ABSTRACT
In the hugely popular 1983 movie Flashdance, an eighteen-year-old Catholic girl from Pittsburgh welds steel together all day, then goes out to go-go dance at night. Michael Sembello’s number-one single from the soundtrack says she’s a “maniac,” dancing her crazy ballet into the danger zone of her mind. The steel-town girl from Flashdance is an archetypal character in pop songs. In “She’s Only Happy When She’s Dancing” by Bryan Adams, she works nine to five to make ends meet, then on Friday night she heads down to the Ball and Chain and loses herself in her fantasies, going insane until Monday, when her carriage returns to pumpkinhood like some updated version of the Cinderella myth. In “Dancing Queen” by Abba, the girl hunts for a place to dance on Friday nights, then has the time of her life to the beat of a tambourine. And in “Working for the Weekend” by Loverboy, white-trash hard rock from the early eighties, her whole junior class toils at the minimum wage all week, forever impatient to go off the deep end and be in the show.
