Reflections on the Self-reflexive Musical

Abstract

Most critical and popular work on The Rocky Horror Picture Show acknowledges that the film demonstrates a variety of cultural references that open it up to many possible aesthetic and theoretical interpretations. In interviews conducted for the music video channel VH1 and now included in the special features of the twenty-fifth anniversary edition of the Rocky Horror DVD, writer Richard O’Brien has confirmed this view, citing influences as diverse as old lingerie ads and Sergei Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible (1944). Much has already been said about Rocky Horror’s status as a cult film and its use of sexuality, but as yet no one has offered an in-depth analysis of Rocky Horror as a musical. The music and songs that make up much of Rocky Horror’s narrative have long been treated as an aspect of the film that feeds into other theoretical readings of Rocky Horror as an example of camp, cult, or queer cinema (or indeed, all of the above). Without wishing to diminish the richness of those other readings, I would like to propose that an examination of Rocky Horror as a musical is long overdue. Rocky Horror, with its theatrical origins and its annual presence as a Halloween screening for the better part of three decades, deserves to be included in a genre that ranges from classics like 42nd Street (1933), Top Hat (1935), and Easter Parade (1948) to the surreal heights of Cabaret (1972), Hairspray (1988), and Dancer in the Dark (2000).

Whenever an art form is highly conventional, the opportunity for subtle irony or distanciation presents itself all the more readily.

—Jean-Loup Bourget, “Social Implications in the Hollywood Genres”