Game #53: Grease

It's Electrifying!

Ahhh, "Grease", otherwise known as Baby's First Movie Musical. 

If you're like me, you were shown this movie for the first time when you were extremely young. I must have been...what, ten? Maybe nine? the first time I witnessed the wonder and the magic that is this 1970's parody of the 1950's, and I loved it to pieces. I used to sing "Look at Me, I'm Sandra Dee" in my bedroom, right before I sang both parts of "You're the One That I Want" to myself. I had a blast.

Maybe it's because we all loved this movie when we were children that there was such huge backlash against it when the film's fans grew up. You hear those songs often enough, and they suddenly become reminders of your lost innocence, and you feel sort of betrayed by the film because NO, high school is not a constant party with swing dancing and showtunes, but maybe it's a good thing that real high school isn't like Rydell because people are really awful to each other and there's sex and unplanned pregnancy everywhere, and you're constantly being told to be yourself but also that your true self is lame...

There's a lot to unpack is what I'm saying.

Grease is not a perfect film. I, however, love this movie in more than a purely nostalgic way, and it took seeing it again with some of my closest friends ten years later to really articulate why.

It's not because of John Travolta. Not totally, anyway.

"(This Whiskey Tastes Like) Grease": The Rules

Moose found this WONDERFUL chocolate flavored vodka that was so sweet and delicious that you could shoot it. I found this super cheap vanilla vodka that you could not do that with. We mixed one or the other with coke, orange soda and root beer to bring us back to the days of the old malt shop.

And if you can find some alcoholic ice cream, then you're REALLY in business!

Easy Mode
1. Title Drops: Drink whenever you hear the word "Grease"
2. Drink when they drink
3. Drink for Daddy Issues
4. Drink when someone touches their own or someone elses hair
5. Drink when someone is called by their last name. It must be their real last name. "Rizzo" is a nickname. Probably.

Medium Mode
All the above rules apply. Also...
1. Drink whenever someone drops the title of the song they are singing. If the title of that song has anything to do with "Grease", drink twice.
2. Drink for sexual innuendo.

Hard Mode
All the above rules apply. Also...
1. Drink when someone laughs at another's expense.
2. Drink for things that aren't things anymore.

Yes. Yes that includes actors.

The Players

The players for this drinking game are...

Krissy: Hopelessly devoted to this movie (Medium)
Pooh Daddy: Played Danny Zuko in high school (Easy)
Bride of Buggerlas: Played Roger in an all-female production in middle school (Easy)
Dame Poppy Middleton: Thinks watching this movie is the Worst Thing You Could Do (Medium)
Big Moose: Got chills. They were multiplyin'. (Hard)
Dijan de Nero: Felt sympathy for Eugene (Hard)
Shirley Whiskas: As sexy as Cha-Cha, and much less stereotypical! (Hard)

A Little Bit Queer

A large portion of my friends fall somewhere on the LGTBQ spectrum. This is important because it turns out that your initial emotional and physical responses to this movie might give you a good indication of whether or not you yourself are a budding queer child. 

Let's look at some examples. Dame Poppy, straight cis-gender girl, had a very difficult time finding anybody in this film attractive. Granted, much of this was due to her utter, intense disdain for this film and everything it represents, but even objectively speaking, she thought she could do much better than young John Travolta.

"I do have to give him respect, because this is the man who gave us 'Adele Dazeem'" - Dame Poppy

It's probably fair to say that John Travolta is not innately appealing to the MODERN straight lady. Maybe in the 70's it was a different thing. If you're a gay man, though? Holy shit, Travolta's a sex GOD in this movie. The swagger, the tight shirt, the muscles, the slicked-back hair, the combination of intense emotional depth and the obsession with keeping all that depth locked away from the world to appear cool and unattainable...that all adds up to make a sex symbol somewhere on the level of Brian Kinney.

From "Queer as Folk". Look, y'all better get familiar, because we're going to be talking about that show A LOT in a month or two.

