Ren McCormack’s Awkward Dancing Was a Legal Strategy

The thing about Footloose (1984) is it wants you to believe Ren McCormack is some kind of dancing savior. Like Kevin Bacon slides into Bomont, flips his hair, and the whole town instantly starts popping and locking in the Piggly Wiggly aisle.

No. Ren doesn’t overthrow Bomont with charisma or talent. He does it by turning visibly bad, desperate dancing into public disruption, then walking into town council like a sweaty little lawyer and filing a motion like the beat is evidence. That’s the play. That’s the scam. And I respect it.

Because Ren is not a graceful swan. He’s a stressed-out raccoon trapped in a JCPenney display, fighting for his life. The town responds by getting even tighter, even weirder, even more obsessed with control. So Ren keeps making a mess until the mess becomes a case. Then he shows up in a meeting where they talk about dog licenses like it’s the Pentagon and he says, politely, abolish the dance ban.

I’m not here to be fair. I’m here to be right.

The warehouse exorcism

The abandoned warehouse, mill, whatever industrial sadness-pit Ren breaks into, is the detonator. The sequence is basically: Ren alone, in gloom, dust in his teeth, cassette-era drums hitting like a court summons, and the song “Never” by Moving Pictures screaming out of the speakers like the last functioning emotion in town.

He starts dancing and it’s not dancing. It’s a grievance with elbows.

He punches the air like it owes him an apology. He hurls himself into the darkness like he’s trying to headbutt a law. He kicks at nothing, then at something, then at the concept of “no fun.” It’s all sweat and denim and warehouse dust, the kind that gets into your mouth and makes you taste regret. And the best part is, you can see the desperation. Ren is not seducing anyone here. There’s no audience. This isn’t “look at me.” This is “please do not let me become the same dead-eyed guy at the town council podium talking about municipal paperwork.”

And that’s why it works.

Because Bomont’s ban isn’t beaten by a perfect performance. It’s beaten by a kid turning his own embarrassment into a public threat. If you can’t control your body, you can’t be controlled. Ren’s warehouse freakout is a practice run for civil disobedience, except instead of sitting at a lunch counter he’s doing rage-jazzercise in a sleeveless top.

Also, let’s stop pretending Kevin Bacon personally did every insane move in that sequence. He’s been quoted saying, “I had a stunt double, a dance double and two gymnastics doubles.” That’s not a confession, that’s an invoice. This movie is edited like a magic trick. Close-up Ren, cut to flying limbs, cut to a shoulder, cut to a landing, cut back to Ren looking like he just argued with God and won.

Peter Tramm is cited as his dance double, which means part of what you’re cheering is basically a professional chaos technician in Ren’s skin. Fine. The point remains. The character’s vibe is still “awkward kid weaponizes motion.” The doubles just make the tantrum louder.

That jukebox strut is not flirting

Then you get Ren out in public, and the movie starts showing you the tactic behind the mess.

There’s a moment where he’s around the diner, the jukebox glow hitting the room like a forbidden altar light, and Ren does that little strut. People always read it like he’s flirting with Ariel Moore or peacocking for the locals.

Wrong genre. That strut is reconnaissance.

Ren is clocking the room. He’s seeing who stiffens up when the music starts. He’s watching who looks guilty for enjoying a beat. He’s testing the town’s reflexes like he’s tapping a fence to find the weak board. Because in Bomont, movement is evidence. You tap a toe and you’re basically smuggling contraband.

And the town is watching him back. That’s the fun part. Bomont acts like it’s too pure to dance, but it stares at Ren like he’s a lab rat about to bite the scientist. Every little Ren move, every shoulder roll, every obnoxious teenage ounce of body language, it makes the adults clutch their pearls harder.

That’s how Ren wins. He doesn’t charm them. He makes them overreact. He turns their seriousness into a gag.

Wardrobe as a dare

Let’s talk about the sleeveless jean jacket. Not because it looks cool. It doesn’t. It looks itchy. It looks like it smells like cafeteria ketchup and bad decisions. It looks like the kind of cheap denim that leaves blue fuzz on your skin. But as a piece of strategy? Elite.

Ren’s wardrobe in Footloose is basically a petition you can sweat through.

