Looking for comparison between British Pantos and Rocky Horror

December 1, 2023 4:36 PM

I am looking for anything (academic would be great, but non-academic is also good) written that compares Pantomimes and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, with a focus on audience participation.

When I first read a parody of a panto (in The Eyre Affair, where Richard III is treated like a panto, with audience interactions and callbacks), I thought Fforde was giving it the Rocky Horror treatment. I've since learned a bit about British Pantomimes, and have read the history collected about audience participation in the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I know the two are unrelated, however they feel incredibly close. I am hoping to find something written comparing the two and looking at them from an academic perspective. I am not in academia, but my spouse is, and through them I have access to a rather good library system, so if there are journal articles, I should be able to read them. If anyone knows of non-academic things written comparing the two, I'm happy to read that, but I'm really hoping for something that tries to explain the similarities, despite the two being so separated in origin.

I feel like I can't be the only person to notice this and feel like there's some underlying psychology/sociology/theater theory that underpins both of them that I just don't have the necessary education to even know where to look for.

posted by Hactar to Society & Culture (3 answers total)

This article might work for you. It looks like it refers to Jim Sharman's memoirs, which could be a good source. I know there's also at least one Rocky Horror oral history out there-- I know I read one in the early 2000's but perhaps there is one more recent.

It might be worth taking this exact question to your local library. It won't be the weirdest questions they've heard all day, far from it.
posted by blnkfrnk at 9:14 PM on December 1, 2023 [1 favorite]

This is a pretty good one:

Comic in Suspenders: Jim Sharman’s Circus Worlds
in The Rocky Horror (Picture) Show by Anna-Sophie Jürgens, published in the Journal of Australian Studies
Volume 42, 2018 - Issue 4. Abstract:

This article reframes an icon of twentieth-century cross-cultural folklore. It argues that the protagonist in The Rocky Horror (Picture) Show is both a hybrid of two types of comic entertainers and an example of the way the pantomime tradition travelled between England and Australia. By clarifying what original Rocky director, the Australian Jim Sharman, likes to call his “colourful past”, and by exploring his many reflections on popular culture, this article maps out his relationship to the aesthetics of the circus world and to clowning in order to understand their echoes in Rocky Horror. Sharman’s numerous references to Australian popular culture unveil a circus-struck theatrical ethos. They also convey that Dr Franknfurter, the Transylvanian scientist protagonist in the musical and film, is funny because he is so much a clown. In fact, this sweet transvestite extraterrestre draws on qualities of two quintessential comic favourites of the circus world: violent clowns and panto dames. The Franknfurter character is thus related to both: the axe-wielding cannibalesque antics of comic madcaps from the (sawdust) stage and the Australian comedians and dame role performers Bobby le Brun and Barry Humphries. Frankie is a blend of particular clown traditions as well as their dashing actualisation.

By good luck, the full text of the article is on Sci-Hub.

A google scholar search for "rocky horror" panto or "rocky horror" pantomime shows a number of possibly interesting articles and books of interest, such as: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
posted by flug at 10:29 PM on December 1, 2023 [5 favorites]

Here's a newspaper article where Richard O'Brien, the writer of the RHPS describes it as similar to panto. This review expands a little on the idea.
posted by biffa at 1:00 AM on December 2, 2023 [2 favorites]