Based on my familiarity with its cult status and catchy tunes, I expected The Rocky Horror Picture Show to provide innocent and over-the-top campy fun, but instead had a visceral reaction against something that could be mistaken for a homophobic attempt to reinforce every negative stereotype about gay people. At its core, the film’s theme is bitter. It is a victory lap for the liberal changes of the seventies, with the premise being that the chaste culture of the fifties was irredeemably unnatural and deeply repressive.

According to the film’s scriptwriter, Richard O’Brien, the intent was to chronicle the “sexual awakening” of the twee but harmless couple: Brad and Janet. Setting the film twenty years earlier located it within the traditional culture it sought to lampoon.

The couple are the punchline of jokes (do they know “how to madison?” is Brad’s cringe-worthy reply to the catchy and extravagant Time Warp song). We are also meant to celebrate their victimisation: after Frank-N-Furter first sneaks into Janet’s room disguised as Brad, he proceeds to take her virginity; “I was saving myself” she weeps upon realising the deception.  Yet, rather than this being a sombre moment, she immediately tells him that it is fine as long as Brad does not know, before then enthusiastically continuing. Similarly, Frank-N-Furter does the same to Brad, who laments that “[Frank-N-Furter] tricked me, I wouldn’t have: never”. Brad’s masculinity is satirised when told that he is “just so strong and protective!” moments before realising he had been tricked into having his first gay experience. Ultimately, the film points to happy couples and laughs. They are not really happy, it boasts: love is a myth, as all would betray their partner and be adulterous if given the chance. All would embrace the sexual counter-culture, if they just saw sense and opened their minds. In fact, the Picture Show itself has a closed-minded view on what relationships can be.

The film’s popularity is rather odd given that its subtext embraces the stereotype of the predatory homosexual. Frank-N-Furter tells them the couple that he thinks they “quite enjoyed it”, and to “admit” that they found it “pleasurable”.  This is then vindicated by Brad and Janet each choosing to continue after realising the deception.

Even the cult screenings embrace this horrible aspect. People shout mockingly at the screen that the couple are “virgins” and that Janet is a “slut”. One can understand why the enemies of the pre-sexual revolutionary order would enjoy the film, but I am puzzled by the continued identification and veneration of the obsessive, predatory Frank-N-Furter. 

It is worth remembering the context of this problematic element of the film. In the seventies, acceptance of sexual predation was worryingly normal among the mainstream cultural elite: take Roman Polanski being defended by much of Hollywood, or Brook Shields appearing nude at eleven years old.

Understanding the film in this context, makes Frank-N-Furter’s sexual enthrallment by the titular Rocky quite disturbing. While caressing Rocky’s exposed body, he sings about his “hot groin” and how he can “make a man” of him — the implication being that he is currently a boy. This implication is further illustrated by Rocky’s presentation as mute and child-like, with a fear of fire. While these things are a reference to the Charles Atlas bodybuilding adverts of the thirties and Boris Karloff’s seminal portrayal of Frankenstein, it would be mistaken to ignore the unpleasant sexualised content.

Frank-N-Furter is the villain, and the film has “horror” in the title, so one would be forgiven for suggesting that this is repudiated within the narrative. However, that would alter the tone greatly from its light-hearted reception, and ignore that the audience is almost invited to celebrate as Rocky is taken into Frank-N-Furter’s bedroom. It is elevated up podium steps, a jubilant rendition of the Bridal Chorus plays, and Janet is so enthralled in the moment that she briefly joins the singing. Rocky though, is clearly naïve and acts with newborn whimsy, and when seen next, is chained to the bed on his front so that access to his backside is ensured.  

Due to all of this, I was initially very confused as to why the film has been so venerated and adopted as a camp classic. However, my theatrical experience was … straight, in that it was in an empty cinema without the usual shouts and jeers with which they are now accompanied. So when watching it, I was focused on the plot and themes far more than those treating it as a collective joke.  

The film’s iconic status should not obscure its actual basis and intent. There is likely some truth to its critique of the picturesque ideal that fifties popular culture presented around relationships. (For instance, popular idioms, such as “newlywed’s first child takes seven months to come to term, and the rest take nine”, imply pre-marital sex was common.) But the appalling acts depicted in the film, and the horrible elements of the culture it emerged from, cast a sickly light on the alternative.

One of the most highly rated posts on the Rocky Horror subreddit says that it is a “terrible movie”, but that it is “our terrible movie” — almost acknowledging that one should not engage seriously with the film, precisely because it is too flawed to be credible on that basis. To most it is a safe way to experience the transgression of taboos and laugh at superficial aesthetics. In this regard, the stage-play is far superior and I found it quite enjoyable, as the interactivity between the audience and actors further distracts from the subtext and adds self-awareness. The Picture Show’s flaws become part of the joke, and it acknowledges that it too should be ridiculed just as much as what it critiques. All of this may explain why it was such a commercial failure in its original run, and only gained mass popularity after that crucial ingredient of the audience interaction emerged. 

