“Let’s Do The Time Warp, Again!” <em>The Rocky Horror Picture Show</em> as Hysterical Theatre

<p>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.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Film Studies

Year dc:date.available

2023

Author dc:creator

• Wendorf, Frances

Contributors dc:contributor

• Kelli Fuery
• Ian Barnard
• Jocelyn L. Buckner

• film studies
• performance studies
• gender studies
• queer studies
• The Rocky Horror Picture Show
• hysteria
• Film and Media Studies

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/film_studies_theses/25

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.chapman.edu:film_studies_theses-1024