1970s Musical About 1950s Teens Meets 21st Century Stupid: Social Media Is Hating on 'Grease' Now

This is a dumb story about dumb hot takes. We live in a dumb time full of overly serious people who left to their own devices will destroy art and usher in another dark age. That’s where we are thanks to social media, which was supposed to connect and enlighten us all.

The BBC, which once aired the likes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Blackadder, and Yes, Prime Minister — which were all deliberately insane and often offensive on purpose — showed the anodyne Grease over the Christmas period. Grease is the tame-by-today’s-standards musical in which Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta played 1950s teenagers despite both being in their mid to late 20s at the time.

Granted, making John Travolta sing in public could be offensive. But it’s not what the haters are hating.

The woke moment should have jumped several sharks and nuked a warehouse full of fridges by now. It’s annoying, scoldy, and played out. Newton-John agrees.

Especially All in the Family. I bet they’d be too dumb to realize that the show was not intended to support racism and bigotry, but rather to mock such attitudes. Archie Bunker was meant to be an unsympathetic caricature that Meathead would enlighten. It was interesting that people found Archie to be a lovable character and Meathead an ungrateful jerk. It seemed that the writers recognized this and kind of toned down Archie a bit as the show progressed.

“No one in our original cast, male or female, was remotely gay. I knew them all.”

I didn’t say they were.

Thanks for the correction on Jim Jabobs.

Do you disagree that the movie was gay kitsch?

Alone at a drive in movie was another song that was originally MINE ( I played Miller in the original Chicago production.) Our show in CHicago was top heavy with songs, and I rehearsed that one for a week, but it was eventually cut. I wasn’t even aware it was put back in when the show went to NY. My original part, was the Teen Angel, who did Beauty School Dropout. I was cast as a main guy when the guy who was cast as Miller, stopped showing up for rehearsals. I still wound up doing Beauty School Dropout a bunch of times when the guy cast as Teen Angel got sick.

Even worse ...old movies depict men courting and marrying their wives before they bedded them...a biological male and a biological female...

and then the children...all of them carrying to term...

and the men working to support and running to protect their families ...with GUNS !!!!

We cant have that ...

It’s possible. Maybe the director(Randall Kleiser)was gay. I honestly don’t think I even sat through the movie, having seen bits and pieces of it accidentally from exposure on TV.What I saw of it was so completely different from the original play and the experience of being in it, I couldn’t force myself to see it all the way through. And Grease 2 I didn’t see at all. The movies looked way too slick and “jokey”, and that might be an element of kitsch. Self-conscious, not meant to be taken seriously..even the touring Broadway production a year or two later I saw with one of my old Chi castmates, Jim Canning,in his old part, who did it on B’way for years, and it was also too slick for my taste,all the actors overdoing “greaser” accents and playing everything to the back row, hyperkinetic movement, the usual things that irritate me about (some) B’way musicals. Besides, I didn’t know you were talking about the movie(s) so I was “defending the honor” of our modest Chicago production, which cost virtually nothing to produce and which drew all kinds of people in to see it. We did a quick impromptu show for Dick Clark (who said he might be interested) on a day we were usually dark, and still managed to get a couple hundred additional folks in the audience. Clark came up into the dressing room after the show and talked with us. It was great. One girl in the cast, who played Frenchy, apparently couldn’t resist doing some shtick, so she played a starstruck teenager and screamed “DICK CLARK!!” and crumpled to the floor, pretending to faint. Clark grinned faintly.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.