Olivia Newton-John responds to recent Grease discourse, says people need to "relax"
Film Features Olivia Newton-John
Grease hasn’t aged perfectly, to say the least. Besides it being painfully obvious that everyone who attends Rydell High is somehow way past their 20s, there are many moments that make the movie hard to watch: There’s the troublesome lyric in “Summer Nights” wherein the male backups ask whether or not Sandy “put up a fight.”; a creepy radio announcer who actually tried to slip high schooler Marty Maraschino a date rape drug at the school dance; Danny even tries to force himself on Sandy, who rebuffs him. The list goes on.
The movie was shown on BBC in the UK over the holidays, so people took to social media to point out how deeply problematic it is. The Daily Express even had a clickbait-y article saying that Grease “could be banned from British TV” after the backlash. (No, Grease is not getting banned and the song medley will continue to be inescapable, I’m sorry.)
Now, Olivia Newton-John addressed the complaints. While on the Australian podcast A Life Of Greatness, she said, “I think it’s kind of silly. I mean, this movie was made in the ‘70s about the ‘50s.” She added that everyone “needs to relax a little bit and just enjoy things for what they are.”
Piers Morgan of all people also decided to weigh in on people’s complaints, saying “we should ban the woke bloody idiots who want [Grease] banned.” Not sure how banning them works but sure.
Regardless of how Newton-John feels about the movie, maybe it’s time to finally listen to Drew Barrymore and recognize that Grease 2 is superior.
263 Comments
Piers Morgan of all people also decided to weigh in“Of all people”? This is peak Piers Morgan content.
Doesn’t Piers Morgan get paid to offer opinions that no one asked for? I’m an american, so not entirely sure of his function other than that.
His other primary directive is to taunt Jeremy Clarkson.Basically, these two old, white men from the U.K show what a potpourri shitbox it is to have conservative leanings there. (Clarkson may seem moderate outside of gas cars but the stuff that leaks from his private conversations says otherwise, really) I have to admit, though, it’s still better than conservatives in America. After all, we imported Piers and that somehow doesn’t threaten xenophobic racist bigots because…I guess it’s because he’s also orange most of the time.
Professional cunt. That’s his function. And he doesn’t always manage the first half of that role.
Piers “Of All People” Morgan
Not MY Piers!
Using him in this story is absolutely giving him more attention/credit than he deserves.
Using him in this story is absolutely giving him more attention/credit than he deserves.
Right, this is very much fake cancel culture outrage that is some of Piers Morgan’s favorite shit.
People pointing out that a beloved film has problematic areas is definitely worse than overseeing employees that fuck up a child’s murder investigation by snooping on her voicemail.
In the interests of accuracy: that wasn’t Morgan. His paper did have an endemic culture of phone hacking, but Dowler wasn’t them.He did publish faked photos of ‘British soldiers’ abusing prisoners of war, though. And even before that point, there was a time when the press complaints comission had only ever sanctioned three newspapers editors and ALL THREE were Piers Morgan…(for American viewers: you may be surprised to learn that the current Piers Morgan is, relatively speaking, the rehabilitated, cuddly, less-despised version…)
Shit, you’re right. I stand corrected, and yet somehow my opinion of Morgan hasn’t really changed in the slightest.
But it’s important to point out that this is a symbiotic relationship.“Progressives” do something stupid.
Piers Morgan massively amplifies the stupid thing and complains about PC gone mad.
“Progressive” outlets massively amplify what Piers Morgan said and complain about conservativism gone mad.Not only does Morgan know that progressives will pick up on and ‘angrily’ amplify what he says, but that’s actually central to his entire schtick. In the same way that the people Morgan attacks are often doing the stupid thing in order to be attacked, Morgan attacks them in order to himself be attacked in turn. It’s the outrage he generates that keeps him paid – if certain people didn’t have an alarm that went off every time Morgan said anything, he’d be just another little-mentioned, curmudgeonly TV host. Indeed, he wouldn’t even be that, since I’m not sure much of his act is actually real – the reality is ‘cynical tabloid editor’, and ‘right-wing outrage-merchant’ is just as much a marketing gimmick as his stint as ‘British-style celebrity interviewer in America’ was.
If Piers Morgan didn’t exist, left-wing commentators would have to invent him – and in a very real sense, they have done. There’s a tacit agreement in place: we’ll keep advertising your gimmick, so long as you keep generating rage-inducing soundbites.
[though, to be fair, he’s not quite like the purer, US forms of this, in that he’s not always on the conservative side. But it’s a fair first approximation…]
Imagine putting your reputation on the line for Grease.
Well, after all, IT IS the word.
The bird. The bird.
The bird is the word.
A-papa-ooh-ma-ma-mow papa-ooh-mow-mow
Touche, my Trashmen fan!
Who put their reputation on the line?
Yes. It’s a slippery slope indeed.
What are you even talking about?
Plastics.
I don’t get what you’re saying. Morgan has no good reputation to put on the line, & a significant part of Newton-John’s reputation is Grease.
and this
I don’t know, if you’re Olivia Newton-John I think it makes sense. She was in what was for a long time the highest-grossing film musical, which was a phenomenonal success, and her only bona-fide film success. It was a huge milestone for her already-successful music career, I’d defend it too if it were me.Plus, though the movie itself is kind of crap, she’s really perfect in it, and deserves to be seen, if only because she’s the only one who legit could be in high school.
Nobody ever talks about Xanadu. hrmph
I like Xanadu, but I wouldn’t call it a bona-fide success. Not like Grease – there’s a lot to love, though.
Oh, I wouldn’t, either. I just loved that movie so much when I was a kid.
Surely people are not just noticing this. Grease has always been problematic. The biggest problem is that it has only one good song: There Are Worse Things I Could Do. I will fight you on this.
Mooning is better
Raining On Prom Night…. Prepare to fight!
No no no. . . best song was “Hopelessly Devoted to You!” That song got me through so many unrequited crushes in middle school! I wore out the ‘45 on my record player over a stupid boy named Ronnie.
I encourage you to reconsider this choice through adult eyes. The pain of There Are Worse Things I Could Do is exponentially greater than the pain of Hopelessly Devoted. It speaks to the universal problem of there being no right way to be a woman. It’s the song you sing AFTER you have restyled yourself as, um, a woman of loose morals just to get a dumbass boy to like you. This is what Sandy will be singing after the credits roll.It’s also just better in terms of craft (even if the rhymes are pretty easy), and it was not written just for the movie.I could hurt someone like me
Out of spite or jealousy
I don’t steal and I don’t lie
But I can feel and I can cry
A fact I’ll bet you never knew
But to cry in front of you
That’s the worst thing I could do
Absolutely the best song!
I love There Are Worse Things but Stockard Channing makes that song and that role. I don’t think you would feel so strongly if you heard Rosie O’Donnell sing it on Broadway (or anyone else for that matter). While ONJ knocks Hopelessly Devoted to You way out of the park, it’s a playground for any great singer. Nope, it’s Hopeless 4eva!
