Grease
with John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John, Stockard Channing, Jeff Conway, Didi Conn, Dinah Manoff
Directed by Randal Kleiser
Screenplay by Bronte Woodard
Adaptation by Allan Carr
Based on the Original Musical by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey
(Paramount)
by Laura Kallio
“Remembered forever as shoo-bop shoo wadda-wadda yippity boom di boom…”
The fact that Grease turns twenty this year means that I, and I suspect many of you, are getting old. Its re-release also means juicier audio (you’ll actually hear the tapping of feet during dance sequences and the distinct crackling of a bonfire in the pep rally scene) and all that big screen ambiance…
But harken back with me won’t you, two decades hence… you and your brother, dancing recklessly and rebelliously on the couch, right arms stretched out before you, singing along to the double album soundtrack of your dreams, lyrics like “she’s a real pussy wagon,” and then, for the big finale, you somersault down to the floor with a loud crash.
I was only seven, but America has been nostalgic about the 1950s seemingly since the decade’s end (which actually wasn’t until around 1965). There was American Graffiti, Happy Days, and perhaps the quintessential ’50s epic, Grease, despite its decidedly late ’70s title theme. The movie was and continues to be so successful (biggest grossing movie musical of all time), because it speaks exactly to the innocence of the decade, that little window of prosperous post-WWII America before the vast social and cultural upheaval of the late ’60s and ’70s when a good deal of chart-topping pop music was churned out in mills, pre-packaged and sanitized, the real artists kept hidden neatly behind the scenes. It was a time when high school rebels wore their hair long, just brushing their shirt collars. They smoked cigarettes and drag raced and fought. It was a time when good girls didn’t. America liked Ike, feared Commies, covered whatever they could with chrome, and watched black and white TV. Ah, the good old days… sorry I missed them.
The cynics then were a small minority (either starving artists themselves or the star-maker types thieving for record companies and American Bandstand), but now, there’s so much information available that cynicism and youth culture have become synonymous, so much so that they use it to sell soft drinks. We became jaded when we realized along the way that happy endings often serve simply to cover up for what is really just bad art, and that there are those who would manipulate us and exploit our market position.
But in 1978, with Carter in the White House and the energy crisis firmly in place, we relished the camp and the simplicity of it all. We knew it was parody, but because it isn’t bash-you-over-the-head parody, but the sort with actual character development and a genuinely thoughtful approach to universal themes like pride and self-image, we allowed and allow ourselves to be sucked into the fantasy. (If you don’t at least smile during the “Hand Jive” scene, and I mean with it, not at it, then there really is no hope for you.) And let us not forget that we are talking about a musical, one that retains a good deal of the staginess of the original stage production (a huge hit in its own right), a fact which serves to heighten the fantasy and, in an ironic way, our belief in the likable, but utterly archetypal cast of assorted characters. And musicals really should be stagey. When your leading man bursts into song without a definite air of otherworldliness already constructed, well, it just doesn’t hold up. But Grease obviously has, thanks to our desire then and now to revisit what in retrospect seems a simpler time.
But, of course, it isn’t that simple after all. Let’s not forget that there is entirely different sort of nostalgia at work here, and his name, is John Travolta. Travolta’s career has our rediscovered fondness for the ’70s written all over it. Taking nothing away, that is, from the fact that he’s a gifted performer who oozes presence (never even mind the chin). His talent notwithstanding though, the guy embodies the ’70s, thanks, at least in part, to Grease. It’s the raunchiness, the sensuality, and the twenty-year-old film quality that appeal to us. Or maybe it’s just the dancing. Either way, with double-retro action like this, there really is something for everyone, you couch dancers and cynics alike. As the song goes, “Grease is the word… is the word… is the word… is the word…”
