Grease: Movie Analysis

Words: 1961
Pages: 8

The year is 1978 and Grease has just made its way into theaters and it’s about to be the “biggest grossing movie musical in film history, grossing more than $340 million dollars at box offices around the world” (Swartz). The film tells the typical story of two love-struck teenagers who are vastly different from one another. Showing that opposites can attract, greaser Danny Zuko and goody-two-shoes Sandy Olsen fall in love over the summer only to be reunited for their senior year of high school. However, when the school year starts up again, that’s when their trials and tribulations really begin due to peer pressure keeping them apart. Looking through a new historic and feminist lens of the 1978 film adaptation of the musical, Grease, sex, love, …show more content…
In the 50s girls were supposed to be well behaved, prim, proper, buoyant, and all things lady-like. However, in the 1970s, “Fashion designers promoted a new sensuality, producing miniskirts, hot pants, halter tops, and formfitting clothes designed to accentuate women's sexuality” (Changing Sexual Morality). In the last scene of the film when Sandy turns into a dare-I-say bad ass, her skin tight leather pants and red pumps made all the eyes in the audience widen. Her change of dress from the frilly poodle “is not a descent into decadence for Sandy; it is a throwing open of the doors of her moral prison” (Miller). From scene also depicts Sandy as being more confident and outgoing than she has been throughout the movie. The reticent sweetheart turned into a woman who knows what she wants…hence the song that the duo Sandy and Danny go on to sing, “You Are the One That I Want” (Grease). In the song also Sandy is claiming that to her heart she must be true, this allows for her to take ownership of herself and is ready to move onto this more progressive era. “Sandy isn’t just saved by how she dresses; she’s saved by singing rock and roll. It isn’t until she can achieve the authenticity and sexual frankness of rock and roll, that she can be healed” (Miller). While some may argue that this can’t fully be associated with a feminist text since she still does get the man in the end, showing that you can’t erase women’s dependency on men. However, when Sandy sings, “Goodbye to Sandra Dee,” at Thunder Road, it’s not for Danny. It’s for herself (Grease). The good girl image she was locked into by her family and her times was keeping her from something that she really wanted. Along with Sandy, the four other Pink Ladies of the film represent female characters that are anything but angelic. They are flawed women and they