Oh, most of these examples were issues that were talked about when it came out. This perspective is NOT one that you can dismiss as modern “wokeness.” Even Mad Magazine’s parody (March 1979 issue) explicitly called them out and it was directed at possibly the most immature, dismissive of women’s and consent issues audience possible (teen-age or younger boys).
(Meaning, it’s not that it didn’t age well, but that it was ALWAYS known to be problematic).
Yes, there were “problematic” debates for years about Grease, especially about why Sandy had to change her style to get Danny back. The first time I ever watched the movie, I was unhappy with the scene where one of the T-Birds lifts up Patty’s skirt and humiliates her in front of everyone at the prom, leading her to run off in tears. I just decided that I still liked what I liked (the musical numbers, a lot of the performances, etc.) while rejecting parts I didn’t like.
To be fair, that new style on Sandy worked really well.
I bought into that “it’s fucked up that Sandy changed her style for Danny” business for years because I hadn’t seen Grease since I was a kid.But I watched it again a few months ago. And you know what? Danny changes his style for her first. When she shows up dressed in that new style, he’s dressed like the prep he thinks she wants him to be.Not just that, but she puts on a costume for one day. He actually ran track for a whole semester! He earned a letter to try to win her back. I mean yeah, it’s just track, but he at least put in what must have been a few hundred hours running in circles!So I think if anything he put in more work for her than she did for him. She seems to like the new clothes too, and it fits her new surroundings so… Why is this a problem?
Yeah, who’s to say she’s not changing her style for herself too? She’s tired of being a wallflower in her song before the makeover, and then acts more confident and assertive with the new look. But just because she dresses more provocatively doesn’t mean she’s totally lost herself. Anyway, she’s supposed to be about that age where your style and identity can be pretty mutable.
Also… when she wears that costume she isn’t singing “do you like me now?” she sings “you better shape up” and Danny agrees, “I better shape up cause you need…”
exactly. people jump to outrage without bothering to examine the whole subject, or bothering to consider complexity, nuance, context, etc.
danny changing (and first) is contrary to the uncontestable “male patriarchy” meme, so goes completely unnoticed and undiscussed, despite being key to the movie.
Thank you! I make this point to people constantly.
THANK YOU!Danny fucking letters in track. That would take months of training and competition! And after that he’s dumping the T-Birds for her. All she did was get a makeover.
Also, all that Danny goes through to try to win her back proves that she didn’t *have* to change her look to get him back. She could have stayed in the same clothes and hairstyle and he, clearly, would have taken her back if she’d just asked. (Really, though, it’s not him taking her back, because she broke up with him.)
THANK YOU. Yes, the fact that Danny changed himself, as well, is conveniently dismissed.
It worked really well to age her about fifteen years immediately. Which was what she wanted, so yes, it did work really well.
I adore The Breakfast Club, but it always bothered me that Ally Sheedy had to basically entirely reinvent herself to woo Emilio Estevez properly (and she looked better before, honestly).
Urgh, I’ve always hated that ending. Here’s a woman with opinions and style choices of her own, so what does the happy ending have to be? Abandoning her personality to fit in better with the mainstream girls so that a boy will like her. Ughh. It just seems to run totally counter to the rest of the film to that point.
i’d like to think Hughes was going for some bigger point about your friends giving you the confidence to come out of your shell, but that’s probably being generous, and even if so, he fucked it up badly.
I think that’s probably what he thought he was saying, yes – but that message just makes it worse! Honestly, it would be less objectionable if it were “I, an intelligent woman, will make the choice to change to attract someone I’m attracted to” – that’s an inherently sad choice, but it can be a meaningful one.Instead, it’s more “being non-mainstream is just a defensive act put on by damaged people, and they need to be ‘helped’ to ‘come out of their shell’ and embrace their real identity as someone who’s just like everyone else”. Which is both offensive and dangerous. I mean sure, it’s often true, yes, but not always, and even when it is true, it’s rarely helpful to say it! This idea that the best thing you can do for someone is to make them be more mainstream, and that this isn’t just a pragmatic question of increasing their chances of getting jobs or boyfriends or whatever, but is actually helping them be more true to themsleves, is really odious.
…I think maybe my point is that it’s one thing to suggest that a sacrifice is worth it to obtain a goal, and it’s another thing entirely to imply that no sacrifice is being made, that there’s no downside. At the end of the film, it didn’t feel like her character was making a reasoned compromise in order to get along with people better – it felt like she was casting off an inferior (according to the film) version of herself for a better one, and I found that problematic. And it doesn’t help, of course, that the film is so unconvincing on that point on even an instinctive level, because nobody has ever looked at that makeover and thought that the girly version seemed like an improvement! [that shouldn’t matter, of course… but inevitably it does]Come to think of it, I guess I read it in a similar way to how I would if it were (explicitly) about her orientation. A film in which a lesbian character decides at the end that she’s going to act like she’s straight because it’s easier would be a depressing film. But a film in which the lesbian character suddenly, out of the blue, in the last five minutes, has a revelation that she needs to get past her lesbian ‘phase’ and just be straight and happy like she’s meant to be… that would be outright offensive. And I guess a (much less extreme) version of that reaction is what I instinctively feel at the end of The Breakfast Club…
Sandy changed her style, but Danny also changed his style! That part gets forgotten.
Nice pull of a deep cut from Mad Magazine.
It’s like how people defend Gone With The Wind saying it was a different time, when people were protesting it them because it was so racist.
The whole point of the musical/movie was that that 1950s sexual mores were problematic. The 1970s may not have been as woke as today, but they were far, far, more advanced than the 1950s. It was kind of like how Mad Men tackled the supposedly progressive 1960s.
Agreed, and this seems to go over many people’s heads. The movie comes off as heavily ironic to me in its cheesiness and how it subverts the nostalgic image of ‘50s America as pure and innocent.
Just remember that Lolita is a classic in every ways. Basically a film endorsing pedophilia. But Greast is the problem. Look at Leon another sketchy film with an unhealthy drive towards grooming a child. Anyway classics
I don’t think anyone is arguing that either of those examples are in anyway less or equally problematic than “Grease.” They’re definitely much, much worse (and “classic” is definitely only an opinion).
I’m glad someone else can see the problems with the films instead of defending them
If you think Lolita endorses pedophilia…I don’t think you understood Lolita
Hebephile for the pedantic apologists
It’s the word “endorsing” you’re being accused of not understanding properly, not the pervy “-phile” terms.
Unfortunately, some people find it very hard to accept that “portraying” (or in non-fiction, “reporting”) and “endorsing” are not the same thing…
There’s a huge difference between the book and the movies.
I don’t think you understand the differences between the book and movies
No it doesn’t. And are you talking about the book or the movie?
I read the book. Humbert Humbert is a scumbag and a rapist and it is decidedly not endorsed.
I did say movie
touché
I don’t think you recall Leon correctly if you think Matilda was the one doing the changing.
I have never seen any of the Lolita movies, but I recently listened to a great podcast about the book and how the movies (and plays) based on it were so off base. (It’s called Lolita Podcast. It’s done by the comedian who did My Year In Mensa.) It’s insane how the adaptations have been so off the mark. It’s clear in the book that what happens to Delores is abuse and awful, but the adaptations tend to frame her as a seductress and it’s so gross.That said, I could never read the book again.
