Grease Live Analysis

Grease Live

I will be looking at the 2016 Fox production of Grease Live! particularly the song "Freddy, My Love" performed by Keke Palmer as Marty Maraschino. This version of Grease premiered February 3, 2016 on the cable television station FoxNetwork, was produced by Marc Platt Productions and Paramount Television and was watched live by almost 12.3 million viewers. I am interested in looking at the construction of ethnicity and gender surrounding Palmer as Marty, due to the fact Keke Palmer is African American, and Marty is traditionally played as a Caucasian girl, as well as narrative space and time vs film space and time, and stylized gestural vocabulary. Throughout the show, Marty is played as being overtly sexual and a main center point

of her character is that she is extensively interested in, and actively pursuing men; her only featured song is, “Freddy, My Love”, and is about Marty’s love interest overseas and features lines of her longing for gifts such as, “I treasure every gifty, the ring is really nifty, You say it cost you fifty, so you're thrifty, I don't mind”. The most obvious, and abundant way Palmer shows Marty’s sexuality is through her use of stylized gestural vocabulary.

Repeatedly during the performance Palmer uses her hands to push up and touch her hair. For example, at moment 0:35 on the video clip of “Freddy, My Love” FOX posted on their YouTube channel, Palmer is seen pushing up her curled hair. This is very reminiscent of a popular stylized choice many Pinup Girls would make in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Pinup models were the sex symbol of their time, men hung their pictures in bedrooms and lockers, or hid them away in wallets, and many soldiers kept pinup models photos in their bunks when they were serving overseas, “Whether Hollywood starlet or the girl next door, the pinup was a powerful image during World War II, a symbol of home that boosted the troops' morale overseas and rallied support at home. When pinup girls hawked war bonds, the economy reaped the rewards. When they posed for sexy pictures or wrote letters to lonesome GIs, the women felt good, too, that they were "doing their part" for the war effort.”” (Kernickey, 2002) The models played important roles during the war, and with Grease taking place in 1959, it is not a far fetched idea that Marty could be taking after a popular model of the the time such as Betty Grabel, or, perhaps, Lena Horne, the only African-American performer in the USO, which would also allude to a later scene in the song when Marty is the main performer in a USO stage show. Using the distinct motion of a sultry hair touch adds to Marty’s sexiness in a way that is subtle and character-appropriate (a girl who believes she is more mature than she is).

It is impossible to note a small gesture such as the hand movement unless you also take in to account how Palmer uses her full body to promote Marty’s sexuality.

Looking at moments 2:00 through 2:05 on the video clip of “Freddy, My Love” FOX posted on their YouTube channel, we now see Marty and her friends on a USO performance stage performing for marines. Marty is shown leading the group, she stands in front as the other girls stand behind her dancing, she then walks down the catwalk stage to the back of the group and pulls her arms and hands down the frame of her face, precise to the beat of the song. The way Palmer controls her body when she walks from downstage to upstage is where the display of empowered sexuality. She takes long, circumscribed steps, as well as keeping her gait in perfect tempo to the song. This walk could perfectly be described as a strut. Using a strut as a walk has a long held connotation of being purposefully sexy and evoking, and in regards to female performers, it has long been used as a tactic for women to show off, such as during burlesque shows, modeling shows, or in dance. Strutting is widely regarded as “peacocking” or “to make a vainglorious display; strut like a peacock.” (Dictionary.com) Palmer can easily be described as doing that here. She waltzes down the catwalk in front of a crowd of marines, in a long, glamorous, sparkling red dress to achieve Marty’s pseudo-mature sexuality that is used to entice and

titilate.

Another interesting and important portion of this performance of, “Freddy, My Love” is how the secondary characters of the scene fit into Palmer’s constructed character and area.

Take, for example, moments 0:08 to 0:20 of the video clip of “Freddy, My Love” FOX posted on their YouTube channel. Here, you can see all of the important characters from the scene and their direct contrast to Marty; Rizzo played by Vanessa Hudgens identified as the girl in purple, Frenchie played by Carly Rae Jepsen identified as the girl in pink, Jan played by Kether Donohue identified as the girl with pigtails, and Sandy played by Julianne Hough identified as the girl in the white nightgown. In this scene characters costumes and minute actions define their character when they're in a space absence of dialogue. There is a distinct separation between the four secondary characters that allow them to fall into two categories: innocent and mature. Rizzo and Frenchie are both dressed in loud colors, and sport short-styled hair, Frenchie even takes it one step further by wearing a short satin nightgown, and a fur trimmed robe over top, while Rizzo has short-shorts and a t-shirt. There outfits are a reflection of their characters, both have flirty and sexualized personalities- in fact, Rizzo is the only female character to have sex within the group of immediate female characters during the show. Jan and Sandy, on the other hand, are both dressed in white, a color often associated with purity and

virginity, have long hair- Jan sports hers in pigtails which is a style associated with children, and they are both covered from the shoulders down. This is a sharp contrast to the mature and overtly sexual identity of Frenchie and Rizzo, even a comparison of their body movements provide a tension between the two subgroups. While Frenchie and Rizzo’s movements are sharp, deliberate, and purposefully sultry, Jan and Sandy are stark, silly, and awkward. Sandy barely moves from her starting standing position, while Jan jumps on the bed, twirls her pigtails, and clumsily follows Rizzo and Frenchie to dance behind Marty. The two separate subgroups, innocent and mature, helps us place Marty directly in between as a chaotic neutral. Marty is shown as a true chaotic neutral, “Chaotic neutral is the best alignment you can be because it represents true freedom from both society's restrictions and a do-gooder's zeal.” (Easydamus.com) She isn’t stuck in 1950’s societies call for a sweet, virgin, do-gooder such as Sandy, she is instead, pulled in her own direction of using her inherent sexuality to lure in, Freddy. She isn’t quite mature, she isn’t yet having sex, she isn’t quite innocent, she isn’t dressed in pigtails and full covering, she is instead writing loving and flirtatious letters to men overseas as a way of exercising her maturity in a way that can be seen as immature and passive.