Grease This!

I hate the movie Grease so intensely that at times, I’d halfway like to hunt down and “grease” the entire cast and crew. I’m pretty sure being exposed to it gave me Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, so now it’s just a matter of figuring out whose ass to sue. That’s what we do when something offends us these days, right?

This monument to the vapidity of 1970’s pop-culture was released when I was in the fifth or sixth grade, as I recall, and I had no use for it whatsoever. It, however, seemed to dog my every step like a deranged stalker. I couldn’t go anywhere without hearing that nauseating theme song, the God-awful “Summer Love”, “You’re the One That I Want”, and “Greased Lightning”. The last of said musical abominations still leads me to grit my teeth and yearn for a machinegun and several hundred rounds of ammo every time I think about it.

At one point, during the song's galling intro, John Travolta huffs the word “shift”. At the time, it seemed that every kid in my class -- in a mass delusion akin to that which swept the generation before us when they were reading “f***” into the intro of the Beatles’ “I Saw Her Standing There” -- somehow heard the word “s***”, and not “shift”.

Shift, people. Shift! The imperative form of the verb “to shift”. This is what one does when wishing to change gears in an automobile. S***, on the other hand, is what you’re full of if you hear anything other than “shift” when you listen to the damned song. It’s about a car, folks, not an outhouse. While bad enough in and of itself, this irritant is only the tip of the iceberg that is my loathing for that celluloid atrocity.

I like movies set during the late fifties and early sixties, and have since I was a child. Musically, I cut my teeth on Daddy’s collection of “Oldies”. I watched Happy Days and Sha-Na-Na, and by the time I graduated high school, I’d seen Blackboard Jungle, Rebel Without a Cause, The Lords of Flatbush, The Wanderers, and God alone knows how many others. Hell, I was the only kid in my class who knew who George Lucas was before Star Wars was released, as I’d already seen American Graffiti.

So you see, it’s not the fact that the film is set in the fifties that pisses me off. Hell, I’m nearly forty and I still run around in a black leather jacket and blue jeans, looking for candy stores to loiter in front of, (If you think I’m gonna write “in front of which to loiter”, go -- never mind. I‘m tryin‘ to keep this reasonably clean…) so obviously the “look” of that era had an influence on me.

The fact that it’s a musical doesn’t bother me either. I’ve seen and enjoyed many musicals over the years: Camelot; My Fair Lady; West Side Story; and even The Sound of Music. No, Grease’s uniquely emetic effect upon me is rooted in very different causes.

To this very day, I’m still not sure why Grease was made and released. My guesses are that either some goombah out in Hollywood called all his friends and said: “There’s this ten-year-old kid named “Bean”, who lives in Georgia and likes oldies. Let’s make this film and really piss him off” or that the generation it portrayed had been out of school for twenty years or so, and was experiencing a touch of collective nostalgia. I hope it was the latter. Otherwise, that whole machinegun-lust bit is gonna get one hell of a lot stronger…
I can’t understand how that generation -- in the throes of nostalgia or not -- could have enjoyed the flick, as it’s so terribly inauthentic. The music sounds like disco or the worst of ’70s pop, with a few superficial ‘50s flourishes added almost as an afterthought. Simply put, it’s f****** dreadful.

Then there’s the look of the characters. Let me get this straight: The movie’s supposed to be about a group of high school students, right? OK, so why the hell does the entire cast appear to be in their late twenties or early thirties? Are they supposed to be mentally handicapped, or “remedials” on “the five year plan”? I mean really! How damned far am I (or is anyone else, for that matter) expected to suspend disbelief? These “kids” don’t look like they should be attending classes, they look like they should be conducting classes!

How difficult would it have been for the producers, directors, etc., to have gotten actual teenagers, or at least actors and actresses who were in their very early twenties to play the roles? Not very, I’m guessing. No, I think the reason for selecting a gaggle of performers who, in all probability, put in for Social Security and joined the AARP ten or so years after the movie was released, was so they could cast John Travolta and Olivia Newton John in the lead roles. That’s the only possible explanation.

Moving right along, there’s the matter of Mr. Travolta (or “John Re-volta”, as I used to call him) himself. For something like twenty years, I despised the guy. Did anyone dare ask what I thought of him, I’d unhesitatingly answer: “He’s a ‘one-trick pony’. He can’t play anything but stereotypical, vacuous, ‘Guido’ prettyboys.” Owing to his amazing turnaround/comeback during the late ‘90s, I’ve turned my own opinion around 180 degrees, but at the time, just seeing his name or face effectively guaranteed that I wouldn’t be watching whatever film he was acting in.

For all that it was released in ‘77 or ‘78, I didn’t actually get to see the movie until 1984 --my senior year in high school -- and it wasn’t my choice. I would rather have done wind sprints in fiberglass underpants than watch the damned thing, but I was at my girlfriend’s house, watching TV in her basement, and she wanted to see it. Or at least I assume she did. It’s entirely possible that we both endured that -- that -- Buchenwald of a movie, each thinking the other wanted to see it.

