Footloose (1984) had tension because it was of the moment. <\/p>\n
The Moral Majority was just entering its apex<\/a> and small town America was a pop cultural phenomenon (months after Footloose was released, Farm Aid hit the air and Small Town<\/a> reached #6). There was also, generally, lots of dancing<\/a> in<\/a> the<\/a> streets<\/a>. <\/p>\n Fast forward to 2011 and covens of sexy but celibate vampires play a bigger role in the popular imagining of white adolescence than uptight congregations. So while Footloose (2011) had no problems putting butts in seats<\/a>, I don’t think anyone \u2013\u00a0not even its makers \u2013\u00a0believes it put its fingers on the pulse of young Americans.<\/p>\n And, yet, if the 2011 retelling had been set in a city like a Salinas, CA (pop. 150,000, 75% Latino<\/a>, 40% under 18) it could have represented a community at the crossroads: teeming with young kids rebelling against their hick parents, caught up in a mess of gangs, a shitty economy, starved government, fire and brimstone preachers, and a dance trend<\/a> that combines (Mexican) country with techno.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Footloose (1984) had tension because it was of the moment. The Moral Majority was just entering its apex and small town America was a pop cultural phenomenon (months after Footloose was released, Farm Aid hit the air and Small Town reached #6). There was also, generally, lots of dancing in the streets. Fast forward to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10,18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5681"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5681\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.josemarquez.com\/etc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}