Date of Award
Spring 5-2023
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Film Studies
First Advisor
Kelli Fuery
Second Advisor
Ian Barnard
Third Advisor
Jocelyn L. Buckner
Abstract
In studying not only the distinct aesthetics and themes of the film but also the experience of the cult midnight movie screenings, this thesis re-positions The Rocky Horror Picture show as a radical descendent of the theatrical legacy of Jean- Martin Charcot’s lectures on hysteria. His “theatre of hysteria” is a retroactive terminology for the physician’s highlytheatricalized lecture series at the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris in the 1880s on the diagnosis of hysteria, during which the bodies of hysterical patients were rendered an objectified public spectacle under the guise of medical observation. The thesis explores intersections between queer and hysterical performance studies, seeking to illuminate the ways in which specific choreographies and gesturing – depicted cinematically and echoed by the shadow cast and spectators in The Rocky Horror Picture Show – iterate a shared experience of marginalization between bodies deemed “hysterical” and queer bodies.
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Recommended Citation
Wendorf, Frances. "“Let’s Do The Time Warp, Again!” The Rocky Horror Picture Show as Hysterical Theatre." Master's thesis, Chapman University, 2023. https://doi.org/10.36837/chapman.000474