The podcast could be interesting, but likewise I have no desire to watch/read again
The podcast is really good. It recently aired its final episode, so you can binge the whole thing now. (I hate waiting for new episodes. I’m impatient.) She did a really god job on it.
I think part of what made this stick in my brain was the use of the word “slut,” which, while not generally shocking to me, was language that seemed to be out of character for Mad.
Yeah, it seems crude for Mad Magazine. More maybe National Lampoon?
Mad was edgier than you might remember. I remember lots of cartoons with drug use and milder pseudo-expletives like “slut” and “frigging”.
MAD even had nudity (although hidden in the tiny margin cartoons) not that long ago. But more than anything, MAD always had very biting, adult satire, which I think it sometimes overlooked by those who view it as a magazine that just appealed to kids and teens.
“is” not “it” That’s been my new favorite typo.
Laughing because, in high school, I was a virgin in leather who knew a lot of girls who put out while wearing Peter Pan collars….
America needs more sluts.
Vintage MAD, I love it. I guess I always saw it as each of them trying to change to join the other’s clique, not Sandy’s trying to signify she’s now a sexpot.
I’ll just leave this here.
Here’s what needs to be banned: People deliberately misinterpreting “Maybe let’s not show that movie anymore on this one particular TV outlet since there’s plenty of other, non-rapey content to choose from” as a “ban.” Armed enforcement agents will not show up at your home to confiscate your home video copy of Grease.
Confiscation can happen:https://www.wired.com/1997/12/judge-tin-drum-illegally-confiscated/
And from wikipedia: In 1980, the film version of The Tin Drum was first cut, and then banned as pornography by the Ontario Censor Board in Canada.[24] Similarly, on June 25, 1997, following a ruling made by State District Court Judge Richard Freeman, who had reportedly only viewed a single isolated scene of the film, The Tin Drum was banned from Oklahoma County, Oklahoma, citing the state’s obscenity laws for portraying underage sexuality. All copies in Oklahoma City were confiscated, and at least one person who had rented the film on video tape was threatened with prosecution. Michael Camfield, at the time a member of the Oklahoma chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, filed a lawsuit against the police department on July 4, 1997, alleging that the tape had been illegally confiscated and his rights infringed.[25][26]
That does not seem like a likely scenario in this case.
What insight do you have into that?
You left out the part where a federal judge found these actions unconstitutional, though.
Oopsie!Did I doooo thaaaat???(Yes, you legitimately used the part of the story that strengthened your argument, yes)
For which we thank higher courts. But a bell cannot be unrung, and a dvd cannot be unburnt.
Nah
It is a ban. It draws parallel to “don’t put certain books in local library” because for whatever reason it’s problematic. It’s not yet “burn the comic books because of it’s immoral” like in the 50s, but do you really want we go back like that? Censoring everything from public view because it deemed problematic now? Also, suggesting you still can enjoying the movie in your own private space, without any prying eyes, by increasing obsolete media (VHS, DVD). Really? When more people ditched said medias, and heavily rely on streaming services. Your suggestion doesn’t make sense.
Uhhh… arent the dudes supposed to be scumbags? Like they are the “cool” guys but they are all pieces of shit and as mentioned its a 70’s movie about pieces of shit in the 50’s. Problematic guys doing problematic things does not make a movie problematic.
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the film but as I remember they’re not portrayed as anything but jackasses.
He was kind of jackass-y for a good chunk of the movie, but Danny was the romantic hero. I guess you could argue that Sandy changed him for the better or he changed himself.
I guess you could argue that if you enjoyed arguing extremely obvious points.
Tell your mommy to change your diaper, because someone is clearly cranky.
He was a jackass when he was around his friends. Even the drive in scene, he’s doing that because he’s been back around his friends and he thinks that’s what he’s supposed to do to be cool (I always thought it was pretty obvious he was acting like he thought he should and immediately regretted it.)When she first met him in the summer, when he wasn’t around his friends, he wasn’t a jackass at all. (I know they didn’t really show it much, but you’re supposed to believe her side of Summer Lovin’ and understand his side is an act for his friends.)I think it’s also saying the same thing when he and Kenickie hug and then act all macho and cool after because they notice their friends watching.
Maybe certain younger people unthinkingly assume it’s contemporary?
Maybe it needs a warning?
“The characters in this movie are parodies. The makers are not presenting them as good people who should be taken as role models, they are fictional characters for entertainment purposes only.”
If a movie like this needs a warning label like that, the problem isn’t the movie, it’s the society.
I think part of the problem is that somewhere between the movie coming out and now, we all decided this was a kid-friendly property when it is not and kids and pre-teens may not be able to see just how much the characters are meant to be jerks and not cool.
Definitely. It was sleepover watching for kids, they even showed this to us at a pizza party in my elementary school in the 80s! It somehow became a kids movie and I think we just thought that was what high school was going to be like without getting that some of these characters were cautionary tales.
I mean, it’s a bouncy musical about “cool” teens and dating. It was rated PG. If the idea that it’s at least pre-teen-friendly is really a misunderstanding, that kinda feels like at least partially the creators’ fault.
Really, though, I think both you and ONJ have a point. Some of the characters were supposed to be obnoxious high-school jerks, but a (necessary and long-overdue) cultural shift has moved date rapists from “these burnouts and losers need to get their act together” to “holy shit, these kids are monsters.”
One thing you point out is that it was rated PG. These days that’s essentially considered a kids movie,with the rare G rating typically given to things for the very youngest kids, and PG-13 often being the watershed where parents might need to worry. But when Grease was released though, there was no PG-13. It went from G, to PG, to R. It would likely get a PG-13 if it was rated today, I suspect, but it retains the rating it had.
Also worth saying: there’s something kind of unfortunate in this idea that if a film isn’t for children, you need to stick in some gratuitous sex or violence to prevent it getting a PG or U rating.Because just because a film CAN be watched by children without permanently scarring them shouldn’t mean that it’s automatically treated as a film FOR children. And if you want to make a film for adults, you shouldn’t have to stick in ‘adult’ content (particularly given that ‘adult’ content is generally of more interest to kids and teens than it is to adults…)
I remember my dad taking me and my sister to see Ice Castles. It was PG. We left not long into it because they were cussing up a storm. I seem to remember “fuck” being thrown around, but that was a long time ago and I was 8, so it might not have been. But, there was enough of it that Dad didn’t just let it slide (he could deal with us hearing a damn or a hell every now and then, but if it was every other word, he was not OK with that.)
I was 8 when it came out. We did not see it at the theaters, but I do remember watching it on TV (obviously a year or two after it had it’s theater run) and my sister, who was 2 years younger than I was, was obsessed to the point that she was singing Greased Lightning in her sleep at one point.
When I was 7, my dance class definitely did a jazz number to Greased Lightening and as an adult, I’m like WAIT, THE LYRICS ARE WHAT NOW?
Oh, my gosh, me too! Not the dance, but the realizing what the lyrics are. I’m pretty sure my sister did not know what that stuff meant when she was singing it.
