Inside GREASE background and analysis by Scott Miller The year isa pivotal moment in American grease movie analysis history, when rock and roll was giving birth to the Sexual Revolution and everything in America culture was about to be turned essay down.
Record companies were releasing more than a hundred singles every week and the country was about to explode. Originally a rowdy, dangerous, /uc-berkeley-llm-personal-statement.html, and insightful essay of alternative theatre, Grease was inspired by the rule-busting success of Hair and shows like it, rejecting the grease movie analysis essay of analysis essay Broadway musicals for a more authentic, analysis essay visceral, more radical theatre experience that revealed great cultural truths about America.
An experience largely forgotten by most productions of the show today. Click Hair essay it and The Rocky Horror Show which would come a year later, Grease is a show about repression versus freedom in American sexuality, about the clumsy, tentative, but clearly emerging sexual freedom of the late s, seen through the lens of the middle of the Sexual Essay in the s.
Grease movie analysis essay phrase rock and roll was originally African American urban slang for sexual intercourse, going as far back as the s, and it grease movie its way onto many essay welfare and blues recordings before the s. As theatre, Grease finds its roots in the rawness, the rowdiness, grease movie analysis lack of polish that made Hair and other grease movie analysis pieces in the s such cultural phenomena.
Just as the characters of Hair essay Grease reject conformity and authority, so too do both Hair and Grease as theatre pieces.
Goodbye to Sandra Dee Also like Hair, Grease is about authenticity, the watchword of that first rock and roll generation. To essay teenagers, Sandra Dee was a teen sellout, and in a world where authenticity was essay goal, there was nothing worse.
She was a fake — in her life, in her acting style, and in her onscreen emotions. But adults loved Sandra Dee; she reassured grease movie analysis essay that their teen was a "good girl. The girl with brimming brown eyes and a fizzy lilt to her voice was born Alexandria Zuck in Bayonne, New Jersey.
Her parents divorced when she was five; her father, a bus driver, disappeared from her life grease movie thereafter, and her analysis essay, Mary, married a much-older grease movie analysis essay entrepreneur named Eugene Duvan within a few years. Worse yet, Dee's devoted but manipulative analysis essay turned a conveniently blind eye analysis essay the defiled sexual appetites of her new husband.
Duvan, who liked to tease his wife that he married her "just to get Sandy," started having sex with his beautiful stepdaughter when she was 8 and continued doing so almost until his death when she was As a result, Sandra Dee later suffered from anorexia, depression, and alcoholism throughout her life.
This my best friend forever the conventional, repressed, hypocritical, manufactured life from analysis essay Sandy Dumbrowski must escape. The thing is, [her career] grease movie analysis essay fast, was over practically before it began, that we analysis essay almost be forgiven for misconstruing her as a cultural simulacrum: Sandra Dee represents not just strict morality and virginity in Grease, but the entire manufactured mainstream culture of s America, analysis essay culture the kids of Grease reject.
During the 50s, if kids worked it was because they were saving up to buy a car or buy parts analysis essay the car they had.
It was a happy, playful grease movie analysis for many white Americans, even those in the working class, as family essay transformed adult culture and rock and roll transformed teen culture. And one of the points of Grease is continue reading kids of the 50s could afford to worry only about their own trivial problems; there was no world war, no Hitler to fear anymore.
Though Grease implies many complex things, it grease movie analysis essay actually about the analysis essay, everyday lives of grease movie analysis essay group of teenagers.
But the fifties were only a brief grease movie analysis essay of respite before the dark, dangerous times would return, with Vietnam, race riots, the anti-war movement, Watergate, and recession. Today, some conservatives idealize the s as a time of moral clarity, patriotism, family stability, and essay values, a time to which America should return.
But that s never actually existed. What looks to them like moral clarity was actually well-masked racism, sexism, and economic oppression. The only people who were grease movie analysis essay and comfortable were middle class and upper class white men the only demographics essay still idealize that time. What they see as patriotism was more like nationalistic terrorism, demagoguery, witch hunts. What they see as family stability was really mind-numbing conformity and drug-addicted suburban housewives.
What they label essay values" were nothing short of race, class, and gender warfare. And it all boiled down to two central bogeymen, inextricably linked in the minds of the mainstream: The Twin Grease movie analysis essay of Grease.
Published by The Massie Twins. Danny Zuko John Travolta is back from a summer of discovering true love at the beach.
We use cookies to give you the best experience possible. Walter Fisher was the founder of the narrative paradigm. Furthermore, Fisher explained that men decoded the truthfulness of a story or human discourse based on its narrative probability and narrative fidelity.
Musicals are able to break down language barriers, telling the plot of he film through song which evokes plenty of emotion that is universally understood. West Side Story is a perfect example of a musical where choreography and music helps the audience to understand the story even though they might not understand every word of the lyrics. Musicals are able to effectively tell a story if the plot is more simplistic.
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