Grease is the Word: Exploring a Cultural Phenomenon
- Submitting institution
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University of Portsmouth
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- 25137122
- Type
- B - Edited book
- DOI
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- Publisher
- Anthem Press
- ISBN
- 9781785271106
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- November
- Year of publication
- 2019
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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1
- Research group(s)
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A - Conflict and Culture
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This output consists of the introduction, individual chapter and the book that contains them, Grease Is the Word: Exploring a Cultural Phenomenon (2019). Oliver Gruner edited this book with Peter Krämer (DeMontfort University) for Anthem Press.
Bringing together a group of 11 international scholars, this book provides fresh insights into Grease as an enduring cultural phenomenon. It builds on Barbara Brickman’s study of the 1978 motion picture, Grease: Gender, Nostalgia and Youth in the Blockbuster Era (2017), while also responding to the enormous global interest in Grease during 2018, the film’s 40th anniversary year. Within its eleven chapters, the book contains the first detailed academic analysis of Grease’s original run on the Chicago stage (1971), new interventions on the role of nostalgia, music, setting and stardom, the musical’s place in online fan discourses and Grease’s various DVD releases. Following its transitions between stage, screen and record, the book traces a “process of metamorphosis,” in Charles R. Acland’s (2003) words, as Grease moves through “a life cycle of commodity forms,” traversing a multimedia landscape and array of historical contexts.
Gruner’s chapter “‘Bland, Who Me?’: Olivia Newton-John on the Road to Xanadu,” analyses Newton-John’s star persona as it evolved through the 1960s and 1970s. He challenges standard assertions that Newton-John was the “bland” second-fiddle to her co-star John Travolta, demonstrating the ways in which her musical range and comic timing – honed in Australian variety shows, British and US television and as a pop star and country music artist – informed her performance in Grease and impacted the film’s production and reception. Gruner’s analysis of Australian, British and US periodicals and fan publications reveal the complexity of Newton-John’s star persona and reframe her place within wider debates on film, popular music and stardom at this time.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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