Grease

Jul. 21st, 2006 08:01 am
ladyofastolat: (Hear me roar)
[personal profile] ladyofastolat
I watched "Grease" last night for the first time ever. I'd watched bits and pieces before, and was familiar with the story and most of the songs, but I had never seen it right through.

The ending really bothers me. In this film, we have a "cool" boy who goes on holiday, where he is finally able to forget about image and just be himself. He meets a nice, innocent girl. However, when they meet up again at school, they cannot be together, because he is cool, and it will not do for a cool boy to be seen with an uncool girl. Having a cool image is the most important thing in the world. The only way the nice girl can get the cool boy is to change. She has to wear slinky black clothes, smoke, and sneer.

The implication is also that she will now sleep with him, when previously she refused - and oh how the film laughs at her for her ridiculous virginity. Nice girls will never get the boy. Girls who say no will never be loved. If you are weird enough to wear untrendy clothes, you will never be happy until you change and wear the same as everybody else.

(Yes, he also tries to change a little, by once being seen in a jacket that isn't black leather, but the way she changes is far more thorough. In the finale, he throws off his uncool jacket with a palpable sense of relief.)

Now, I feel a bit of a killjoy in being bothered by this. I certainly don't subscribe to the belief that all fiction has to promote those values that are seen as correct in today's society. So I would never dream of saying that a film like Grease is wrong and shouldn't be shown.

However, it bothers me. There are so many young girls out there today who are feeling the pressure to be "bad" in order to attract the boys. There is such a pressure to be cool, not just amongst young people. People all over the world are suppressing their real interests, for fear of being laughed at.

For example, when I was young, everyone knew that I didn't listen to pop music, which meant that I was a safe person to confess things to. Once, some friends were deriding Buck's Fizz, exclaiming about how lame and uncool they were. "I can't believe I used to like them!" they were saying. Afterwards, every person in that group admitted to me privately that they actually still liked Buck's Fizz, but "please don't tell anyone else." We had a group of friends who all liked the same band, but none of them dared admit it, because said band was "uncool."

I think this is just so sad. So many people in the world are being forced to hide their real natures and real interests because of fashion and expectation. I think it's a shame to see such a popular and seminal film promoting that message so openly.
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