Well, it was for me. “Ha ha, look at the stupid thoughtless things guys used to do” doesn’t make it actually amusing. The creators of Mad Men knew better than that.
“Problematic guys doing problematic things does not make a movie problematic.”
It can. If they’re clearly framed as villains, that makes it less problematic, but I don’t think that the characters in Grease are.
I think the problem is that there are no real consequences shown so problematic guys being problematic is also being acceptable. Should every movie have consequences? No.But a cherry sucker musical that ends in romance probably should or just omit the problematic parts altogether.I only watched the movie once but iirc the basic summation of everyone in there was, “boys will be boys”
Sort of like how everyone has jumped on Temple of Doom being racist because it shows Indian people eating monkey brains etc, except forgetting the important point that those same people are the goddam villains of the movie and nobody’s trying to say Indians in general eat eyeball soup.
a creepy radio announcer who actually tried to slip high schooler Marty Maraschino a date rape drug at the school danceI never quite understood this because Marty reveals that the drug was… aspirin. I know that it was implied that he was trying to knock her out but with… aspirin?
It’s implied that she thinks it’s aspirin but it’s actually something else.
Yeah, that’s what I got from that scene. Either Vince Fontaine was literally trying to slip an aspirin in her Coke (as a form of birth control or some poor man’s roofie) or Marty saw a white pill and mistook it for aspirin but it was really a Quaalude or some other date rape drug.
Not really. A common myth in those days was that aspirin in Coke was an aphrodisiac, and/or would sedate you. It was bullshit, of course, just as when I was a kid “everybody” knew that coating a cigarette in toothpaste would get you high. Who knows where these myths start, but every generation has their own.
He should give her Stimutacs. It’s mostly kelp.
Kelp is crap. What’s the other one percent?
It’s, uh, trade secret.
For what it’s worth. People in the 50s believed that taking aspirin with soda before sex would prevent pregnancy. https://www.verywellhealth.com/myth-busters-aspirin-as-a-birth-control-method-906684
Oof. Imagine all the babies that sprang from that notion.
I think they are called baby boomers.
So THAT’S where babies spring from!!
Now it can be told.
wow. Bayer babies.
It’s about time we give Baby Boomers their rightful name. Soda Babies.
Well they sure got that wrong. The directions were really that, to prevent conception, the woman take the aspirin and hold it between her knees.
Or else that aspirin and Coke would get you high. My friends and I tried that in junior high but we just got giddy like any other 14-year-olds.
That may have been one version, but I think there was also an urban legend it was an aphrodisiac. Pretty sure that’s what he’s up to in Grease (and some other movies)– not birth control but trying to make her uncontrollably horny (ew)
it’s a pain reliever and thins the blood, so it’s possible that it could delay premature ejaculation.
As my Catholic mother noted, aspirin was the only contraceptive approved by her priest. But you didn’t swallow it, you held it between your knees.
I think I remember that people thought it was also an aphrodisiac. There is no way I am doing a search on that.
people need to be offended, anything will do
He’s just trying to look out for her future heart health.
I thought the whole thing with Grease was intercourse, not discourse.
Hey-o!
I thought discourse is where you play Frisbee football.
John Cleese doesn’t particularly care about this.
David Crosby has stated in a statement: “Meh.”
Two perfect responses.
Why is “relax” always the response? No one is stressed out. They just think your movie teaches shitty things, which it does, which is fine? My 5 yo daughter loves Grease. She and her 2 yo brother love to bop de bop. And that’s fine with me. But I also am going to make sure they know that parts of it are shitty and why. Maybe ONJ should relax and let people say what they want.
Something being a movie does not equal the movie “teaching it”. That’s absurd logic.
Yes it does! The Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, for example, taught me I should join the Navy. It’s called patriotism.
This is great content, thank you.
Well, you can sub in words like “normalizes” or “depicts in a positive light” if that makes you more comfortable, but I’m also happy with “teaches,” and disagree that the logic that got me there is in any way absurd.
All equally foolish.
No one owes it to you to make their art consistent with your standards.
“Why is “relax” always the response? No one is stressed out.”Good point, people calling for bans and boycotts are historically laid-back and even-keeled.
“My 5 yo daughter loves Grease. She and her 2 yo brother love to bop de bop. And that’s fine with me. But I also am going to make sure they know that parts of it are shitty and why.”
You’re literally doing what she’s suggesting, yet somehow you’ve tried to paint her as an asshole for suggesting it in the first place.
When I was four or five I thought the lyrics to “Summer Nights” went something like “tummy more, tummy more, tummy cheek-a-me-fine.” I had no idea what they were talking about.
I didn’t know what virginity was or why Sandy was so bad at it.
It’s funny you mentioned your daughter loves Grease, because my little sister used to love it so much it was her favourite movie she’d watch at least once a week… Until she turned 16 and has completely denied ever being that into Grease since (she’s 31 now).
Same for me but it was Grease 2!
Featuring the very not-for-kids “Reproduction”, by the guy who wrote “Burning Love”.
And the also very not-for-kids “Let’s do it for our Country”
When the best journalistic reference you have is a Buzzfeed list article (someone should come up with a word that combines those two things!), the silliness of the position kind of speaks for itself. Although the star couldn’t have put it any better.
*world’s biggest eye roll followed by a party at Allan Carr’s house*
I just watched a doc about Allan Carr two days ago! – How crushing that Grease 2 opened against ET. Even the choreographer, who said they worked their little hearts out said, and I paraphrase – “yeah, I would go see ET over us.”
I was a bit confused as I thought you meant UK comedian Alan Carr, who may or may not like Grease for all I know.
I could see him HATING IT, or I could see him LOVING IT. There are no shades of grey with Alan Carr.
And the way they sexually humiliate that car ….. in song. jalopniks will want to chime in on that.
Now, this is not a defence, I promise. Of course Grease hasn’t aged well and that’s because nothing does. We had to watch Grease all the time at school because it was the only VHS tape the school had so every relief teacher, every rainy day, every school camp, they put Grease on. So I hated it and I thought it had gotten old by the time I was 10. But here’s the thing, I don’t think there’s any reason to think “put up a fight” necessarily means “resist a rape”. In context it honestly just felt like he was being asked, did you have to do a lot of convincing. But I promise that’s honestly as nice about the film as I’m willing to be.
I think it can be viewed both ways honestly, one’s completely innocent, the other is extremely disturbing.
Also it’s the rest of the gang asking, not Danny saying. And as other commenters have pointed out, the rest of the T-Birds are jackasses. A bunch of jackasses ASKING a character who is deep down a nice guy (ie the romantic lead) if he forced his girlfriend does not condone rape, it highlights that Danny is a nice guy for not doing that.Also IIRC the line is delivered with a sort of sneering, backslapping, hahaha ain’t we edgy attitude – they aren’t even asking seriously.
All of that and as a lyric it’s there to pair off of “was it love at first sight?” The whole concept of the song is that neither side is getting an impartial story, but both are talking through their own coded gender norms, the girls overly mushy, the boys overly raunchy, but they’re both asking the same things.
