Grease has been hugely popular ever since it came out in 1978 – yep, it’s already that old. It’s rated 7.2 on IMDb and 70 by MetaCritic, and if you look on the IMDb message boards for Grease, for instance, you can see it’s still being discussed actively.
Most have probably seen it, most probably even like it. Even in 2014 the movie’s popular, and it doesn’t go away either, for example:
“The No.1 Party Musical GREASE is returning to Australia in a new multi-million dollar production. It’s got groove, it’s got meaning and it’s burning up the quarter mile!”
What most people don’t realize, though, is that Grease is very sexist. The definition of sexism: “prejudice or discrimination based on a person’s sex or gender”.
Sexism includes the stereotyping of a person based on his or her gender or the belief that his or her gender is superior to the other. People need stereotypes, or schemas, to create order in their world. It’s easier to tag a certain stereotype to a thing or person or event, than to have to judge every new phenomenon anew. This is what happens in every person’s brain, unconsciously.
Those stereotypes and other gender-based notions are often reinforced in advertising, in children’s toys, television and movies, in books, cartoons, comics, and of course, pornography, and there are countless other examples. Everyone is exposed to sexism every day, and mostly, unknowingly.
While to a certain degree one would expect to encounter sexism in an average action movie (buff hero to save the damsel in distress) or a horror flick (the dumb blonde screaming the loudest), Grease seems fairly innocent. It’s a cute, classic romance, but in fact, it’s not. It’s riddled with stereotypes and all sorts of values about how the genders should behave.
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