Grease holds the distinction of being one of the most remarkably comprehensive and cohesive pursuits of a singular thematic concept in the history of film. Everything about Grease—both narratively and cinematically—comes together to consistently define, project and reiterate its theme. Truth and reality should at all times be subordinated to the happier alternative of façade and illusion.
The Cast
The single-minded pursuit of this theme begins with the casting. The story is about teenage high schoolers in the 1950’s. John Travola was in his early twenties, Didi Conn in her late twenties and Olivia Newton-John was thirty years old when the film was released. Stockard Channing was born in 1944; not only was she playing a character in high school student in the 1950’s…she was a high school student in the 1950’s!
Grease
Even the title is essential to the cohesion of this theme. What is the purpose of putting grease on one’s hair? To defy practically every natural law of the universe. Grease can make hair defy gravity by forcing hair to stick straight up. Greasy hair can thumb its nose at the forces of motion by allowing hair to remain perfectly in place even on a rollercoaster. Grease makes hair and illusion and the user all the happier because of the control it provides.
The plot of the movie is that Sandy and Danny enjoy a summer romance in which they “go together” because freed of crushing peer pressure of the greaser friends he hangs out with at school, Danny was able to just be himself. As the film progresses, it becomes clear that Danny’s tough-guy front does act as a cover for a basically decent guy with a real potential for being sweet. Since he doesn’t possess the inner strength of character (mainly because he’s a teen boy rather than any fundamental flaw specific to himself) to resist that peer pressure, drop the greaser façade and be the summer Danny that Sandy loves, complications ensue.
Like Danny, Rizzo puts on a tough front that hides something a little softer beneath. Unlike Danny, however, her toughness seems less a façade than just the dominant aspect of her personality. Her relationship with Kenickie undergoes turbulence when she discovers she may be pregnant. This is the point of contention which seems to drive a permanent wedge between a couple whose relationship thus far as been defined by tension and arguments. Just before the film concludes, however, the pregnancy is revealed to be yet another illusion as Rizzo’s initial fears prove unfounded. The news that she is not pregnant immediately creates reconciliation between the two: a lateral move right back from the harsh slap across the face of reality that Rizzo and Kenickie are irreconcilably incompatible and destined for romantic doom.
The Fifties
Needless to say, perhaps, while slang is there (“cruising for a bruising”) and the allusions are there (“Look at me, I’m Sandra Dee”) and the cars and hairstyles and the overall look and feeling, it is a presentation of a period in history through the distorted prism of nostalgia mixed with the influence of pre-existing entertainment. The two highest rated television series during the production of Grease were Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley. Both were sitcoms set in the same warm and fuzzy pop culture recollection of the 1950’s and it is surely no coincidence that the film resembles both those shows—as well as actual movies made about teenagers during the 1950’s—than it does how teens in small town American high schools actually looked and behaved during that decade.
All of these individual aspects contributing to the theme of preference for the falsity of illusion versus the truth of reality help the film drive inexorably toward its climax which puts the exclamation point on the concept. Credit must be given where due, however, and to its credit, the ending is a bit trickier and complex than it might have been. Sandy decides that in order to get back to where she and Danny left off in the summer, she was must transform her goody-two-shoes appearance into something sultrier and—by implication—more sexually available. Danny, meanwhile, has already been (to his credit) trying to reject the peer pressure as best he can by risk his greaser credibility by becoming a jock. The finale is an exuberant celebration of the reconciliation between Sandy and Danny, but the irony arrives in layers. The change accomplishes her goal: Danny goes wild for the new Sandy and they are reconciled: racy Sandy and jock Danny being a closer representation of summer Danny. After all, Sandy has already explicitly asked whatever happened to the Danny she met in the summer with the insinuation being that summer Danny is her preference. But suddenly, jock Danny rips of his letter and fully reverts to greaser Danny, complete with leather jacket. So who rides off into the sky at the end? Provocative Sandy and greaser Danny, facades disguising the truth of the real Sandy and Danny who met and fell in love over summer.