You may be in a better position than me to judge: despite having watched it (or at least, y’know, watched one school period’s worth of its total length) a bunch of times, I can’t profess that it ever really engaged me to the extent that I considered it in terms of what it does to the characterisation.
My impression – though I wouldn’t have articulated it this way as a kid – was that it was all overwhelmingly camp. I had the impression that some musical-theatre type person somewhere thought in the 70s that that’s what people talked like in the rose-tinted, romanticised version of the 50s, when everything was perfectly innocent and not at all racist, misogynist or cripplingly conformist.
I say this with full recognition of the fact that a lot of people hide behind “irony” inappropriately, but I just felt like the line, and the context in which it appears, has too many layers of irony and context (for better or for worse) to really be taken as being about anything at all.
Which does, of course, in turn mean that nobody is wrong to take offense at the line. THat’s not some outrageous or unreasonable inference to draw: I just think it’s a dumb line in a dumb movie written by people who didn’t really have much regard for such things. If the historical context of Grease is the hill we absolutely must die on, I tend to think that we’re better off curating it in this way rather than cancelling it.
But then, I would say that, because the likelihood of me willingly and happily associating with a Grease fan for any extended period of time is pretty low.
It’s interesting that the stage show is much more vulgar – it’s really toned down for the movie. I believe the show was conceived as a goof on the sanitized way that contemporary culture had been portrayed in the movies of the 1950’s, via the lens of the anything goes/anything can be seen and talked about 1970’s.And then, ironically, the movie was considered fine for kids because of those very 1950s movies – you know, “It was a more innocent time” stuff.
Oh wow, that is really interesting, and kind of makes sense if I think about it. It seems as though the film is actually tapping into the thing that the play set out to skewer, which kind of jives with the relative times in which each thing was created: the stage play at the start of the 70s when the 60s appeared, briefly, to be giving way to a genuinely progressive version of America, making it safe to be a bit revisionist about some of the harmful myths; but then the film kicks off around the time that neo-conservatism is gaining traction in the leadup to the Regan years, where the nostalgia for the 1950s seemed to lose some of its ironic appeal and genuinely appeared to influence policy and mood. Maybe I need to eat my words: maybe the film really is an unironic paean to the days when it was viewed as okay to carry on with a woman who is resisting your sexual advances. I can’t purport to be an expert so thanks for this extra bit of detail about the source text.
And I don’t think in the context of the 50s “put up a fight” meant a literal fight. It’s more like “did she play hard to get or is she slutty”.
*ding ding ding*
“Danny is a nice guy for not doing that.” Damn, the bar for being a nice guy is an easy vault.
It’s a movie, dickhead.
well that wasn’t very nice, was it…?
I hate Hoosiers for a similar reason. “Today we’re going to watch a movie. It’s about basketball, but also about life.”
Coach stays.
Yup, at my school gym teachers also taught Driver’s Ed, Health, and Sex Ed, any time one of them was out for the day or feeling shitty you knew Hoosiers was coming.
At my son’s high school, apparently the go-to movie for that was Tron: Legacy, which is a piece of information so strange I didn’t know what to do with it.
That is random AF (as the kids probably don’t say anymore). Hoosiers at least has the sports to phys-ed connection. In elementary school it was Fern Gully because it had environmental messages (I actually never got tired of that one even though we watched it probably more than once a year). Tron: Legacy must have been the DVD somebody left in the DVD player or something.
You could also watch the “It’s about wrestling, but also about life” movie (VisionQuest). Or the “It’s about bicycle racing about also about life” movie (Breaking Away). Although Breaking Away is legitimately good.
It’s like the annual debate about “Baby, it’s Cold Outside”. Yeah attitudes about gender roles, sexuality and dating in the past were really fucked up but they were what they were and if you’re looking at material that is from or takes place in that period you need to think about the context. Girls were supposed to “play hard to get” and boys were expected to convince them. If she didn’t “put up a fight” she was slutty. Sandy was the kind of girl that would put a fight compared to say Rizzo who was the opposite. There was a whole “good girl” “bad girl” dichotomy back then. I highly doubt they were talking about an actual physical fight. But aside from that the song was juxtaposing the girls being romantic and the boys being gross. The boys were intended to be seen as gross.
Well, I don’t know that I’d offer an unqualified agreement to that, but I partially agree. I agree insofar as: it seems to me that if we have created art/content/media/whatever which reflects poorly on us, it makes more sense to curate that material in a way that recognises this than it does to suppress any opportunity to be held accountable for it. Accountability is absolutely a must, and I suppose that’s where you and I differ slightly in that it’s for this reason that I’m not entirely comfortable outright excusing offensive things by their historical context or their presumed intent.
It’s also worth noting that we’re dealing with media that mythic in terms of how it positions its audience, and how it tries to create a particular mode in its audience. It’s not really mimetic in its construction, ya know?
The best definition of ‘myth’ I ever heard came from one of my media teachers who said that a myth is “Ideology presented as narrative”. That rings entirely true to me, and so I suppose the reason why things like Grease are so challenging to carve up nowadays is that it may not have certain layers of irony intended to undercut the ideology it presents. To be honest, to me it speaks less to the fact that “things were different back then” and more to the fact that, until home video and the internet, a lot of media was created with the understanding that it would be more carefully and specifically curated, so that it’s intended context could be maintained.
(For the record I don’t ever believe that intent excuses harm or offense, but it may mitigate it)
He also gets shoved right after he says it and everyone kinda glares at him.
“I don’t think there’s any reason to think “put up a fight” necessarily means “resist a rape”. In context it honestly just felt like he was being asked, did you have to do a lot of convincing”
yeah, its like the difference between rape and what guys think is rape, right? Its not like you raped her, you just drove her out to the beach and pushed and pushed until she gave in because she was afraid she would have to walk home. thats not rape, right? Its just not taking no for an answer.wow.
I just want to clarify before I respond: that’s genuinely what you think that I was saying? Your comment is being made in good faith, and you inferred from my post that I was excusing behaviour consistent with your example? Am I reading that correctly?
I read your post again, and I have to say, yeah, that’s how I did interpret your post. I can’t really see it any other way even now. if that is not what you meant, what did you mean?
hang on, wait. let me be more precise. I don’t think you think that having to do alot of convincing is the same as rape. I am saying having to do a lot of convincing is often the same as rape regardless of what you think it means.
