Whose High School Musical?
Over the festive season, the BBC decided to screen the phenomenon of 2006 – High School Musical, a Disney production that took the teenage world (or perhaps just the female portion of it) by storm. I sat down to watch it, not entirely sure what to expect, and found it to mildly entertaining with one annoyingly catchy song and a couple of fairly clever set pieces set in the school canteen and gym. I can see why teenage girls love it, and thus being neither a teen nor a female, it’s hardly surprising that I didn’t find it quite so thrilling. I am pleased it exists, though. It has a better moral message than that other teen favourite, Grease (the opposite message in fact – Grease says ‘conform to get the guy’, High School Musical says ‘be yourself’). And the inevitable, very swift release of a stage version for amateur performance should hopefully encourage more youngsters to get involved in live theatre. I dread to think how many productions of the show will spring up in America this year. It’s also nice to see a musical do so well in the music charts, even getting a top 10 single in both the US and the UK with ‘Breaking Free’.
Having watched the film, and decided that I have no need to buy the soundtrack or the DVD, I was interested to discover that the success of High School Musical is causing a bit of a stir with regard to intellectual property. A man named Paul Cozby has filed a lawsuit against the Disney Corporation (which is terribly brave of him), as he feels they stole his idea. He wrote a stage show called High School Musical a few years ago, which received a number of productions in Texas, and he feels that as well as the title being identical, the film shows a striking resemblance to his own work.
The Singing Librarian Talks 