Media Diary - Week 6

                                                     
                                                     Guilty Pleasures Week

                                        

Grease 2 is the 1982 offspring of the eponymous 1978 film musical Grease. It focuses on the current students of the first film's Rydell High School, including the new iterations of the Pink Ladies and T-Birds. On the arrival of British student Michael, the cousin of Olivia Newton-John's Sandy from the original, he causes a stir in the school's social circle by falling for a Pink Lady named Steph - played by Michele Pfeiffer in an early role. Grease 2's attempt to top the first film's success both critically and commerically failed and cancelled plans for a further 'threequel' and television series; prompting critic Roger Ebert to name it "one of the worst films of the year", adding that the sequel "went over the same ground as the original [Grease], but at half-speed."

Perhaps most shocking is that I wholeheartedly enjoy this film, although it has many flaws. It's easy to view Grease 2 as a terrible cash-grab while the original was still making money, but in my mind this film has more consistency than some of the songs from Grease. I would say that it also weaves a more interesting, dare say it more complex narrative than the first film. Although I'll make it clear that this film is not, to me anyway, the better film. I believe that the target audience would be 'the mainstream', the people that enjoyed the first film and especially families because of the attraction of the first film's same cheerful and colourful song and dance numbers. 

I view this film as a 'guilty pleasure' because it's usually never talked about, even when we may look upon it with rose-tinted glasses. I first stumbled upon it on TV, amused that there was even a sequel to such a well-renowned film as Grease. Out of curiosity, I watched it and lived to tell the tale; it's in a way underrated. I wouldn't be quick to talk about it because of its notoriety among 'unnecessary sequel' lists and especially in the age when I can look it up if I wanted to know about it - no matter how buried. Grease 2 is a surreal experience. I often think 'how did that happen?' as if it were an elaborate joke, yet it isn't and that's the real gag. An oddity if there ever was one.

 I have a conflicted, often contradictory reading of the film. On one hand I accept Grease 2 as its preferred reading, a sequel to the first film and its notion that this one man has to change his whole personality in order to attract the opposite sex. Afterall, did you see the ending of the first film? Of course you did. On the other hand, I like to think that this film exists in its own little pocket universe and ignores the original because of the strange and often bizarre songs - clashing with the tone of the original. I find myself again dealing with a negotiated reading, because the plot device of having to change yourself for someone else still doesn't quite sit well with me, as in the first film.

Why does Grease 2 appeal to me? Well, it's a sequel to Grease. If I found on TV the film 'Psycho 2' I'd be very amused and curious. Oh, wait, that film does exist. In any case, the appeal of this film for me comes from returning to that world after the bizarre ending to the original. Some of the same characters do, in fact, return alongside a new cast and there's interest to be found in the change in the status quo in regards to the T-Birds - now villains (it really depends on your reading of the original if you already thought they were villains). Some truly inventive and weird sequences occur happily throughout the film, take for instance a sequence in a sex-ed class involving the song 'Reproduction' as the students discuss the many queries of, you guessed it, reproduction. In case you wondered what that sounded like:         

    



So in a sense, Grease 2 appeal directly to your need for Escapism. Being set in the 1950s (two years after the first, to be exact) it provides an amount of fantastical scenarios potent to the generation having not been raised in that time, with its colour and fashion quite alluring. There is a surreal quality to watching a film set in this time because of these things. These films also address personal issues, such as Love and Belonging, which may help identify (pardon the pun) Personal Identity as an appeal. 

To finish, I'd say give Grease 2 a try. It may not hold up and it certainly isn't better than the original but it's somewhat of an oddity to watch. Who knows? You may even enjoy it.