Okay, but you don’t know what I think, so I’m pleased to inform you that you are incorrect about what I think. Like entirely and totally incorrect about it. I don’t know anything about you but my hope is that you’re not in the telepathy business because you didn’t get it right.The behaviour in question is that a guy in the song asked “did she put up a fight?”.My contention is that this question can mean things other than “did she resist your attempt to rape her?”. I believe that this contention is made fairly evident in my post.As far as I can tell, you’ve drawn an inference that I’m using a narrow definition of rape. To be clear, my definition of rape does indeed include coercion, pressure, all those other things which I literally wasn’t talking about until you implied that I was.All I said, and I don’t think it needs restating but I will anyway, is that “put up a fight” does not automatically mean “resist a rape”, and this holds true whichever broad or narrow definition of rape I’m using.I’d further suggest that there’s quite a few other semiotic indicators in the scene that reduce the likelihood that he’s talking about rape at all. Not least of all is the fact that Sandy does not appear to consider her time with Danny to have been sexually abusive or assaultive. Like: Danny didn’t rape Sandy, so either the guy who sings that line is grossly misinterpreting what Danny’s describing, or he’s referring to something other than rape. Contextually the second seems more likely.I made no comment defending the scene (I disapprove of the entire movie), and I certainly made no comment from which it seems reasonable to conclude that I believe “not taking no for an answer under coercive circumstances” (of the sort you describe) is not rape.Like, sorry, but I just didn’t. I just said “put up a fight” doesn’t automatically mean “resist a rape” and that in the Summer Nights sequence of Grease there’s enough context for me to form the view that the line does not refer to rape.
What, is there good money in the telepathy business? It was an elective at my school, and I took ethics and debate instead.I just use words to get my ideas across, and I use other peoples words to understand what they mean too. I will take you at your word that you do not think from the context of the scene that the person who sings “Did she put up a fight” was talking about rape in any form.But you are wrong. He was talking about rape. Clearly and unambiguously.Yes, you are right, Danny did not rape Sandy. Sandy clearly does not feel that she was raped. In all likelyhood, Danny and Sandy did not have sex prior to or even during the movie.Danny is describing the events of the summer as a braggart, exagerating the events in order to look cool to his friends.The guy who sings the line had never even met Sandy at this point of the movie. He sings the line, believing all the made up bs from Dannys lines of the song. He is not misinterpreting what Danny is singing. Danny is clearly describing a conquest, probably made up to make himself look virile in front of his gang. when the boy sings, “did she put up a fight?” the other boys clearly think that this is something bad from their reaction. they clearly think the boy means did Danny have to coerce her, either physically or pschologically. Either way is or can be rape. All the other boys thought he was talking about what I call rape. and though they think its bad, they do not think it is as bad as it actually is. it is absolutely clear from the context that the boy who sings that line is talking about rape, and not kickboxing or dominos.it is absolutely clear from the other boys reactions that they interpret it as rape, and are disgusted only because Danny wouldn’t have to resort to rape, thats something that lower members of the gang would do.Danny takes this information and later, when he cannot seduce compliance from Sandy at the drive in, attempts to force himself on her, and is stopped only by being kneed in the nuts.I give you the courtesy of assuming you to be misremembering the movie.I am not saying the movie should be banned. By all means, watch it if you want. Go watch ‘Birth of a Nation’ if you want. But I will skip it.Oh, and just because you can use words like semiotic, doesn’t mean you should. while technically not incorrect, using it in the way you have is not normal.
Of course Grease hasn’t aged well and that’s because nothing does.Even Han Solo get’s refered to as rapey for the kiss with Leia in The Empire Strikes Back. A lady friend of mine thinks it’s a pretty steamy hot scene.
Coming from someone who Piers Morgan would call a “woke bloody idiot” as well as someone who fucking hates Grease, this is such a non-controversy. Yeah, Grease has creepy shit, shock of shocks, so do 95% of romantic comedies. (and shut your ass, Piers, the fact that you still have a show is far more offensive than anything in Grease)
No need to cancel ‘Grease’, just watch it with the popular theory in mind that Sandy is actually dead the whole time and it’s her journey to Heaven. She actually drowned in the ocean at the beginning, there’s the whole ‘Beauty School Drop-out” Frankie Avalon in the clouds sequence (although that’s about Frenchie), and the ending where Sandy and Danny drive off into the sky. There’s more to it in some youtube breakdown I’m sure.
https://www.smoothradio.com/artists/olivia-newton-john/covid-19-vaccine-daughter-chloe/
As a lifelong Grease hater (and either you love it or hate it) I’m cheering on anything that keeps this turd out of sight.
I would like to assume that anyone who has seen the movie was smart enough to know when the movie was made, what era the movie was set in, and capable of figuring out that our society back then was not the same as it is now. And if certain individuals who apparently are taking offense by not connecting these fucking obvious dots, they are the actual problem, rather than the filmmakers and the audiences who still love this movie.
Except that most people get introduced to the movie when they are very young because we think it’s a good movie to show small kids. I definitely saw it at 5 and did not understand that it wasn’t from a long, long time ago or that Danny was the same guy from Look Who’s Talking and was somehow still alive. So I can see why some people might be saying “this is maybe not the ideal movie to show in a key primetime spot during Christmas where you’re encouraging viewing by families.”
For sure. I’m just wondering if those same people think films like the Back to the Future movies should also be avoided during the holidays (if they actually air them over there). The BTTF movies contain bullying, attempted sexual assault, misrepresentation of Native Americans and Libyans, spousal and child abuse, attempted incest, use of a vehicle designed by a cocaine trafficker, you know… the list goes on.
One big difference, however, is that Back to the Future in the UK is rated with certificate 15, which means no one under 15 is admitted. As in the US, Grease still receives a PG rating when they have the option of certificate 12 or certificate 15. Additionally, Grease aired at 5pm when families were more likely to be watching with younger kids.
I think Back to the Future does get the same kind of pushback. John Mulaney did a whole bit about how that was a “family” movie, but has a lot not family friendly stuff in it including attempted sexual assault and incest. Back to the Future would absolutely be PG-13 today as would Grease.
BTTF is a PG in the UK.
It was released during Covid into theaters and was given a 15 at least for that release. Don’t know if they re-rated it for other media.
“This best friend, this is another student?” “No, no, no. No, this guy’s either, like, 40 or 80. Even we don’t know how old this guy’s supposed to be.”
The reason Grease should be cancelled is its part of the Boomer ‘our period of adolescence was the greatest period of history” movement in the 70s and 80s that led to so much shitty movies about the 50s, hot rods and diners.Of course this shouldn’t be confused with Gen Xs glorious belief that the 80s was the golden age above all others. As its totally different and we’re right.
As a gen Xer, I hate that 80s nostalgia, my other Xer “friends” worship “top gun” and still listen to 80s rock 24/7. YUCK! in the 1980s, if you were a unpopular nerd that did not like pop culture and pop music the 80’s were a bad time.
Everything about the Eighties looked bad to me then, and still does now. The fashion, the magazines, the films’ photography, the aberrant values, the idiotic optimism. Eighties nostalgia should be outlawed and punished severely, or at least taken as a signal of mental disorder.
With you brother.
It just all seemed like, what the fuck is going on? Like, EVERYTHING was, I don’t know, cursed or something.
Well, the 80s did produce some excellent satire of the 80s. Robocop holds up.
in the 1980s, if you were a unpopular nerd that did not like pop culture and pop music the 80’s were a bad time.Word. The Eighties were a super-bad time.
Nostalgia tends to run about 25-30 years after the fact – long enough for the people who grew up in a decade to get to positions where they’re making decisions about what shows/films/books to make, so on the plus side, we should be moving out of 80’s nostalgia and into 90’s nostalgia pretty soon.
As a 90’s kid, I’m not sure this is better.
the music was better. crunge was better than 80s pop in many ways.
