusively between Skatetown USA and The Outsiders, in which you see this quality nascent and first emerging as that undefinable something that would later lead to blockbuster roles--in M*A*S*H he had a small role as a young soldier who comes in wounded and discovers that he has a likely terminal case of leukemia. The young soldier bravado melts away and you see the vulnerablity of one facing his own mortality; and his selfless reaction to it is profound. The contrast between what he projects and what lies at his heart is achingly and almost unbearably moving. The episode is called "Blood Brothers" and I'm telling you. Watch it. And see if you can't identify the quality I try to describe here.
That quality, I think, is a man who has every thing at his disposal to make the world his own--and instead gives it back. And not without a struggle that allows us to identify and believe we, too, though we often desire the opposite for our own reasons, could win the battle and give our baser desires up for something more satisfactory and, well, good.
Comments