“Summer Nights” is one of the biggest hit songs in the entire movie and it makes a big first impression…in a bad way, if you listen closely. The song is mostly harmless (teenagers gossiping, embellishing events, etc.), but then there’s that one ‘tell me more’ verse: the girls ask, “was it love at first sight?” and the boys, “did she put up a fight?” I honestly can’t find another way to interpret this except as an allusion to date rape. I suppose you could think, well, ‘was she playing hard to get?’ But even that concept is pretty problematic. Who gets to decide that someone is ‘playing hard to get’? Perhaps they are just saying ‘no’ and it’s not what you want to hear.
However you interpret this line, you can’t escape the fact that it brings up major concerns about consent. When my children have their first sexual experiences, I hope that neither of them will pressure another person or feel pressured by another person. It irks me that Grease normalizes the idea of pressuring women into sex and portrays that behavior throughout the movie as something that horny teenage guys just do. And there is truth to that, but that doesn’t make it OK.
When my 8-year-old is a horny teenage guy (ew!), I want him to be the kind that doesn’t do that. And if my daughter ever finds herself in a situation like that, I would like her to have the confidence to not be pressured and to permanently walk away. I guess what I’m saying is that my big beef with Grease is that it’s seriously lacking in positive role models and messaging—so lacking that I can think of hundreds of other movies that would be better candidates for introducing my kids to all the coming-of-age stuff.
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