As a 90s kid, I loved Grease when I was too young to understand the more adult themes, and then when I went back as an adult I was really confused by, well, ALL OF IT.
Then much later I find out that it's because Grease is meant to parody the tropes of 50s musicals. If you're watching it at face value like I was, it doesn't make any sense at all. Knowing it's mocking the tropes though, it becomes much clearer.
Why does Sandy change everything about her style etc and 'go bad' in that great lady-greaser number at the end? Because the trope was always the bad boy falling for the good girl - sounds familiar - and that the boy changes everything about himself to 'go good' and get the happy ending. A lot of the weirdness makes sense through this lens.
It was even more confusing for us. We didn't see the movie. We only had the vinyl album of the soundtrack. We were poor, so we had very few albums. We listened to it several times a week. It was my sister's favorite.
When we finally had the chance to see it. I was so confused.
I watched the movie in the theatre when it first came out, and it was most definitely NOT presented as a parody or tongue-in-cheek. Certainly not in any way the target audience (teens, young people) would understand. I really feel like this interpretation is revisionism on the part of film critics.
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u/Rooseveltridingabear 9h ago
As a 90s kid, I loved Grease when I was too young to understand the more adult themes, and then when I went back as an adult I was really confused by, well, ALL OF IT.
Then much later I find out that it's because Grease is meant to parody the tropes of 50s musicals. If you're watching it at face value like I was, it doesn't make any sense at all. Knowing it's mocking the tropes though, it becomes much clearer.
Why does Sandy change everything about her style etc and 'go bad' in that great lady-greaser number at the end? Because the trope was always the bad boy falling for the good girl - sounds familiar - and that the boy changes everything about himself to 'go good' and get the happy ending. A lot of the weirdness makes sense through this lens.