The woke prequel to the beloved rock musical Grease reportedly features a song about white supremacy along with lyrics about the exclusion of “Jewish, Asian, brown or Black, single woman or gay, on the wrong side of they.”
Streaming on Paramount+, the Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies TV show takes place four years before the original film and essentially pushes every woke theme that the cultural left has popularized in recent years, from LGBTQ sexuality to obnoxious identity politics.
According to the Daily Mail, “family favorite tunes will be re-sung alongside new musical numbers including one about white supremacy, while the 1950s student population at Rydell High School will be re-filled with a varied mix of LGBT and black high schoolers unseen in the 1978 hit.”
The show also features a “non-binary tomboy who struggles to fit in alongside her multicultural bandmates.” Nonbinary trans actor Ari Notartomaso, who plays Cynthia, said the story tells what it may have been like for a “nonbinary” person during that time period.
“Queerness, gender nonconformity and transness throughout time hasn’t always been exactly the same,” Notartomaso said. “All of us are a product of the culture that we live in, but it is really special to be able to tell that story of what it may have been like in the 1950s.”
The third episode in the series tackles racial themes of white supremacy as it reportedly grapples with “discrimination within the Rydell High community.”
“Revolving around the stories of a shy black girl named Hazel and Davila’s Latina character Jane, the episode will include a musical number called ‘In The Club’ in which rich white country club founders are animated out of an oil painting to sing about white supremacy,” noted the Mail.
The song includes the following lyrics: “When you’re in the club, we’ve got each other’s backs. As long as you’re not Jewish, Asian, brown or Black, single woman or gay, on the wrong side of they.”
Themes of sexual orientation will also be explored through the “queer character Cynthia” while other themes such as “50s patriarchy” get a mention.
Regardless of the woke themes, critics have not been kind to the new Grease.
“As a drama in its own right, it’s neither automatic, systematic nor hydromatic. If you’re a hopelessly devoted Grease fan, this probably isn’t the one that you want,” wrote Michael Hogan of the Daily Telegraph.
“The best word to describe ‘Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies’ is ‘baffling.’ ‘Overstimulating’ would be another good one. ‘Ludicrous’ would also sum it up nicely,” wrote Kelly Lawler of USA Today.
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