And of course it helps that for a good ten minutes of the film, Travolta's wandering around in tight white booty shorts DESPERATELY trying to get good at some sport, any sport.

Mmm, look at dem legs.

Meanwhile, if you're a lady who likes ladies, you don't just have one option for possible crushes, you have SEVERAL. There is, however, one who stands out.

"I think Rizzo was the first woman I was really attracted to and didn't know it," said Bride of Buggerlas, and who can blame her? Stockard Channing, although she is obviously much too old to play a high-schooler, KILLS it in this movie. She's tough, she's funny, she knows how to use the color pink as a weapon, and she's probably the most sexual character in the film. It's a thin, thin line, especially when you're pubescing, between "I want to be this person" and "I want to sex this person", and Rizzo easily falls square on that line. 

God, you're cool. Look at dem legs. Also, can we look at Sandy's FACE right now?

Looking beyond who finds who attractive though, "Grease" is fraught with homoerotic undertones, and they exist simply because the script faithfully depicts what high schoolers are like, and my GOD are things confusing when you're in high school. Of course, according to canon, gay people don't exist at Rydell High (except possibly Eugene, but it's more than likely he's just a dweeb), but just because you say something doesn't exist doesn't mean it's so. Popular fan theories abound that Rizzo and Frenchie are secretly getting it on, and the reason why Rizzo's so mean to Sandy is because she's jealous that Frenchie is paying so much attention to her. And need I remind you of the wrestling scene? Or any scene where the T-birds are all together, actually?

"HAVE YOUR GAY AWAKENING! HAVE YOUR GAY AWAKENING!" -Bride of Buggerlas and Shirley Whiskas.

These poor kids. It's the 1950's and they're confused. However, even if you're a straight, cis-gender, vanilla person, this movie's still slinging a lot of mixed messages at you.

What Do You Call It ... Consent?

At some point in my life, I must have thought that Sandy and Danny's plotline in "Grease" was romantic. I must have. I shudder at that thought now, because their love story is everything that's wrong with teenaged love stories ever. 

At its core, "Grease" is the story of two people from wildly different social worlds attempting to reconcile the strong feelings they have for each other with the way the rest of their world perceives them. Danny is clearly crazy about Sandy, but he's unable to express his feelings honestly because his cool image won't allow it. Sandy wants to have fun with Danny and the Pink Ladies, but her preppy, Pollyanna persona won't allow that. They each have to shelve their hang-ups about the masks they wear in order to get what they want: a date with the person they like. Trouble is, the consequences of those transformations have much larger implications for Sandy's life than for Danny's.

"Tell me about it...stud."

People generally take issue with Sandy's transformation at the end, since it's another case of a woman changing herself to be with a man. I never got the impression that this transformation was permenant, though. It comes across more as Sandy making a dramatic statement to Danny to get his attention; the stuff that she talks about in "You're the One That I Want" doesn't deviate from what she says she's always wanted, which is a committed relationship with a man who's going to be true to her. Also, Danny was all set to ask her to go steady before Sandy burst onto the scene with her tits out. Her new hairdo is just icing on the cake at that point, because Danny always liked Sandy for who she was. His hang-ups were with himself.

"Or go up to her and go "hey, I like you". Just TALK to her!" -Shirley Whiskas

Danny does attempt to change throughout the film, but his attempts are half-hearted and mild compared to Sandy's, because no matter what he does he is still in the position of power in this stand-off. Yeah, Sandy can make him jealous by talking to other guys, but she's not going to go beyond that. Danny, however, can bang as many chicks as he wants and nobody will bat an eye because that's the kind of behavior that people expect from him. That's why a dramatic gesture from him would have meant more, and why it's kind of uncool that he attempts to force himself on Sandy in his car.

That's not quite the face you want your date to have when she looks at you.

