What makes a cult classic a classic?
by Elizabeth A. Allen (with help from Umberto Eco), http://oddpla.net/frplace/theater/eco.html Umberto Eco provides an interesting thesis for the appeal of the cult work of art. In “Casablanca: Cult Movies and Intertextual Collage,” an essay that comes from his anthology Faith in Fakes: Travels in Hyperreality, Eco talks specifically about Casablanca, but his ideas can extended to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, as well as all other cult media. To succeed as a cult artwork, The Rocky Horror Picture Show has to have the following characteristics. • “It must provide a completely furnished world so that its fans can quote characters and episodes as if they were aspects of the fan’s private sectarian world, a world about which one can make up quizzes and play trivia games so that the adepts of the sect recognize through each other a shared experience.” In other words, The Rocky Horror Picture Show charges ordinary phrases with almost magical meanings to be deciphered only by the initiates.