Generally, we accept that once art is produced, that the authorial intent behind various details becomes irrelevant, all that matters is how these details are interpreted by the audience. With the transformation of Rocky Horror from a bitter commentary on sexual ethics, to a light-hearted conduit for audience ad libs, I wonder if there is another example of something which has been so fundamentally transformed through its reception?

The film is a warning, not a celebration

Charlie Bentley-Astor

The Rocky Horror Picture Show made the case against the sexual revolution fifty years ago, but audiences have been enjoying themselves too much to notice until now.

The cult classic is revered for its unabashed celebration of all things sex, lust, and rock ‘n’ roll. Homosexuality had only been decriminalised in the United Kingdom three years before the show’s first performance, and the Pill had been made accessible not just to married women but all women. The film is celebrated for its early embrace of sexual liberation, cross-dressing, and homoeroticism. Some regard the film’s cinema release in 1975 as a watershed moment in which “queerness” first asserted its place in popular culture. But, almost fifty years on, I am left wondering if the film was not a celebration of sexual freedom but a warning against it.

When the story begins, Brad and Janet are “two young, ordinary healthy kids” — newly engaged and in love. They find themselves stranded in the rain on a stormy night. Their car has a flat tire, but fear not! “Burning bright | There’s a guiding star| There’s a light” which guides them to a refuge and a telephone. They arrive at Dr Frank N. Furter’s castle. There is a party. Frank’s castle is the home of the lucky — “You’re lucky. He’s lucky. I’m lucky. We’re all lucky!” sings the maid Magenta as she slides down the bannisters. “And so, it seemed,” says the omniscient narrator “that fortune had smiled on Brad and Janet and that they had found the assistance that their plight required — or had they?”

In the ensuing tale, the modest and blushing couple are divested of their virginity. Each is unfaithful to the other. Janet beds herself with multiple men, and Brad surrenders himself to a homosexual encounter. They are voyeurs to one another’s infidelity. They see each other naked, dance burlesque in lingerie and are molested by several characters. By the end, the omnipotent narrator — the Criminologist — decrees that light has been extinguished. “Darkness has conquered Brad and Janet” and the two are left crawling in the mist, with tear-stained faces, unable to find each other.

But it is The Rocky Horror Picture Show! It cannot be as severe as all that.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show is fun! It is not frightening so much as compellingly strange: characters in a horror film do not tend to burst into song about love (unless they are in the sabotaged sequel of Joker). Whilst the film simulates some aesthetic features of a horror movie — a dark and stormy night, creaking doors, murder, and cannibalism — a great number of classic horror tropes are also flipped on their head. The haunted house on the hill is not haunted at all; it is in the full throes of a party. The master of the house is not a vampire but a personable and sorrowful transvestite. Frank-N-Furter’s monster is not a monster but a blonde hunk. 

This begs the question, “What is horrible about The Rocky Horror Picture Show?”

The catchy tunes and spectacle provide an excellent cloak for the sinister goings-on. The singing and dancing encourage complicity in disturbing behaviour and the air of frivolity sweetens actions that would otherwise be repulsive to the witness. Which is to say, in the glow of an “orgasmic rush” all manner of sins can be forgotten, if not forgiven.

In the “Time Warp”, Magenta describes this “orgasmic rush” to the virginal Brad and Janet. “You’re spaced out on sensation.” A grin. “Like you’re under sedation”, Riff Raff nods. But as Columbia entrances the audience with her tap dance, she reveals how, as an unsuspecting innocent, she received an “evil wink” from a man with “devil’s eyes.” “He stared at me and I felt a change,” she says, but she does not elucidate upon the nature of the change, and in the wake of the ambiguity, something sinister permeates her silence.

Each of these characters recounts their moment of being thrust into sexual consciousness. 

Magenta construes the moment as “dreamy” but there is a double entendre to be gleamed in her cry of “Oh, fantasy free me | So you can’t see me, no not at all.” She has a desire not only to be liberated from the constraints of the material world — to indulge in a game of role-play, perhaps — but also to disappear into her imagination until she becomes invisible to the person who touches her. “In another dimension” she becomes a voyeur to her own sexual encounter, “Well secluded, I see all.” 

Riff Raff’s account is similarly conflicted. “It’s astounding,” he says, “Time is fleeting” but he reveals he is also gripped by “madness [which] takes its toll.” He drinks until “the blackness would hit me | And the void would be calling.” The audience is left to wonder whether he is being called to surrender to the alcohol’s coma or another hollow sexual encounter.

In these three figures, one can detect something parasitic which puts the audience on edge. They pinch and grab and poke at Brad and Janet, almost as if testing their flesh. Their twisted outward appearance belies the perversion within, but it is masked with thick makeup and glitter. Despite being “driven insane” by the pelvic thrust, Riff Raff, Magenta and Columbia are not deterring Brad and Janet from sharing their fate. Rather, they entice them into it. 

The most perverse manner in which one can cope with sexual shame is to enjoin others into it. A culture of permissiveness can be simulated by increasing the prevalence of a given behaviour. When Brad discovers Frank has crawled into bed with him (not his fiancée) he reels back in horror. “You tricked me!” he cries. “I’ve never-never-never–”

“Oh, I know,” Frank replies. “But it is not all bad, is it? Not even half bad?” Brad continues to resist Frank’s advances until Frank promises not to inform Janet of their sexual embrace. Brad’s conscience is placated. What is the rationale here? “What I am doing cannot be wrong because these other people are also doing it.”

