This was a year in the building wave of revolution in sexual mores in America, and it is difficult to remember, sometimes, where we were then, psychologically. But, now, in the age of relentless drumbeat about "date rape" and "No means no," the pivotal epiphany scene of "Grease" is an unabashed attack on saying "No."
In this scene, the heroine, Sandy, who has rejected having sex with her boyfriend in a car at the Drive In movie, is rebuked by Rizzo, the sexually liberated, and very sexually active femme fatale, for rejecting love. Rizzo, at that moment, thinks she is pregnant. We are told she got pregnant when the condom broke, and her lover was not her boyfriend, such as she has a boyfriend--she maintains she can have sex with whomever and whenever she pleases. Sandy expresses her regret that Rizzo has gotten into this sort of trouble, and Rizzo launches a full on frontal assault against Sandy and her sympathy.
It's not me, who is really to be pitied, but you, Rizzo declares. "There are worse things" she says, than getting pregnant. You can behave badly, teasing boys, flirting with them when you have no intention of having sex with them, leading them on and disappointing them and, worst of all, not experiencing real passion yourself.
Sandy is enlightened by all this, and with Rizzo's help, she transforms herself into the greaser's dream girl, and she appears in sexy, black leather slacks in the grand finale, strutting around provocatively, and promising to deliver on the promise of sexual consummation.
So, Sandy's declaration of "No," which her suitor honors in the car, is portrayed as a nasty and dishonest rejection of life, joy and the American way. She is brought to the threshold of sexual gratification and honest man/woman sexuality.
Now, the Phantom is with Rizzo's basic argument in some ways: The Phantom spent a good part of his teens searching for girls like Rizzo, and being confronted with preconditioned, striving girls who had been prepared for his amorous advances by all the might of parenthood, adult authority of church and state.
It is true, the Phantom admired and valued girls who were strong and daring enough to reject all that indoctrination and launch into sexual adventures. But he also recognized most of these sexually liberated girls--the "early adapters" -- had no long term plans, and when they got pregnant, these girls thought that ought to result in marriage, a baby and dropping out of school.
Even then, the Phantom recognized the girls who withheld were typically focused on graduating from college and launching careers.
What he was searching for was the girl who saw she could do both.
But he did ultimately accept, when a girl was not ready to have sex at the drive in, even if she had been tacitly promising to "Go all the way," it was her choice to chicken out.
The message of "Grease" is that decision to stop things in their tracks is a moral affront, a personal and ethical failing, as surely as the paratrooper who freezes in the door of the airplane and refuses to jump, a failure of nerve and an act of cowardice to be despised, a "worse thing."
The argument, from the 1970's sexual revolution, is an interesting one today, in the setting of the tidal wave of opinion which supports the college girls who get so drunk they cannot even recall having sex, but then file complaints of rape against the boys who had sex with them while they were in no condition to resist.
What would Rizzo say about them?
No comments:
Post a Comment