Rock 'n' Roll High School

When, several years ago, some junior exec at Disney green-lighted a project with the back-to-basics moniker "High School Musical" I'm certain that he/she had no expectation at all that it would launch a franchise and one of the least likely cultural phenomena of the Oughties. The original production, airing on Disney's basic cable channel--not even on ABC Family or the parent ABC network--somehow struck a chord with the masses of teens and tweens not only on this side of the Atlantic but throughout the world. Its album of nouveau bubble-gum rock became the hottest selling of the year. It spawned an immediate sequel with the equally imaginative title "High School Musical 2," which on its airing last week, became the highest rated basic cable program ever, or something. Now more people have seen the pair than, probably, have read Shakespeare.

Which begs the question, "What in hell is going on?"

I'm not the only one to ask that. I was listening to an NPR movie-review program last Friday, the day "HSM2" premiered world-wide, and the critics were seriously trying to analyze the enormous popularity and What It Meant. Is this a middle-class phenomenon?" posed one sociologically. It certainly was not a musical or an artistic one. Commercial for sure. There was a tremulousness to the discussion, however, as though the analysts were fearful that this could indeed signal a retrograde Return to the Musical as an accepted popular genre, and not something to sneer at as terminally uncool.

As though that would be a bad thing. Perhaps the positive receptivity to an unchallenging, aggressively wholesome musical drama is some kind of reaction to the Hip Hop and Rap that has dominated the CD charts and Ipod downloads of the past twenty years. Or it is an outgrowth of MTV and its satellites as kids discover that yes, videos can be expanded and combined to form stories? Eureka. But are kids' aesthetic perceptions and judgments to be taken at all seriously? These are the folks who kept Sanjaya Malakar on the airwaves for tedious months on end.

I am embarrassed to admit that I am one of the few over-50s without children to have actually watched both programs. The original was a head-scratcher, and the sequel--which received very good reviews--was barely viewable, and I made it through only because I'd DVRed it and could watch it in snippets. Continuity was never an actual issue to the marketers, who provided long commercial interruptions and fourth-wall breaking visits with the cast as part of the televised package. I have no retention of the original "HSM" and thought the sequel was hardly Pulitzer material. The songs, except for an opening toe-tapping ensemble number and a pretty ballad "You Are the Music in Me" were completely forgettable. The choreography was lively but the story was Disneyesque pap. The performing kids were quite impressive, however, reminding us how Disney's can successfully mine young talent. A generation ago they brought in teens Christine Aguilera, Justin Timberlake and Ryan Gosling. Now there's Zac Efron, whose future is admirable and whose present, including a fine performance in "Hairspray," is the envy of anyone who's ever auditioned for "American Idol."

All this is a nice circumstance for the Disney Corp, its stockholders, and anyone connected with "HSM," but I don't see this as some kind of watershed event in the history of musical drama. It was simply an extension of the fact that the musical and the innocence of the high school experience meld together very successfully. Many of the most commercially successful, and enduring musicals or our time have emerged from this milieu, among them "Bye Bye Birdie," "Grease," "Hairspray," and even the best American musical of all time--that's right, "West Side Story." Okay, it was darker, but it had its dance at the gym like the rest of its ilk. Perhaps something of the simplicity and clarity of the high school experience, with its stock characters and innocent yearnings work well with the bizarre conventions of kids bursting out into songs at the slightest whim.

Actually a better signal that the musical may be reviving is the success of "Hairspray," still with legs at the cineplexes. It could be that it benefited from the coattails of "HSM" and drew the teenyboppers to the cinema to see Zac Efron. Or it could be that it was simply a terrific adaptation of an off-beat but well-conceived vehicle that emerged, originally, from the warped mind of John Waters. "Hairspray" is easily the most entertaining movie of the summer, and musically is so far ahead of "HSM"--or most of what Broadway has turned out since Sondheim went into semi-retirement. Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman's score is a marvelous pastiche of early-60s pop, recalling every type of song that I danced to, but doing them far better. These guys are not one-shot wonders, either. They wrote the score for "South Park the
Movie," which elevated that cartoon to one of the best animated movies ever, and included the funniest--and dirtiest--song ever to hit the silver screen, "Uncle Fucker." The lyrics for "Hairspray" are not as raunchy but they are suitably subversive when needed, and to keep the adults satisfied.

Disney will not be providing downloads of songs like "Uncle Fucker," but they do have "High School Musical 3" already in the works, but for a more elaborate and hopefully profitable theatrical release. By that time, perhaps the excitement will die down (though it didn't for "Pirates of the Caribbean 3"). Whether there will be a groundswell of production for more musical films is still problematic. The revival of the musical could be a tiny blip on the cultural landscape, and we'll see if it can survive the upcoming release of "Sweeney Todd," with Johnny Depp as the murderous operatic barber.