by Emily Maesar, Staff Writer

As far as universal teenage rebellion goes, music is a pretty undeniably aspect of the whole experience. At least, if media has anything to say about it. But also, I feel that it’s a fair assessment on a personal and anecdotal level outside of films, television, and books. Music remains a huge way that people, specifically teenagers, learn about themselves and their overall taste. It's often one of the first things teens use to craft their external selves, so it becomes deeply personal.

While, as a genre, musicals aren’t specific to teenagers, they’ve ebbed and flowed in popularity over the history of human entertainment - including teen media. With that being said, I thought it would be fun to look at two of the biggest teen musicals of different eras and why they emotionally resonated with their intended audiences and became absolutely massive hits. 

First, I wanted to look at what might be the most culturally significant teen musical of all time: Grease. Based on the 1971 stage musical of the same name, from the minds of Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey, the 1978 film adaptation was a huge hit. Not that the original stage production wasn’t, though. During its nearly eight year original run, the Broadway production of the show ended up doing well over 3,000 shows and has had countless revivals in the last 40 years. 

But we’re here to talk about the film! It’s arguably the better known version, because that’s just how these things go. Movies are a more accessible medium, and boy do people love the film version of Grease. On a budget of about $6 million, the original box office of the film is nearly $160 million. With all the re-releases, the overall box-office is estimated at just under $400 million total. Which is quite a return!

In fact, Grease was the highest grossing film of 1978 and became the highest grossing musical of all time (beating out The Sound of Music), until Tom Hooper’s adaptation of Les Misérables, and then Disney’s live-action Beauty and the Beast after it. All of which is to say that a lot of people have seen Grease, and a lot of those people happen to be teenagers. So, in the interest of knowing what teenagers of the last nearly 40 years have had in their brains, let’s do a quick plot rundown.

Set during the 1958-1959 school year, Grease starts with the strong, but ultimately doomed, summer romance between Danny Zuko (John Travolta) and Sandy Olsson (Olivia Newton-John). They both pine for each other, but know they won’t ever see each other again. Except… Sandy ends up going to Rydell High School, Danny’s school. With Sandy now in Danny’s domain, they have to navigate their still very present romantic feelings alongside the societal expectations of their respective friend groups. 

There are some classic 50s plot moments, like a televised dance competition, a drag race between Danny and a rival greaser gang, and a school fair that could give state fairs a run for their money. All the while, Danny and Sandy’s relationship yo-yos around based on macho bullshit and Danny’s own romantic past. Not to mention that Sandy is very famously compared to Sandra Dee, star of the previously covered flick Gidget. She stands out not just from Danny and the T-Birds, but from her friends in the Pink Ladies. And this, of course, is the central conflict of their relationship. 

I think that Grease and its popularity is really due, in part, to the 20-30 year media cycle. Set almost exactly 20 years before the film’s actual release, Grease allowed the adult audience to revisit their youth in a way that time and time again brings in the money. There’s no accounting for the nostalgia factor, after all!

Part of the nostalgia that Grease was tapping into, though, clearly worked on actual teenagers of the late 1970s. Except, it wasn’t the same kind of nostalgia as their parents were experiencing. No, instead, it was a look at how their parents’ generation truly were - just like them. We all have very strong ideas about what the 1950s were like, and teenagers in the late 1970s were no different. The media campaign to keep “family values” as the 1950s defining feature was no accident. 

But what Grease offered the youth of the late 1970s was not just fun, music, and romance - it allowed them the chance to see their parents as teenagers. Still curated, but closer to what they were experiencing, themselves. It was a chance to, subsciously or not, view their parents as peers in some way.

And it’s after Grease that the teen musical dries up for a while. It doesn’t go away completely - musical films are still made and teenagers are still into them. But there isn’t a film that hits in the same way over the next 28 years. 

Until, that is, in 2006 when Disney Channel released what would become one of their biggest pieces of intellectual property… maybe ever. High School Musical remains one of the biggest teen launching pads in recent years, still rocketing the careers of gen z teenagers today. Astounding! (good 4 u, Olivia Rodrigo!)

