The 1978 musical flick Grease has a new woke reboot at Paramount+, and it includes a new non-binary lead character, a musical number about white supremacy, and a plotline about “transness” in the 1950s. Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies takes place four years before the original film but will center around themes popular with today’s cultural left.
A report from the Daily Mail says the series will mix songs from the original film “alongside new musical numbers, including one about white supremacy.” In addition to its new all-female lead cast, the rest of the characters will be “re-filled with a varied mix of LGBT and black high schoolers unseen in the 1978 hit.”
At the head of the cast is “gender nonconforming nonbinary trans actor” Ari Notartomaso, who plays a “non-binary tomboy” named Cynthia. Notartomaso described in an interview that the purpose of the new series would be to explore today’s woke politics in a 1950s setting,
“Queerness, gender nonconformity and transness throughout time hasn’t always been exactly the same. 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.”
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Ari Notartomaso shares how the new series “Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies” will connect with a younger audience. https://t.co/eVEkgFvBot pic.twitter.com/emBugqwact
— The Associated Press (@AP) April 7, 2023
According to the show’s description, Cynthia and her “multicultural bandmates” go on to spark a “moral panic” at Rydell High due to their non-conformity.
An upcoming episode of the series titled ‘In The Club’ will also reportedly follow the story of a shy black student named Hazel, who is harassed by the rich white country club members, who are animated to life from an oil painting. According to the Daily Mail, the club members put on a rendition about white supremacy, including the 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.”
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Paramount+'s prequel series seeks to rectify the transgressions of the original by acknowledging them and mocking them in #Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies. https://t.co/4NhNjecD6l
— Rotten Tomatoes (@RottenTomatoes) April 9, 2023
The series’ first two episodes aired on April 6 to poor audience reviews, receiving just five out of ten stars on IMDb. “Quite possibly the worst piece of garbage I’ve ever seen,” said one review. “Big fan of the original movie, and this is an absolute embarrassment.”
Critics have not been any nicer to the show. A review by Adrian Horton of The Guardian describes the series as “the prequel nobody asked for.” A scathing critique published in USA Today reads that, “Pink Ladies is such a mighty morass of bad ideas that it’s hard to keep it all straight,”
“In spite of each episode being overpacked with characters, bad musical numbers and prosaic dialogue, the series is entirely lacking in substance behind all the over-exaggerated style… it is the worst kind of offender in Hollywood’s obsession with franchising existing stories.”
USA Today awarded the series just one half-star out of four.
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