I dunno, I’ve got a soft spot for a bit of New Romantic. That said, what I’ve come across is the stuff that will have been good enough to survive. I imagine it would have been a very different matter had I lived through it.
If you were cool, good, looking, athletic and rich the 80’s were great if not they sucked. I remember being teased for listening to the heavy metal that Xer nostalgia now likes and clearly remember being teased by people for listening to it that now post if on thier FB page.
it was great because those people had cocaine
If you were cool, good, looking, athletic and richYeah…that’s me out!
Hey, now… you only need to exclude me once.
So sorry. I grew up a poor, fat, nerdy, smart, asthmatic shy kid in a very very wealthy school district. life was very hard in that environment in the 1980s. Classmates with BMW and MB cars and rolex watches and shoping in NYC every weekend and never wearing the same designer jeans more than once, and bullying the rest of us for sport.
The 90s nostalgia is already here, at least in fashion. Look at the GenZ kids on TikTok with their baggy mom jeans and biker shorts. Even scrunchies are back in style. As a fellow 90s kid I’m pretty ambivalent about this. I loved growing up in the 90s and I would not want to be a kid today, it seems terrifying. But I’m not ready to see pop culture romanticizing the 90s, it wasn’t just Dunkaroos and Blockbuster, we had protests against racial violence and school shootings and a war in the Middle East just like now.Nostalgia always over simplifies the past though. At least Grease showed some of the issues with sexism and consent etc. instead of portraying the 50s like everyone was so innocent and pure. Unlike another awful nostalgia piece from the 70s – Happy Days.
I don’t really think so. I think the 1980s were the first decade where nerds had a lot of culture aimed at them. Weird Al. The countless SF and fantasy movies made in the decade. Dungeons & Dragons (although technically that was from the 1970s).
Nerds in the 80’s were very not cool, they (we) were picked on an bullied without mercy. were you a nerd in the 1980’s? I belonged to an afterschool DnD club. we were massively ostracized for it.
I know. I’m 50. But the point was that was when culture shifted and began the trend to today where nearly all pop culture is what was once nerd culture with videogames and superheroes considered appropriate for even adults.
Yes my 20 year old kid and I talk about that a bunch but it happened way after the 1980s were over, once most people had computer and cell phones and the internet became used by the masses.
Do you really think it was better in the 1970s, when there wouldn’t even have been the DnD club?There’s a reason things like Star Wars arriving at the end of the 70s resonated so religiously strongly with geek: because it was the beginning of the end of a very long drought. Although of course geek culture would’t really become mainstream until… the mid-00s?
the 70s did not have the crap music, massive consumerism, greed is good, Aids is bad, trickle down garbage. the economy went to hell so there was not as much shame in being poor in the 1970s.
Thankyou for the best summary of what it was actually like to grow up in the 80s I have ever read. I had a much older dad than all the other kids, so I had an ear for classical music and the Big Band jazz of the 40s. Imagine the teasings and beatings those tastes afforded me, at least until puberty suddenly made me taller and stronger than most of my peers.
For some reason, probably best explained by some physcological theory, the popular kids who peaked in the 80s have been on the slog slide downhill and do not want lose the “glory days” like Al Bundy: high school football star.
I don’t know, I was an unpopular nerd who liked some pop music, but like a lot of alternative and I have fond memories of those days. However, unlike my dad, I do not think that good music began and ended in the 80s (um, he thinks that about the 50s up to the Beatles. Yep, he doesn’t like the Beatles.) I listen to other stuff, too. I just don’t hate the 80s.
As a Gen Xer who actually experienced the Eighties, I can confirm that the Eighties have been, hands down, the worst fucking decade of the 20th century, and that includes the one with Nazis in it, which at least produced some truly great films, not Sixteen Candles.
Go back to bed grandad, the nineties were the worst decade of the 20th century.
Reasonably sure the 30’s and the 40’s sucked. Antibiotics, vaccines and health and safety laws make the 90s better than the whole first 1/2 of the 20th century.
Objectively, the 90s were pretty amazing. [and yes, I’m nostalgic, as a 90s kid. But only vicariously nostalgic, as I had almost no actual interaction with contemporary popular culture during the 90s themselves…]Massive, seemingly unending economic booms. Home ownership at a high. Landslide wins for charismatic young politicians who promised a ‘new way’. Crime finally falling fast after the nightmare decades of the 70s and 80s. The Soviets defeated, the US-UK liberal worldview unchallenged by any serious rival – the only geopolitical question was how fast to push democracy and civil rights around the world. Unprecedented wave of democratisation of dictatorships, and liberal reforms in authoritarian states. Political unification and reconciliation across Europe. Relative safety – the terrorist ordeals of the 1980s mostly out of the way (even though the IRA were still active, everyone knew it was the last defiant outbursts of a dying institution, leading up to Good Friday later in the decade); the constant existential terror of nuclear armageddon a thing of the past. At home, management-labour disputes at an all-time low, and low unemployment. An end to inflation. Pundits seriously pronounced “the End of History” – from now on it would be just a kumbaya utopia, unending. Big strides had been made in medicine, while drug-resistant bacteria were not yet widely discussed. Flu epidemics were in the past, SARS still in the future; ebola was limited to low-budget thrillers in the cinema. AIDS was less frightening than it was in the 80s.
Speaking of which: cinema tickets were cheap, cinemas more numeous, and there was a mix of big, touchstone blockbusters with artier, middlebrow fair. If you missed a film (and they ran a long time if they were popular), you could catch up via the booming home video market – puchases, rentals, and just taping you own copies off TV (or “piracy” as we’d call it now), which brought its own subcultures with it. TV was progressing too, with much more varied and ambitious storytelling. Bookstores were plentiful too, and libraries well-funded. A profusion of music stations on the radio, and cheap ways to record from them – mixtapes on cassette and later minidisc, or you could buy (at a low price) on CD, from the numeous music stores. This boom in cultural engagement, and in particular the rise in niches and subcultures, was greatly facilitated by the introduction of amazing, affordable home computers (how astonished people were by Encarta – not only an entire encyclopedia (previously an entire bookshelf) on your computer, interactive and media-filled, but an atlas so detailed that you literally hadn’t seen anything like it before), and above all the internet, Web 1.0, which I think some younger people now don’t realise was the most amazing, liberating, exhilerating thing ever. All those kids in all those small towns, discovering things, and people, and opinions, and culture, and ways of being, that previously they had no way to experience, and being able to experience them alongside other people of like minds, being able to create their own places with their own rules. Oh, and mobile phones, of course – everything became so much safer, so much easier.
And while I’m not a great arbiter of fashions, there was clearly something liberating about the 90s styles – everything was so much more casual, achievable, livable, than the hyperbolic and starkly artificial 80s.
