“Let Me Call You Sweetheart” - Breakdown of the “Let's Misbehave” Dance Scene from Heroes’ Journey
Cas, as it turned out, was lamp.
“Let Me Call You Sweetheart” - Gene Kelly's iconic mop dance. Of course the difference between Dean Winchester and Gene Kelly is that Gene Kelly got to use an umbrella.
oh boy guys - strap in cuz we’re going to get deep into Old. Gay. Musicals. One of these references foreshadows Cas showing up in Dean's heaven. If they did that on purpose then I'm ready to Misbehave. 👀
TBC - the Entire sequence is about Dean wanting what Garth has but didn’t realize he could have with another Man, or with Cas. That’s not up for debate in this post. There is a long history of characters 'coming out' in dance sequences, and I can not divorce this in my mind from the fact that Mac from Always Sunny, a character that had been closeted nearly as long as Dean Winchester, had recently come out in a dance number (x).
Instead I’m going deep dive on the chosen music and the dance references.
Let's Misbehave, Cole Porter, and Queercoded Innuendo
Let’s Misbehave was a gay anthem all about living outside the law written by Cole Porter, a gay man in a time when that was not a thing you were allowed to be. His work like I 'Loved Him (But He Didn't Love Me)' or 'I'm a Gigolo' ("a dash of lavender found next to a passionless dowager") is full of innuendo which is, in hindsight, extremely gay, but written ambiguously in ways that flew perfectly under the radar of censors at the time. His more famous musicals are still on Broadway regularly.
In order to change up the pacing of some of his shows, the songs have been switched around somewhat. “Let’s Misbehave” was actually written for the female lead in a show called Paris, where two characters who’ve been working together only now realize they are in love. I wonder whether people working on spn know that.
It was dropped from ‘Paris’ in favor of “Let’s Do It” (which the censors demanded be renamed, “Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall In Love” sure guys, you totally fixed it, GJ.) 35 years later it was added to the Second Act of the much more famous, “Anything Goes” where it joined songs with lines I know you will all enjoy such as “Baby, if I’m the bottom, You’re the Top.” More on Anything Goes at the end of the post. It's fun stuff, there's a lamp.
The Hays Office had a lot of issues with his titles, but ironically when they renamed works like ‘The Gay Divorce’ it became the infinitely funnier 'The Gay Divorcee'. Bigots not getting it: funny for 100 years and counting.
Garth and Dean start dancing in white tuxes with straw hats and canes which could reference any number of B&W old movies. Dean is learning from Garth how to dance, copying him. Just like Fred Astaire's call and response solos in Top Hat White Tie and Tails which has this lil move. (This one is fun for the audio Astaire adds with the cane.)
then Dean goes to throw his cane and his partner is missing - he isn’t there.
Eright - now this part - this part I want to be wrong I really do. I really do. Now tell me this show is not referencing the one time Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire danced together when they have Dean and Garth dance together. TELL ME.
Because here’s the thing about this number.... the one time they danced together it was to the ‘The Babbitt And The Bromide’, a song where two men repeatedly meet, beat each other up, dance together in close embrace, and then separate for decades. “they both were solid citizens they both had been around” they spend their lives with their wives, and then they meet again in heaven ..... sigh.
“A harp each one was carrying and both were wearing wings, and this is what they sang as they kept strumming on the strings, You've grown a little stouter since i saw you last i think, Come up and see me sometime and we'll have a little drink” (x)
Gunna be honest. I had never once thought about the lyrics of this number before. So did the spn writers? Or were they just referencing the famous dancers? Because if it is on purpose, which is a BIG if, but if they thought about it and it's on purpose? ... Then it foreshadows Castiel in Dean's heaven in the finale. I'm going to keep going, but that is absolutely the headline.
(This is actually not the first time we've seen Dean do that little heel click move. It appeared in season 6 so Jensen has had it under his belt for awhile. I just enjoy that fact.)
There is Dean doing that dance without a partner by his side. So next Dean makes like Gene Kelly - and he finds one. See the Lamp vs Mop Gifs at the top of the post. That's Gene Kelly dancing with a mop to “Let Me Call You Sweetheart”, something we all know Dean Winchester never says and certainly has never called Castiel. (x)
When he’s done, Dean blows a kiss at the lamp and moves on with his dance reference tour. Dean taps up the stairs in a likely nod to Bill 'BoJangles' Robinson, the highest paid black actor or performer of his time, famous for his stair tap dance. (x)
Back to the history of ‘Let’s Misbehave’ for a second. In '72 it was used in the opening credits of the movie ‘Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)’. Then in '81 Christopher Walken strip tap danced to it on a pool table surrounded by women and photos of nude women until he revealed a giant tattoo of a heart on his chest in ‘Pennies from Heaven’ (x). So of course that's the very thing that Dean does. Well, the tap on the table, not the stripping.
The dance he does up there is almost a cross between a tap and a Charleston, the signature dances for the time and used in Anything Goes. It's also vaguely reminiscent of a dance Fred Astaire did in Swing Time that would only be called an homage to Robinson if we're being extremely generous to Fred Astaire.
Jensen ends on a sequence of tap I find extremely impressive at its speed for someone who only learned for this very dance, and I just want to recognize and give cred to it.
It's not specific enough choreography that I have placed it to any one dancer or dance yet, just presented with skill. I know there are more references & nods, including the little cane hop at the beginning, so if anyone picks more out I will be editing the post.
Anything Goes - keep reading
Like SPN, 'Anything Goes' a show that people think of as lighter fair, a guilty pleasure - pulp - not much meat there. It’s easy to digest for a general audience that isn’t reading too much into anything... but try telling that to the people analyzing it...
Anything Goes was the first successful Broadway musical comedy to build a story on two threads of pointed cultural satire, apparently. It was riske for the time. The show includes the “yes they really did put that on stage in 1927″ song lyric “If love affairs you like with young bears you like....” and yes, that meant the same thing then.
because I know this fandom, The show also includes the song “Blow Gabriel, Blow,” it’s all about sex, but is disguised as a religious hymn about the book of revelations, and it's set to Jazz [the devil’s music] and ‘is about’ praying to an archangel to blow his horn and bring the end times already, because we’re already living through the apocalypse: Enjoy some famous lines (x):
"I've been a sinner, I've been a scamp, But now I'm willin' to trim my lamp” ;
“Once I was headed for hell, Once I was headed for hell; But when I got to Satan's door I heard you blowin' on your horn once more, So I said, "Satan, farewell!"; & “'Cause I've gone through brimstone, And I've been through the fire, And I purged my soul, And my heart too, So climb up the mountaintop, And start to blow, Gabriel, blow”
Remind you of any boys we know?
So, like in any spn analysis, the question becomes, "What did they do on purpose and what was an accident?"
Did they purposefully pick a gay song by a gay man?
Did they know about the original intended plot of the song?
Do they know about the duel nature of Anything Goes?
Did they just pick random famous dance numbers to reference or did they pay attention to lyrics and subtext?
Lamp. I'm just going to write lamp here
The episode was written by Andrew Dabb and directed by John Showalter, these questions keep coming up with the two of them. That being said, clearly the whole sequence was choreographed by someone else, and that someone else was Gordon Hart (x), who is, according to his instagram, married to a man.
I don't know about you, but if that Babbit & the Bromide stuff is on purpose, I am also ready to Misbehave.
In this case Cas was quite literally Lamp.
