Grease: contexts, genre and narrative

Grease (Randal Kleiser, 1978): Danny Zuko, leader of the T-Birds, and Sandy Olsson, who met over the summer, meet again in their final year at Rydell High, where the T-Birds and the Pink Ladies keep them apart until Sandy's transformation at the end of the year.
Made by Paramount in 1978 from a stage musical but set in the late 1950s, so it looks back at the 1950s with 1970s attitudes to sex, gender and youth.
Its stars John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, and its success as a soundtrack album.
Nostalgia for 1950s America (cars, drive-ins, school dances) at a time of social change.
A musical and a teen film: songs that reveal inner feelings, large dance numbers, high-school iconography such as cars, jackets and the school dance, and young adults playing teenagers.
Narrative: two groups, two lovers kept apart, the race at Thunder Road, an ending in which Sandy, not Danny, changes, and themes of identity, conformity and peer pressure.
A short worked paragraph linking a context to a specific moment in the film, as the comparison question rewards.
Worked answers with their marks, and practice questions to try, each headed 'Practice question' with its marks.
Quote only short lines of dialogue you're sure of, a few words at a time, and base every point on what happens in the finished film.

What you need to know