Portrayals in Popular Culture
Greasers are usually portrayed as urban working class ethnics, often Italian American or Hispanic American. The terms greaser or greaseball are ethnic slurs applied to Italian Americans or Hispanic Americans due to stereotypes of either naturally greasier hair or widespread usage of hair grease. Notable exceptions to the urban ethnic portrayal include films such as The Wild One (1953) and Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and The Outsiders (1983), which portrayed a more rural, southern United States variant of the greaser subculture. Other films and TV shows featuring greasers include: Crime in the Streets (1956), The Delinquents (1957), 77 Sunset Strip (1958), The Young Savages (1961), Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), American Graffiti (1973), Badlands (1973), Happy Days (1974–1984), The Lords of Flatbush (1974), The California Kid (1974), Grease (1978), The Wanderers (1979), Grease 2 (1982), The Loveless (1982), The Outsiders (1983) Eddie and the Cruisers (1983), Rumble Fish (1983), Streets of Fire (1984), Tuff Turf (1985), Stand By Me (1986), La Bamba (1987), Full House (1987–1995), Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989), Cry-Baby (1990), This Boy's Life (1993), Roadracers (1994), Deuces Wild (2002), Secondhand Lions (2003), the children's cartoon Johnny Bravo, the video game Bully (2006), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), Fallout 3 (2008), Mafia II (2010) and Fallout: New Vegas (2010), The Violent Kind (2010)
Read more about this topic: Greaser (subculture)
Famous quotes containing the words portrayals, popular and/or culture:
“We attempt to remember our collective American childhood, the way it was, but what we often remember is a combination of real past, pieces reshaped by bitterness and love, and, of course, the video past—the portrayals of family life on such television programs as “Leave it to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best” and all the rest.”
—Richard Louv (20th century)
“Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers another.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“Our culture has become something that is completely and utterly in love with its parent. It’s become a notion of boredom that is bought and sold, where nothing will happen except that people will become more and more terrified of tomorrow, because the new continues to look old, and the old will always look cute.”
—Malcolm McLaren (b. 1946)