HOLLYWOOD SHAPED MY HAIR. James King

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СКАЧАТЬ in the forties. What’s more, my look was actually late fifties thankyouverymuch. But, as his giant sausage fingers brazenly cracked through the brittle layers of lacquer, I sensed that he wasn’t in the mood for a history lesson.

       ‘THE WAY WE ARE FEELING’

      As childhood segued into puberty, my love of Grease didn’t wane, and I eventually ended up with a copy recorded off the telly, albeit the ‘daytime’ version of the film that cuts out a lot of the more choice language and the moment where Kenickie’s condom splits. (Apparently broken prophylactics aren’t great for a Bank Holiday Monday afternoon on BBC1.) Cut or uncut, I loved to believe that my passion for Grease made me different, at least in the crowd of adolescent boys that I shared a classroom with; classrooms where Grease wasn’t exactly the movie du jour (and where phrases such as du jour weren’t really du jour either).

      What I didn’t know back then, of course, is that Grease was – still is – a cultural phenomenon. It originated as a cheeky stage musical, penned by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey at a time in the early seventies when a Western world torn apart by Vietnam, Watergate and industrial strikes was desperate to remember the comparatively carefree times of the late fifties. Around the time of Grease came other retro hits, as varied as George Lucas’ autobiographical pic American Graffiti and the cartoon teddy boys of British band Showaddywaddy. Grease the movie rode on this wave, cleaner than the stage version and released in the summer of ’78 to huge success, both at the box office (it’s still America’s biggest grossing live action film musical) and in the music chart (28 million copies of the soundtrack album sold). With endless TV showings throughout the eighties and to this day, it’s fair to say that, for a period of nearly forty years, Grease has been pretty much inescapable.

      Still, my personal relationship with Grease perhaps appeared odd in the restricted confines of an action flick-obsessed boys’ school. ‘Grease is the way we are feeling’ wrote the Good Lord Barry Gibb for the movie’s theme tune, but I never felt that sense of community extended to a Suffolk secondary when Van Damme, Seagal and Lundgren were the kings of video rental. I didn’t mind though. That proudly retro hairstyle I carefully nurtured had become more than just a nod to a favourite film: it was an attempt to stand out from the crowd.

      Of course, being unique is easier said than done. The more films I watched, the more I saw similar swept-back dos to mine regularly cropping up, all boasting an equally high product content. Despite my best intentions, it was clear that actually I wasn’t alone – not even close. Still, I contented myself with the fact that these hair doppelgängers were all in American high school movies, a million miles away from my own East Anglia. So, at least within the tiny confines of my school I pompously proclaimed myself a one-off. It’s true … the fact that I was failing GCSE maths probably should have been more of a concern than my haircut, but what can I say? Once you’ve fallen in love with Olivia Newton-John there’s no going back.

      American teen movie quiffs turned up regularly back then. The legendary director John Hughes, a child of the rock ‘n’ roll era, clearly loved the music and style of his past, bestowing casual quiffs on his decidedly eighties teen heroes, such as Ducky from Pretty in Pink (presumably named after his ducktail hairdo) and Ferris in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Other film-makers of a similar age – Bob Zemeckis, Francis Ford Coppola, John Waters – also made films largely set during the time (and haircuts) of their adolescence (Back to the Future, Peggy Sue Got Married, Cry-Baby). David Lynch, meanwhile, a man who continues to rock his own sprawling take on the quiff even to this day, gave us movies and shows such as Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart and Twin Peaks that displayed his warped take on retro Americana, bursting at the seams with slick-haired Elvis wannabes like Nicolas Cage and Chris Isaak. The more films I watched, the more Brylcreemed barnets I saw, this look apparently the iconic cut of the American dreamboat rebel, even thirty years from its inception. If it wasn’t a big fashion in Ipswich, well … that only made it even better.

       SLICK … BUT SENSITIVE

      A love of this type of grooming usually equalled, at least in cinema terms, a macho sensitivity that I might not have picked up on as a kid, but by my later teenage years I found extremely appealing. If you worried this much about your hair, it seemed, you were probably in tune with your feminine side, even if you didn’t entirely realise it (the James Dean-obsessed Christian in Clueless takes this theory to its logical conclusion, painfully disappointing Alicia Silverstone’s love-struck Cher by eventually admitting that he’s not just really into male grooming, he’s actually gay). When you think about it, Grease is basically the story of Danny’s journey towards this sensitive side.

      You see, if Danny had just been open and honest, instead of being all uptight and blokey, the movie would have no plot. Everything that happens in the movie happens because he can’t just be truthful to his friends about his feelings for Sandy. On the one hand, he’s the King of the school, on the other, he’s totally repressed. He’s like Elvis meets Ralph Fiennes.

      It’s only when Danny stops trying to be pouty and proud that Grease can have a happy ending. Although the big deal is made out of Sandy’s transformation into legging-clad sex kitten – ‘Tell me about it, stuuuhd’ remaining one of the least convincing yet hilariously iconic lines in cinema history – she hasn’t really done anything wrong to warrant a change. It’s the guys that need to grow up. Zucko does just that, by ultimately taking as much care over his relationship as he does over his hair.

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