Rocky Horror Commodification Show
I would like, if I may, to take you on a strange journey. -the Criminologist from Rocky Horror
So obviously it’s been awhile since I’ve updated this blog. Between a lack of inspiration and a bunch of changes in my life, this is one thing that suffered. Since I missed the month of October completely, my goal is to get back into a groove for November.
But I’m going to start and finish out this month by responding to a YouTube video posted by Hank of vlogbrothers (found here: http://www.youtube.com/vlogbrothers#p/u/1/22RWBe-1ix8). In it he discusses why the Rocky Horror Glee Show was awkward. In the end, Hank ends up saying why he is bothered by Glee doing Rocky Horror Picture Show like this:
“So probably what bothers me about Glee
doing Rocky Horror is that Glee isn’t going to be talking about what’s actually cool about Rocky Horror. They’ll take out all of the absurdities; they’ll take out the cannibalistic transvestite space alien stuff; and most importantly they’ll take out the experience of Rocky Horror which was an experience that was created by thousands, if not tens or hundreds of thousands of individuals watching Rocky Horror in different cities across the world and making it their own experience… The cool thing about Rocky Horror is that culture that I was once a part of and that I once needed because YouTube didn’t exist yet.”
So here’s the deal, Hank. An important way that mainstream culture reifies itself is to commodify ideas and trends that exist in outsider cultures. This serves two main purposes that are important for culture to accomplish. First, it allows mainstream entertainment media to “produce” new ideas that help validate it’s existence. Music, movies, and books can take new themes and ideologies from media that is created on the fringes because most people haven’t seen it. These “new” styles can come in with little resistance from the outside because, in general, there isn’t much resistance in comparison to the sales gained by pulling from non-pop culture. In this way, mainstream culture seems new and exciting even though it rarely ever is. Classic examples include but are not limited to: West Side Story and rock ‘n roll. A more modern example of this may be the way rap music has been integrated into pop music (although it still maintains underground music scenes). So the attempt for Glee to reintegrate Rocky Horror is actually pretty common. It works because it sells.
Here’s the second, and in my opinion, the far more crucial impact the commodification process has on fringe culture: it strips it of its fringiness. When hip-hop was rolled into mainstream music, over time it lost much of its social awareness and critique. By integrating these themes and ideologies into the mainstream, they take away the aspects that make them outsider in some way. This actually is a pretty amazing defense mechanism for keeping themes that may critique social norms in check; absorb them so they can’t be used negatively.
So Hank, if you want to keep Rocky Horror the experience that has been created by years of sing-alongs and toast flinging, just don’t stop going to the theater for your Rocky Horror experience. As long as the people that have made the show what it has become keep doing it, it can’t be commodified. That experience is pure. Don’t let Glee take it.
