Chad Taylor

What's on the slab

The headlines about Richard O'Brien's difficulties in moving to New Zealand contrast with the sporting community's efforts to bring back Sonny Bill. O'Brien's problems are doubtless more to do with the horror (ho ho) of immigration regulations that the nation's attitude to art and culture but, still: I do wonder.

I've seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show once, on Friday night in Avondale in 1978. Once is the exact number of times anyone needs to see it because after a single viewing you can remember every line. The pastiche of horror movies and American rock and roll is so bang on the entire hippocampus lights up in recognition.

To make the show O'Brien and collaborator Jim Sharman plundered American culture. The result is somehow very NZ/Australia, I think because the (mostly British stage) cast are pretending to be American as only a foreigner who worships that culture can. This is one way in which art moves forward: by a series of bald-faced thefts and imitations driven by an inner longing that lifts itself above mere reversioning. It's what I call 12-bar Art, after 12-bar Blues, because it follows exactly the same rhythm as everything before it while at the same time standing out as distinct in itself. Rocky Horror's personality lies in its texture and gradations. It made a jump to the left.