watching 'Grease' with a feminist gaze

[abbeylockhart]

Not seen it for years.

Dp says 'isnt it sexist?', will watch and see...

Couldnt that song be interpreted as she likes sex and when she gets horney she goes for it instead of holding back (like the other girls) ? Or am i clutching at straws with that theory?

yes - I see it more as a the words of a woman who knows she enjoys sex - she would see it through, wouldn't she?

Do you know I was just musing about starting a thread in FWR to discuss feminism and pop culture/films and spotted this!

I wanted to discuss it more 'generally' though. Would anyone mind if I started a seperate thread?

On the subject of Grease, I haven't watched it in years but do remember watching it obsessively with me friends in high school. I might be looking back with rose tinted specs a bit but I think we mainly discussed the female characters and decided Rizzo was the one we would most like to be.

As an interesting aside, one of the characters in Grease (a teacher, I think) was played by Fannie Flagg who has written some great feminist books (imo). I wonder if she had any input?

Another thing- not a boob job in sight.

Flippinada- go for it. Have you ever read the 'Friends' feminist thread? It was epic.

Fannie Flagg was the nurse, so she'd have had time for behind the scenes input - it's a tiny role.

Same time next week for St Trinnian's then? Not seen that one before but I can imagine there'll be plenty to go at!

What kind of St Trinians?

She wrote fried green tomatoes! Never knew that!

Fried Green Tomatoes is FAB. The book much more so than the film which is soppified and Hollywood-ised to the point where it's almost unrecognisable.

I'm going to hunt out the Friends thread!

Do you mean the film or the book SGM?

Book is far superior IMO!

I don't be;ieve that Sandy compromised herself. I think that her relationship with Danny allowed her be herself. She no longer had to conform to the virginial 'ideal' of that time.
I feel that the film is about liberation.

Sorry but that's being far too optimistic.

Starting to smoke when you hate it, isn't liberation. Changing into a vamp when the man you love fell in love with you as a boring Good Girl, isn't liberation.

That sounds a bit like the lap-dancing is empowerfulizing argument

I'm not so keen on the film SGM but you're right about the general rareness of a mainstream film with female leads.

I think you could probably count on one (maybe two) hands the number of female-led films in the last 10-20 years.

If someone can prove me wrong I will be delighted !

I want to grab Sandy by the shoulders and give her a shake. If you have to change everything about yourself to fly off in a car singing "We'll always be together", he ain't worth it.

Eleanor I think the smoking thing is probably a bit of a red herring. In the early 70s when the film was made there was far less information around about the ills of smoking, and I think Sandy posing with the cigarette was more to do with the coolness fator of it all at that time. From our 21st century perspective it's worse than it was at the time.

No sorry, that's not true.

I was twelve or thirteen when the film came out and can remember going to see it and actually, the health risks of smoking had already been established and they'd already started doing the warnings on the packs.

And also, it wasn't just the smoking. It was the fact that she changed every single thing about herself, and this wasn't presented as liberation - the songs made it quite clear that she was uncomfortable with this transformation, she stumbled and coughed, and made an alarmed little face that she was getting it wrong. It wasn't presented as liberation, it was presented as Sandi putting on an act to get her man. That's what I saw when I was a very young teenager and I remember even then, thinking how unfair it was that she'd changed so much and he'd changed so littel, and I think to try and put an empowerfulizing message on top of that, is just wishful thinking

but surely sandy's change of outfit and crazy perm was her way of casting off the clothes that were childish, like the bows in her hair, rather than conforming to him

tight jeans are alot more liberating to wear than those awful hooped skirts

ONJ had to be sewn into those Vamp Sandy trousers: hardly comfortable jeans!

Someone made the point about Sandy's two guises as madonna/whore upthread. Don't you think that's what is going on there, showing how Sandy is presented with a choice of eating shit with a fork or a spoon, the non-choice of madonna (repressed prude "look at me I'm Sandra Dee, lousy with virginiteee") or whore (sexually 'liberated')?

Rizzo is the other 'liberated' character, but her song is full of sadness and pain really isn't it.