Back To The Fifties Grease

Pre-University Paper from the year 2008 in the subject Musicology, grade: 14 Punkte = 1 (sehr gut), Wilhelm-Raabe-Schule Hannover (-), language: English, abstract: Grease, highly successful in the 70s as both a musical and a movie, is sometimes criticized as being too nostalgic and unauthentic by only showing an idealized version of the 50s. The audience of the 70s, which the movie appealed to, was too young to compare the 50s portrayed in the movie with reality, critics say.3 In this paper, I would like to discuss aspects of the movie and compare them with the reality of the 50s. It is important to see beyond the prevalent plot of the movie, the love story between Danny and Sandy, and to concentrate in more detail on supporting roles and the overall atmosphere. Of course, Grease would not be Grease without its music. The 50s do not only mark the birth of a new style of music, Rock and Roll, but also of a new culture, that of teenagers, a fact which is clearly reflected in Grease. Thus, I will first look at Rock and Roll, and its effects on the development of a youth culture, and then point out a few problems these changes brought with them.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Hollywood studios and record companies churned out films, albums, music videos and promotional materials that sought to recapture, revise, and re-imagine the 1950s. Breaking from dominant wisdom that casts the trend as wholly defined by Ronald Reagan's politics or the rise of postmodernism, Back to the Fifties reveals how Fifties nostalgia from 1973 to 1988 was utilized by a range of audiences for diverse and often competing agendas. Films from American Graffiti to Hairspray and popular music from Sha Na Na to Michael Jackson shaped - and were shaped by - the complex social, political and cultural conditions of the Reagan Era. By closely examining the ways that "the Fifties" was remade and recalled, Back to the Fifties explores how cultural memories were fostered for a generation of teenagers trained by popular culture to rewind, record, recycle and replay.

After the techno-futurism of the 1950s and the utopian 1960s vision of a “great society,” the 1970s saw Americans turning to the past as a source for both nostalgic escapism and serious reflection on the nation’s history. While some popular works like Grease presented the relatively recent past as a more innocent time, far away from the nation’s post-Vietnam, post-Watergate malaise, others like Roots used America’s bicentennial as an occasion for deep soul-searching. Happy Days investigates how 1970s popular culture was obsessed with America’s past but often offered radically different interpretations of the same historical events and icons. Even the figure of the greaser, once an icon of juvenile delinquency, was made family-friendly by Henry Winkler’s Fonzie at the same time that he was being appropriated in more threatening ways by punk and gay subcultures. The cultural historian Benjamin Alpers discovers similar levels of ambivalence toward the past in 1970s neo-noir films, representations of America’s founding, and neo-slave narratives by Alex Haley and Octavia Butler. By exploring how Americans used the 1970s to construct divergent representations of their shared history, he identifies it as a pivotal moment in the nation’s ideological fracturing.

Drawing upon a wealth of original research and entertaining anecdotal material, Guffey unearths the roots of the term “retro” and chronicles its evolving manifestations in culture and art throughout the last century.

Providing an indispensable resource for students and general readers, this book serves as an entry point for a conversation on America's favorite pastime, focusing in on generational differences and the evolution of American identity. In an age marked by tension and division, Americans of all ages and backgrounds have turned to film to escape the pressures of everyday life. Yet, beyond escapism, popular cinema is both a mirror and microscope for our collective psyche. Examining the films that have made billions of dollars through a new lens reveals that popular culture is a vital source for understanding what it means to be an American. This book is divided into four sections, each associated with a different generation. Featuring such era-defining hits as Jaws, Back to the Future, Avatar, and The Avengers, each section presents detailed film analyses that showcase the consistency of certain American values throughout generations as well as the constant renegotiation of others. Ideal for any cinephile, The American Blockbuster demonstrates how complex and meaningful even the summer blockbuster can be.

Olesker's doo-wop portrait of Baltimore is nostalgic, but it has a hard edge.

Musical comedy set in and around Rydell High in the 1950s.