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What Grease Taught Me About Education “Oh that's cool baby. You know how it is, rockin' an' rollin'
an' what not.” My brother got a copy of Grease for his birthday one year, and proceeded to watch it nearly every day. As a consequence, I have probably seen Danny Zuko pretend to be all tough and misogynistic in front of the T-Birds more often than I have seen any other movie. Grease means a lot of things to a lot of people – especially primary school aged girls of all stripes – and I must confess that it taught me something very important about our Western education system. I refer to one scene in particular. The ‘Greased Lighting!’ sequence, in which the T-Birds and Mrs Murdock sing about how Kenickie’s car will soon be a speedy chick magnet. For any of you poor souls who have not seen the movie, perhaps knowing the song only through 1990’s “Grease Megamix” (in which they dubbed the line “You know that I ain’t braggin’/She’s a real pussy wagon” over John Travolta clearly mouthing the word ‘shit’), I will describe the action. Kenickie, Danny Zuko’s right-hand man, has bought a new car. He drives it in to a garage to show it off to his fellow gang members. There is much snorting and derision, and Kenickie looks all shades of despondent. Zuko leaps to his friend’s defense, with the immortal lines: Now, this car could be systematic. The spirits of the gang are rejuvenated, and they launch into a catchy
song and dance fantasy sequence in which they do up the car. Just before
the song ends, we see the car in all its awesome glory - overhead lifters,
four barrel quads, fuel injection cut off, chrome plated rods, four-speed
on the floor, purple French tail lights, thirty-inch fins, So far, so good. What does this have to do with education? I’m getting to that. Later in the film, we get our first glimpse of the restored Greased Lightning, after the boys have fixed it up ready for some illegal street races with high stakes against the diabolical Crater-Face. The car looks better than it did, but nowhere near as good as the awesome machine we saw in the fantasy sequence. In other words, the dreams of the T-Birds could not be matched by the stark reality of their high school expertise and lack of funds to buy quality components. I had exactly the same experience all through school. In year one, I had the brilliant plan that our class should host a circus, and all the other classes would watch us. I envisaged brilliant magic tricks like the one where you put your finger through a hole in a matchbox so it looks like it has been cut off, juggling, and clown tricks involving seltzer and cream pies. The idea died in the arse, even though Mrs Hodson seemed quite amenable when I presented the scheme, because a bunch of six year olds can barely wipe their own arses, let alone orchestrate the spectacle I pictured in my head. This chasm between imagination and reality continued, especially in the realm of process writing. I would have vast dreams of multi-chapter stories involving a Psycho Fat Cat or The Greatest Deathly Hero, all of which would peter out after a page and a half of writing. The less said about my attempt to write a Doctor Who masterpiece entitled ‘The Seven Doctors’ in year six the better. High school was no better. Art continued to be a disappointment as skill levels could not match vision. Here the Grease parallel became most apparent, especially in senior years. I lamented constantly that I did not have unlimited funds and dozens of serfs to see out my desires, like Andy Warhol or that other guy. I made messes in the hopes that they would be considered Kandinskyish genius, and used textas and crayons under the guise of ironic reference to childhood scribble. I called my work ‘multimedia’, to give the impression that whatever I had created was exactly what I had planned from the outset. My visual arts diary was as big a lie as Danny’s fib about banging Sandy under the docks last Summer. You get the idea. Skip forward to university: Honours Year. My first taste of academic defeat as I failed to reach the minimum grade required for future study. My grand plans for a comprehensive thesis on the social impact of coal mining on the Bulli region was a big a failure as Frenchie’s foray into beauty school. Sure, I had some laughs, and connected with my family history but, like Frenchie, I was forced to return to uni for the equivalent of Grease 2. I think that the Rock Eisteddfod is the greatest example of this phenomenon. It's the only event in the world where crepe paper and a bedazzler is the first step in what turns out to be a large number of very poorly executed ideas set to bad music and performed by girls and guys who should never enter the same room as elasticised fluorescent spandex and lycra. Grease clearly demonstrates that the public education system enables all students who apply themselves to realize their dreams - albeit in mediocre fashion. Personally, I would have rewritten the end of the movie, to reinforce this message. To wit: The Pink Ladies stand looking on, unimpressed, as the dented russet
Charger, it's old duco barely disguised with a thin matt black paint
job literally slapped on - that is, where the panels haven't rusted
away completely - burbles up the storm water drain in a cloud of blue
smoke and wheezes to a halt, crouched on it's sagging springs gently
vibrating as the worn rings and timing chain ping and rattle away in
the rich smell of burning oil. |