As I recall, she did want to watch it, for all that I had other things (namely her) in mind. Nevertheless, I managed to sit through every dry-heave-inducing frame of it without acting like too much of a prick. We were supposed to be studying for our end-of-the-quarter exams, as I recall, but I found studying every bit as boring as the horror unfolding on the screen before me, so I spent the evening dividing my inattention between my math book and the tube.

Finally, the agony was over! It was time for some serious “kissyface”, time for me to put into play yet again Mao Tse Tung’s dictum: “Two steps forward, one step back”, a rule understood by every teenage boy who wasn’t a "closet case" or hadn’t figured out what his “gear” was for by that age.

“In front of the folks, there’s nothing so becomes a boy
As modest stillness and humility;
But when at last the wretched movie’s over,
Then imitate the actions of the tomcat:
Stiffen -- uh, never mind --, summon up the blood (Check. No problem there!)
Discard (feigned) fair nature for much-favored ardor,
And lend the eye a lecherous aspect.”

“____, love? It’s eleven o’clock. Isn’t it time to Jeff to go home?”

This is one of my deepest and most personal reasons for hating Grease.

To this day, I’m amazed at the ways in which a person can condescend even when making a simple statement and asking a question. My own parents (bless their plain-spoken, Republican hearts) would have said something more akin to: “It’s eleven. Your friends need to get their asses out of here, and you need to get yours to bed.”

“Isn’t it time for Jeff to go home?”

What the hell kind of question is that? Jesus, lady! I dunno. Is it? Is my Ma on your front lawn in a chariot outfitted with scythe-bladed wheels, demanding to speak with me? Is Daddy pounding on your door -- targe in one hand and claymore in the other, whorls of woad adorning his face, my brother and several cousins standing behind him with chunks of burning peat atop their spears (and that is how you thought of us, is it not?) -- hollering: “Send m’ wee nickum bastard of a bairn oot-by now, else we‘ll burn doon the hus wi‘ bath eizel an’ bleeze!”?

If the answer to either question is “no”, then it’s patently obvious that it ain’t time for me to go home, but rather time for me to vacate the premises, and that you shouldn’t be employing the interrogative form of the verb “to be” at all. You should “cut to the chase” with a declarative sentence: “It’s time for Jeff to go home” or even an imperative: “Jeff, get your ass out of here.”

But enough about that.

Noooooooooo!!!!!!! This was just wrong! I’d sat through that entire damned flick, acted like a complete saint, and actually let her study, and this was to be my reward? Lost time and effort, boys and ghouls. That’s all the more reason for me to hate Grease.

And then there’s the final scene. I believe I’ve been very honest on this blog, insofar as my failure to adhere to “the straight and narrow” is concerned, have I not? I’ve done this for a reason, though. Actions have consequences. To a great extent, we reap what we sow.

Therefore, even though I was a nasty young punk at the time, I was actually offended by the “message” conveyed in the movie’s final scene. For most of the movie, “Sandy” (Olivia Newton John) had been a very dull, very boring (but still pretty) “nice girl”. “Danny”, (Travolta), on the other hand, was a degenerate. So what happens during the last few minutes of the film? Does “Danny” get his s*** together in order to win “Sandy” over?

Not only no, but hell no! “Sandy” is the one who comes hoppin’ an’ boppin’ out, looking (for all that the flick was ostensibly set in the ’50s) every inch the prototype of a 1980s, “big hair” heavy metal slut. Now I ask you, gentle reader, what the hell kind of message does that send?

Gotcha, didn’t I? Reading some of the things I’ve written on this li’l blog of mine, you’d probably think I’d say: “You go, girl!”

Au contraire. I say anything and everything but. I say the exact opposite, as a matter of fact. I’m not seventeen years old anymore. I’m pushing forty. At this age, it’s actually tragic to see women and girls attempting to “liberate” themselves via the dubious method of validating themselves and/or justifying their existence by their genitalia alone.

One of my dearest friends -- I’ll be honest: To my mind, he’s a brother, not merely a friend, for all that he’s nearly a decade my junior -- has two little daughters, and the thought of either of them behaving in that manner when they reach their teens sets my blood to boiling. I’d knock the teeth out of any zit-faced little sonofabitch who dared to encourage them to do so, precisely because I used to be the kind of zit-faced little sonofabitch who did such things.

“What a long, strange trip it’s been”, as the Grateful Dead once sang.

And now you know why I hate Grease as passionately as I do.

Comments

[Carmy]

6th grade. Grease was made for little girls like me who weren't yet allowed to see Saturday Night Fever. I loved it. BTW .. when a girl invites you over to watch a movie, she doesn't really want to watch the movie. Your bad for sitting through it!! Küßchen aus der Kälte!

[Dave Bean]

LOL! Some deep, dark, intuitive part of me should have told me that you liked the flick!

As for the latter matter? She actually *studied* while we watched it -- or rather, while I *subjected* myself to it.