This scene was cited by every girl watching as terrifying to their childhood selves, and as something that made them worried about becoming a teenager. This scene taught them that teenaged boys see teenaged girls as slabs of meat, and relationships as a series of transactions you have to make in order to steadily get laid. Coupled with Riz's pregnancy scare in the second act, it doesn't paint a nice picture of womanhood. It's made worse by the fact that the scene is immediately followed by "Oh, Sandy", a song written for John Travolta about how he doesn't understand what he did wrong. 

"Grease" is an interesting film because despite its setting and all the gender baggage that comes with it, most of the female characters are autonomous and active. Rizzo and her Pink Ladies have control over their sex lives, and as a result the boys have a strange kind of respect for them. Rizzo gets space and room to speak in a way that Sandy, who follows the rules and tries to be conventionally attractive, does not. So maybe Sandy's transformation at the end of the film isn't an act of assimilation; it's an act of self-preservation. By becoming a woman who's tough and says what she means, she becomes a person who gets what she wants instead of bending over backwards to please everybody.

So...in that sense...is "Grease" at least a little bit feminist?

What? NO! SHUT YOUR WHORE MOUTH!

Okay, maybe that's a little strong. But it's at least making a statement about masculinity and femininity that's more subtle than I think we give the film credit for. 

For what it's worth, I haven't taken any kind of gender studies class, so this isn't grounded in any real theory. But I would totally attend a gender studies class if they used this movie as course material. I want a detailed examination of interpersonal relationships between two men as exemplified by Danny and Kenickie!

"What happens is that everyone leaves and then you have a big feelings talk and you’re best friends. But you have to have the feelings talk on your way out the door." -Big Moose

Where Are They Now?

If this movie was made ten years later, it might have had an "Animal House"-style montage that showed us what happened to everyone ten years later. This is what that montage may have looked like. 

Danny and Sandy got married after graduation, and after years of bickering and false compromises, got divorced. Sandy traveled Europe to experience the wild teenage years she never got, and Danny got a job as a travel agent, as well as several children out of wedlock.

Patty Simcox married a nice boy from her neighborhood and bore him two children. She felt some slight dissatisfaction as a housewife, until the formation of her local Homeowner's Association, of which she became President.

Jan became lead editor of a popular tabloid magazine. She and Roger wrote each other letters every so often for years, until finally meeting up and remembering that they were a little in love in high school. They got married.

Frenchie and Rizzo moved to New York City to join the Beats and form a polyamorous commune with Kenicke. They all had great sex with each other.

They would all look back on their time at Rydell high as a beautiful time in their history, truly the best years of their lives. And they would thank God that most of them weren't in "Grease 2".

"The first time I watched a movie and really wished I had that time back, it was Grease 2." -Dame Poppy

The Results

"Grease" is a campy romp with some insanely catchy music and oversexed thirty-year-olds pretending to be teens, and the drinking game will give you an excuse to revisit this nostalgic favorite (or least favorite). The great news is, this drinking game works great. The better news is, I have more rules for you!

Drink when Someone Puts Something in their Mouth
Usually it's cigarettes, but people eat a lot in this movie too. It probably symbolizes carnal desire. Pooh Daddy points out in one scene where Danny is surrounded by the T-birds that he is the only one NOT eating, a detail I think is really cool.

Drink when Someone is Treated Badly by the Opposite Sex
Everyone is mean to each other. Usually to hide sexy feelings.

Drink for Veiled Homoeroticism
Draw your own conclusions here, don't just take my word for it.

"I don't know if giving him a bat's a good idea..." -Dijan de Nero

Friends, it's come to my attention that the holiday season is once again upon us. In keeping with my tradition of reviewing Christmas movies that aren't really about Christmas, I've picked a very special film that very few of us had seen before our test screening.

When I said I wanted a cool little gizmo for Christmas, this isn't exactly what I had in mind...

Like what you see? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter, at For Your Inebriation and @KrissyPappau respectively. You'll get weekly updates, behind the scenes drunk talk, and other chatter!

For Your Inebriation is written by Krissy Pappau (Hollis Beck). All "Grease" images and videos are owned by Paramount Pictures.