"Oh Danny, Is This the End?"
banished.substack.com
May 11, 2022 • 25M
"Oh Danny, Is This the End?"
Is the musical Grease past its sell-by date?
Appears in this episode
Amna Khalid
Banished is a show about our reassessment of the many people, ideas, objects and even works of art that conflict with modern sensibilities. What can we learn about our present obsession with cancel culture by examining history, and what might it mean for freedom of expression? And how do we reconcile opposing points of view without turning on each other? For subscriber-only content, visit http://banished.substack.com.
Episode details
4 comments
One of the most popular musicals of all time, Grease seems to have fallen from grace. Most recently, two schools in Australia were planning to stage a joint production of the musical this year, but shelved it when students complained that the content of the musical was “offensive.”
Why has the musical come under fire? Is it time to retire it? On this week’s Banished, Amna Khalid speaks with Scott Miller, founder and artistic director of New Line Theater, an alternative musical theater company in St. Louis.
"Oh Danny, Is This the End?"
I admit I am one who thinks Sandy debases herself to "resolve" the play's conflict. She likes herself at the beginning, but she doesn't fit-in with the Pink Ladies, and Danny does not accept her as-is. She doesn't grow, she regresses. The take-away (if any) is peer acceptance is a strong motivator. The conversation with Scott Miller didn't change my mind but I am willing to give it another watch and listen. Maybe my thoughts are superficial.
That said, Grease seems to be the Brett Kavanaugh of musicals. Maybe there is some value, but one can do much better.
I very much appreciated Scott Miller's generous attitude about helping folks to move through this era we're in, to further deeper thinking in the arts. Not sure what happened at the end of this conversation, it looped over and over with him repeating the word score, score, score . . . on my computer.
To me, an explanation for a lot of the lack of conversation today, the cancelling out of the other currently battling about in our culture, is laced in the individual's easy availability to have an experience of power via social media. Having an amplified voice is fun. It is the dopamine hits to the brain, in a social media culture experienced largely in solitude, that is the problem. We need social engagement, eye to eye interactions, to help mediate our emotional states biologically, and that can't happen in alone spaces.