He’s a new kid in a town that banned dancing after a tragedy, and he shows up dressed like he’s already been told “no” a thousand times and decided “no” is a hobby. The sleeveless jacket says, I am not participating in your moral weather. The impossible hair says, I have already been blow-dried by a jet engine and survived. The whole look is a dare, and Bomont’s adults can’t ignore dares. They live for them.

This is where the “natural dancer hero” myth really gets stupid. Ren’s power isn’t that he’s smooth. It’s that he’s visible. He’s loud in a place that worships quiet. He’s a walking disturbance. He can’t enter a room without changing the temperature. Even when he’s just standing there, he looks like he’s about to start a case.

And he keeps choosing the most confrontational version of normal teen life. Music. Clothes. Posture. It’s all bait. The town takes it every time.

Willard’s remedial rebellion

Now the movie would be lying if it said Ren did this alone. Ariel (Lori Singer) is her own chaos engine, pushing back on Reverend Shaw Moore (John Lithgow) because she’s bored, angry, and sick of living inside his sermons. Reverend Moore isn’t a cartoon villain either, he’s a grief-loaded authority figure trying to keep a lid on a town that still feels the burn.

But Ren’s contribution is specific. He turns rebellion into a transferable skill.

Enter Willard Hewitt (Chris Penn), a good guy with the rhythm of a busted washing machine. Ren decides this is the hill. He’s going to teach Willard to dance.

And what does that look like? It looks like humiliation with a beat. Deniece Williams’ “Let’s Hear It for the Boy” plays, and the montage becomes propaganda. Not subtle propaganda. Bright, bouncy, “we are absolutely doing this” propaganda. Ren is basically running a freedom boot camp in a church-basement nation.

Here’s why it matters. Ren isn’t training Willard to become a star. He’s training Willard to become a problem. A body that moves is a body that can’t be fully owned by the town’s rules. Every time Willard gets one step less awkward, Bomont loses a little control.

And the comedy is that Ren himself is still not some flawless instructor-god. He’s coaching like a guy who learned from watching MTV on a fuzzy TV with rabbit ears. He’s teaching rebellion the way kids actually taught each other stuff in the 80s, by yelling “no, like this” and trying again until it stops being embarrassing.

That’s not a hot take. That’s just what happened.

Courtroom Ren

The absolute sickest Ren move in the whole movie is not a kick or a spin. It’s a sentence.

He walks into a town council meeting, the kind of beige civic room where joy goes to die, and the town is discussing “old business” with the energy of a printer manual. In the transcript, there’s even a line about raising the dog-license fee from $3.50 to $4.50. That’s the level of thrilling danger we’re working with. Bomont is basically run by people who think a price change is a personality.

And then Ren, the kid who just had a warehouse exorcism, stands up and goes full sweaty little lawyer.

“My name is Ren MacCormack and I would like to move on behalf of most of the senior class of Bomont High School that the law against public dancing within the town limits of Bomont be abolished.”

Look at that thing. It’s not inspiring. It’s procedural.

“I would like to move” is courtroom language. He’s not begging. He’s making a motion. “On behalf of most of the senior class” is him trying to make his teenage chaos sound like a constituency. “Within the town limits of Bomont” is him speaking their weird little control-fetish dialect. He’s packaging a beat like it’s a municipal agenda item.

That’s the whole thesis right there. Ren doesn’t overthrow Bomont with charisma or talent. He does it by turning visibly bad, desperate dancing into public disruption, then walking into town council and filing the motion like the soundtrack is a witness.

And the movie, directed by Herbert Ross with a screenplay by Dean Pitchford, understands the joke. It’s 107 minutes of a teenager learning that if you can’t win the room with skill, you win it by making the room look ridiculous. Make them argue about dancing the way they argue about dog licenses. Force the comparison. Let their seriousness trip over its own shoes.

Ren McCormack isn’t the best dancer. Sometimes he’s not even the real dancer on screen, thanks to doubles. But he’s the best at making dancing feel like an emergency, like a right, like a thing the town has to litigate out loud.

So yeah, the warehouse scene is holy. Not because it’s perfect. Because it’s messy on purpose. Ren alone in industrial gloom, fighting the building like it passed the ordinance, is the moment the town loses. They just don’t know it yet. They’re still counting dog-license dollars while Ren is out there turning sweat into case law.