Not to mention that, while in absolute terms the situation was much worse for sexual minorities than it is now, or even in the 00’s, there was a real sense of progress, step by step, from the dystopia of the 80s. Think of something like DOMA: the idea that the movement for gay marriage could have gained such momentum that, for the first time, conservatives would have to pass laws to ‘protect’ themselves from it (and even then, only to allow conservative states to not recognise gay marriages conducted in liberal states), and that such a law would be openly condemned by the President, would have been unthinkable a decade earlier, when the issue was virtually undiscussed. Likewise, ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ seems barbaric now, but it was a huge step forward compared to the previous interrogate-brutally-at-the-slightest-suspicion policy, and it was a compromise that we all expected to be moved beyond much quicker than it turned out to be. The era’s most popular light comedy show had a sympathetically-and-seriously-portrayed gay marriage as one of its key narrative moments!
All in all, while they were no utopia, the 90s were an era of wonderful, and well-founded optimism – of social, diplomatic, economic and technological progress – as well as a relatively relaxed culture that was willing (sometimes too willing) to laugh at itself.
Also, The Simpsons.
I literally said nothing against the 90s in any of my posts. yes the 90s were good i have been complaining about the 80s.
Yes, I was agreeing with you about the 90s.
well written. thanks
The 50s wasn’t a Boomer thing. The guys who wrote Grease were old enough to have had children who were boomers.
The ‘50s are a Boomer-nostalgia thing; they were in short pants hearing about their older siblings’ impossibly cool adventures at the Tastee-Freeze and racin’ for pinks and whatnot, and they subsumed it into their own memories. Similarly, the Greatest Generation isn’t Great because they beat the Nazis, but because they were the Boomers’ dads and moms.
Greatest Generation isn’t Great because they beat the Nazis, but because they were the Boomers’ dads and moms.who then turned into the MAGA hordes.
the boomers right, because the Nazi fighting generation is nearly all 95 years old.
The greatest generation was a term coined in 1998.
Speaking as an Xer, I like a lot of things from the 80s, but kids today need to stop strip-mining 80s stuff and start actually making new things
Also, quit making it all about malls and neon clothes. I think The Americans did the best job at showing the 80s without making it completely ridiculous. I dressed much more like Paige did than like a lot of teens in movies set in the 80s now.
And yet outside “Back to the Future II” we don’t have any 1980s-themed diners! The closest I’ve seen was a few 1980s-themed dance clubs, but even those closed in the early 2000s when GenX got too old for the club scene.
hmmm… this place kind of tried, if you can call “The Golden Girls” representative of the 1980’s.
https://ny.eater.com/2017/11/20/16681470/golden-girls-cafe-rue-larue-closed
I’m forever surprised that we think Grease is wholesome family fun. That is mostly driven by the PG rating which would definitely be PG-13 if that rating had existed. I should not have been singing along to Look at Me, I’m Sandra Dee at 7.But I would make the argument that at least some of the references are meant to be gross. Like we’re not supposed to think that Vince Fontaine is a good guy. We’re supposed to think he’s gross and hitting on an underage girl and possibly drugging her. We’re supposed to think Danny is a jerk for making a move on Sandy at the Drive-In. I don’t think we’re supposed to walk away thinking these were good things to do.It’s not quite the condemnation we would expect in a contemporary movie, but at least part of the point of the musical and many other 1970s looking back at the 1950s projects was that the 50’s weren’t really so wholesome and nice.
I really don’t have much of a memory of having watched the film in its entirety. Mostly I’ve just been “aware” of its existence as this pop-culture ‘thing’ that some people highly revere and quote from.I saw the recent live TV version, and from what little I remember of it at this point, it seemed fun. But did they cut out the parts that people are talking about here?
Cease, is the word.
I watched the musical Grease with my mom who graduated high school in 1959 and my kid who graduated high school in 2019. With all the smoking and sex and drinking I was thinking that kids today are much better off then the kids of “good old days”.
Yep, complaining about old movies is always dumb. It is dumber when the movies are fantasies or comedies that were not taken seriously even at the time. See Revenge of the Nerds. Literally no one who watched that in 1985 or whatever thought that the nerd was sexually assaulting her. She liked it and everyone with a brain knew it was silly and unrealistic.It completely ignores mores of the time where in the 1950’s it was considered part of courting. Not many woman at the time considered guys to be “sexually assaulting” them. There was no pill back then and many places did not even have condoms, so the entire morality at the time was woman should not have sex until marriage.Man, is this kind of thing dumb
Plenty of women were sexually assaulted on dates in the 50s and were traumatized by it.
This guy’s take… it’s like he’s never even spoken to a woman.
Rohypnol wasn’t commercially available until the 70’s. What were people slipping into drinks in the 50’s? Hmm. I guess phenobarbital might work.
Oh God people please don’t go watch BACK TO THE FUTURE I beg you
“we should ban the woke bloody idiots who want [Grease] banned.”So the people who want Grease banned should be cancelled?
I feel like if Piers Morgan were ever to realize that he’s not as smart as he thinks he is, he would immediately fall apart into a million little pieces.
Tried to watch Grease 2 the other day, made it only a quarter way through.
I wasn’t old enough to understand any of the critical discourse that folks here are saying this movie generated. Everyone around me seemed to think it was really great but it made me deeply uncomfortable from beginning to end. I remember thinking that none of the actors looked at all comfortable with their parts. All the boys had crushes on ONJ. I just felt like she wanted to get TF out of there.
The late 70’s was peak Travolta. Thank goodness Saturday Night Fever and Urban Cowboy don’t contain any gross behavior!
There’s always a skit.
Just don’t watch it (or watch it again if you didn’t like it). It’s worked for me!
Just more generation outrage bullshit. The amount of goofballs on the extreme ends of the left and right are making me rethink many aspects of life. Banning a film because of a song lyric might be peak cancel culture stupidity and I’m starting to hate that aspect of the left as much as the Trumper Q morons of the right. If we ever have a 3rd political party in America it needs to embrace a pragmatic centrist viewpoint so that rational people have as much representation as the extremists on both sides that are slowly burning our nation to the ground and sending us into a civil war and death spiral that I promise you not a single one of those idiots on either side are prepared for or would ever actually want. I miss the pre-internet days when stupid people didn’t have a megaphone.
Just more generation outrage bullshit. The amount of goofballs on the extreme ends of the left and right are making me rethink many aspects of life. Banning a film because of a song lyric might be peak cancel culture stupidity and I’m starting to hate that aspect of the left as much as the Trumper Q morons of the right. If we ever have a 3rd political party in America it needs to embrace a pragmatic centrist viewpoint so that rational people have as much representation as the extremists on both sides that are slowly burning our nation to the ground and sending us into a civil war and death spiral that I promise you not a single one of those idiots on either side are prepared for or would ever actually want. I miss the pre-internet days when stupid people didn’t have a megaphone.
The creepiest part of “Grease” is in the lyrics for the song “Greased Lightnin’,” which states:You are supreme
The chicks’ll cream
For Greased Lightnin’What exactly is going on in that supposed High School, anyway?
Only part of Grease that has aged well is how well John Podesta played his alter ego Eugene Felsnic.
Cancel Piers Morgan. Then he can become roommates with Lou Dobbs and start a show called The Repulsive Couple. I won’t be watching.
I read three stories by the previously-unknown-to-me Tatiana Tenreyro this morning and all of her takes on stuff suck