With a similar starting point as Grease, High School Musical is about Troy Bolton (Zac Efron) and Gabriella Montez (Vanessa Hudgens). They meet over winter break, after being forced to do karaoke together at a New Years Eve teen party. They exchange numbers, but don’t think they’ll actually see each other again. Except… Gabriella starts at East High School, Troy’s school.

In contrast to Grease, however, the big event during the school year isn’t a televised dance contest or a drag race, but instead are the auditions for the spring musical. Well, the call-backs. (I love this film, but it’s wild how truly low-stakes the plot of it is. I think this is, in large, part due to the budgetary and technical restrictions of it being a DCOM. We were never gonna get to see the musical until something of a higher caliber happened for the series, like the third film being theatrically released.

Troy and Gabriella face the same back and forth issues between their friend groups, which causes them to yo-yo in their romantic relationship, that Danny and Sandy did before them. However, Troy’s dad being his basketball coach adds in a new, additional layer to the conflict that becomes much more generational. 

Something that’s so interesting about comparing and contrasting Grease and High School Musical is that they’re both stories about being real and honest with another person, failing to maintain that once the bubble surrounding your relationship bursts, and how you adapt to accommodate both in the end. But while Grease is only burdened with the weight of friends and romance… High School Musical tackles those, plus dealing with the parents of it all. 

Perhaps part of that is because in more modern stories parents hold a much more elevated level of control over their kids. Or, at least a much more emotional one. Danny Zuko’s father would probably have some thoughts on “Grease Lightning” as a concept, but it’s hardly relevant. Even if we knew what Danny’s parents wanted and watched him eventually cave to those wants and desires, it’s much less emotionally charged as far as their relationship goes. 

But in more modern stories, like High School Musical, we’ve reached an era where teenagers often have more involved relationships with their parents. For better - or for worse. So, we know exactly what Mr. Bolton wants for Troy, we know what Troy ultimately wants, and we understand the hesitation in Troy’s decision making for the sake of trying to keep him and his father in a good place. In the modern teen story, musical or not, parents matter. And not just as a backstory device to understand why characters behave and think the way they do. Which is why Mr. Bolton being everywhere Troy is, in the form of both dad and coach, makes a lot of narrative sense and places the film in a specific era of teen media.

Also, it gives High School Musical an X-Men level of allegory. Because there’s certainly a reading to be had of “singing = queer in some way.” And I think that’s always been true, but in an even more modern rewatch, knowing Disney’s level of coy with depicting any sexuality outside of heterosexual, I think it’s a resonable reading to pull from the story. I mean, director Kenny Otrega is openly gay, after all, and I think between the dialogue of Troy in the first film, plus the general vibe of Ryan throughout the whole series, it’s pretty clear there’s something gay in there somewhere. And between teenage girls and queer teens, that’s a pretty large market to cover.

Like, between the three main films, a highly successful television series that’s currently launching careers, all the home video releases, and so much merchandise… the High School Musical franchise had made Disney billions upon billions of dollars. Clearly, something caught the attention of teenagers at the time. Myself included.

There’s just something about singing and dancing to find your most authentic self that emotionally resonates. Like, maybe I technically learned the “We're All in This Together" dance backwards because I was bad at listening to instructions at fourteen, but it’s also burned into my brain. Just like the lyrics to “We Go Together” have been written into the pages of my memory since I was ten, simply because my chorus teacher was nostalgic for Grease. A film she probably watched, and loved, as a teenager. 

Nothing makes a film part of the teen canon quite like being something memorable (usually quotes, but in this case we’re talking about the musical of it all) and merchandisable. Grease and High School Musical persist because the romance is something basic enough to be universal, but everything else around it is specific enough to appeal to the teenagers who consume them. 

These two films sit in the pantheon because they ride the line of knowing exactly what their contemporary teenagers wanted: a rebellion with some good tunes.