The kids have been watching Grease lately. They watched it once before about a year ago and liked it, but had apparently forgotten about it until they were reminded by an ad for the musical which is coming this fall to Malmö. It’s fun to watch and hear all the music again, but some of the scenes make me a bit uncomfortable to sit watching with my 7 and 8.5-year-olds, in light of the fact that the subject is sex, albeit obliquely referred to most of the time. Because really, how AM I going to explain what Kenickie is talking about at the drive-in when he digs in his wallet for a condom and sadly tells Rizzo, “It’s broken”?
Karin, however, is now a hardcore Travolta fan (“Han är SNYGG, mama!“*) and when asked if she wanted to be a Pink Lady or a Scorpion emphatically declared that she was a T-Bird. I haven’t wanted to crush her illusions by mentioning that Mr Travolta is older than her mother by a good 10 years or that he looks like this now:
and not like this:
I admit to feeding my kid’s musical habit with frequent injections of movies and music I have loved as well. If I can influence their musical taste away from rap and thrash metal, I’ll do so gladly and be proud of it. My dad did it to me at a young age, giving me a lifelong admiration for musicals, by raising me on My Fair Lady and Fiddler on the Roof and The Sound of Music and South Pacific and Hair (and I wonder if he had the same sort of worries in regards to THAT film as I have with Grease, and hoo boy, Grease is a walk in the park compared with Hair in terms of sexual connotations).
While in this mode, however, I have realized that I don’t actually have very many classic musicals on film, and although I DO have the soundtracks that isn’t enough at this stage to capture the interest of the visually-oriented generation my kids belong to. And after looking at a (by no means complete) list of contemporary stage musicals, there are many that I haven’t seen myself which makes me long for Chicago and the many, many theaters with which it abounds.
While looking for musicals on DVD, I also came across something frightening. David Hasselhoff in the musical version of Jekyll & Hyde? SO WRONG IN SO MANY WAYS.
Anyway, I’m thinking maybe Cats ought to be next up for the musical-obsession-maniacs that my children are turning into, or perhaps Fame. What do you think? Got any favorites you can recommend?
*He’s HAWT, mom!