Summer Loving

Directed by Randal Kleiser in 1978, Grease became one of the most successful musicals in cinema history and, to the surprise of many, a classic for future generations. It was an adaptation of a musical that had shone brightly on stages from Chicago to New York, with original music by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey, to which were added some new songs. But what explains its extraordinary success?

The plot is simple: after a platonic summer romance, Danny and Sandy unexpectedly meet each other again at the same high school, in their senior year. Disagreements and misunderstandings arise since Danny, leader of the T-Birds gang, has to maintain his “cool”, macho style over being romantic, something which shocks the virginal and shy Sandy. The story is told through musical moments, splendidly choreographed by Patricia Birch, which bring us the warm days of summer, the vitality of youth, vibrant colours and a soundtrack inspired by the rhythms of 1950s rock and roll, which remained stuck in the ears of successive generations. Although a musical break with the glorious years of Rodgers and Hammerstein, these moments maintain all of the artificial, even delirious, mechanisms of the old American musicals, such as “Beauty School Drop Out” with the fabulous cameo by Frankie Avalon, well-known among teenagers of the 1960s. The truth is that all of us can hum “Hopelessly Devoted to You”, “Summer Nights” and “You’re The One That I Want” to this day.

The presence of John Travolta in the leading role also attracted much publicity, thanks to the furore his dancing prowess in Saturday Night Fever had caused a year earlier. Curiously, Travolta had his comeback to the Hollywood limelight in 1994 with Pulp Fiction, by Tarantino, which featured another infamous dance number that brought new audiences to his films. In Grease, Travolta takes notes from Elvis Presley, with fewer pelvic thrusts but the same shiny leather jacket.

Of course, we are dealing with the artificial, nostalgic, late 1970s version of 1958/59, and it is this constructed memory that we have inherited and has fed subsequent generations. Grease is not plot: rather, it is setting, anachronistic and idealised, about the conventions and iconography that we have built up around this period of change. There is a timelessness that makes it all the more appealing, and even the leading actors are adults playing adolescents!

Grease doesn’t just depict the teenage years of the baby boomers, it was also directed at young audiences who became a significant force in mass culture. Post-war prosperity enabled their parents to help them study for longer, and even go to university. Adolescence was invented, youth was prolonged and created new habits of consumption, of sociability, and new iconography represented in rock and roll culture. Music, cinema and magazines were unknown to their parents and marked the beginning of a bona fide cultural revolution. And the car, now accessible to these teenagers and omnipresent in this film, facilitated a freedom never seen before, including from the point of view of sex.

The beginning of the sexual revolution is the central theme of this film. The character that symbolises it is Sandy, whose journey takes her from every parent’s ideal teenager — virgin, shy, conservative — to the young woman who, in the finale, dressed in black leather, owns her sexual desire singing “and I need a man”. This ending remains controversial. Was her transformation undertaken simply to please “her man” or was it a true break from the reactionary values of Middle America? For many, Sandy stands as the symbol of female sexual emancipation, which emerged in force in the 1960s and reached its peak in the 1970s. I believe that the character of Rizzo, the rebellious and sexually active young woman who functions as a counterpoint to Sandy, is far more interesting and substantial. Her sarcasm and free spirit are patent in the songs “Look At Me, I’m Sandy Dee”, in which she makes fun of the shy teenager by referring to the famous actress who played white middle-class America’s ideal American teenager, and, above all, “There Are Worse Things I Could Do”, when she suspects an unwanted pregnancy. Her reaction is one of the future far more than it is one of the end of the 1950s.

It is true that some scenes cause discomfort and perplexity when viewed with today’s eyes, and there have even been attempts at cancellation. It is a “white” film, depicting the suburbs of a white middle-class America where there is a glaring lack of racial minorities. There are only the working-class Italians and Poles, who had risen in social status thanks to post-war economic prosperity.

There is an abundance of what we would call “toxic masculinity” in the gestures, language and attempts at sexual harassment, seen as a normal part of being a man. But this was the world in which the teenagers of the 1950s had been raised, and these kinds of questions would only be asked much later. Grease isn’t a social film, but a musical about the social lives of these high school students.

We are left with the nostalgic and idealised images of those 1950s, in which the American dream could co-exist with an ostensibly rebellious youth. Not long after, the civil rights movement, Vietnam, the assassination of political leaders and Watergate would lead to the loss of American innocence.