It is under this guise that every conceivable sexual dynamic imaginable appears in the film – straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, monogamous, polygamous, incestuous. Paedophilia is a central motif of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Frank lusts after Rocky, who, though possessing the body of a man, has the mind and temperament of a child. He is just minutes old when he is first sodomised by Frank. Whilst uncomfortable for the audience, these sexual experiments take place in “time slip” between Earth and the alien galaxy of Transylvania and are, therefore, construed as legitimate and every relationship with the same authority as a marriage (if not the same sanctity).

It is for this reason that some have argued The Rocky Horror Picture Show to be regressive. It reinforces harmful stereotypes about homosexuals being promiscuous, unfaithful, and child abusers. The Rocky Horror Picture Show argues for sexual conservatism but not in its debauchery — it argues in its sadness.

The argument for sexual liberation is that happiness corresponds with freedom — giving people liberty minimises the chance of their being isolated, marginalised, and distressed. Social ostracism and sexual taboos are illustrated to be superficial in Frank’s enduring pain. He longs to be a woman, and his falling short makes him sad. “That delicate satin draped frame |As it clung to her thigh, how I started to cry | ‘Cause I wanted to be dressed just the same.” But in his castle, he is liberated from all rules and conventions. He is able to pursue his “absolute pleasure” — not only to “dream it” but to “be it.”

And yet he is unhappy.

Frank’s “sensual daydreams to treasure forever” are tempered by “erotic nightmares beyond any measure.” Frank does not liberate people as might first be suggested by his confidence and glamour and generosity. He sucks them down to share in his slavery. This is typified by Rocky, who is born for the singular purpose of giving and experiencing sexual pleasure. But, after the first consummation, Rocky is chained to the bed. Frank is already bored of him. The anticipation proved to be more thrilling than the act.

In the pursuit of his lasting contentment, he hacks to death Eddie, encourages an otherwise happy young couple to betray one another, and rapes his infant child. “You’re like a sponge,” Columbia screams at him. “You take, take, take and drain others of their love and emotion.”

Rocky seeks to hide from the fear and confusion of his sexual slavery within the sex itself. The “orgasmic rush of lust” obliterates his awareness for a fleeting moment before he once again falls out of bed, “left from my dreaming was a feeling of unnameable dread.” 

Columbia finds her recourse in the “love of a certain dope.” She escaped from the hypersexuality of Frank’s castle into her conventional — heterosexual and exclusive — relationship with Eddie. Their dynamic is characterised by romance rather than lust. This does not mean that it lacks intensity or excitement. It is that the reason behind the intensity is different. 

Columbia and Eddie are thrilled when they see each other. They enjoy each other’s company. They are not a means to an end for one another but the end itself: “With your arms around your girl, you try to sing along |It felt pretty good.” They dance and sing, kiss and cling to each other, but that is all. That is enough. There is nothing illicit or taboo or revolutionary about their love but it remains playful. It is “rock and roll” and Eddie feels his soul blessed when he is united with his girl. 

When Eddie is murdered by Frank, she turns to a “dope” of a different kind. For Columbia, sex murders love, and sensuality becomes inaccessible to her — “he locked the door and threw away the key.” For Rocky, sex makes love impossible, and he is trapped chasing erotic highs in order to soothe and orientate himself. Even though it makes his life a “misery”, it is all he can “trust” – it is the one constant.

Their sexual revolution, “It was great when it all began” but by the end Riff Raff declares “Your [Frank’s] mission is a failure | Your lifestyle’s too extreme.”

Janet is the only character who is exposed as enjoying sexual liberation: “I feel released | Bad times deceased | My confidence has increased … My mind has been expanded.” The betrayal she feels on discovering Brad’s infidelity is transient. Its touch is light, and she realises she can sweep it away with the touch of another. She betrayed Brad but in Brad’s betrayal of her, her prior infidelity — to her mind — is admissible. The slate is swept clean.

Brad on the other hand is guilt-ridden and grief-stricken. His “heart has turned to stone.” He cannot comfort Janet as he once did. He asks Janet for a “sign” that she still loves him. But it never comes and he comes to dread his sexual urges: “It’s beyond me | Help me, Mommy | I’ll be good, you’ll see | Take this dream away.”

In the aftermath, Brad and Janet are met with an impossible choice. Janet no longer loves Brad. The mystery of romance and sex which had been concealed about him is gone. And so, too, is her passion for him. Brad, his faith is broken. He feels a wounded love for her, but he can never trust Janet again. They might break off their engagement and seek happiness elsewhere. But Brad and Janet are bound together by this experience. 

Like it or not, they are damaged goods. Neither had the virgin status with which they went in. Janet moves from man to man, whilst Brad may be a closet homosexual. Janet, whilst still being able to achieve sexual highs, forfeits intimacy and the nurturing of a spiritual tie with another human being. In short, she forfeits love. Brad, on the other hand, will be unable to have sex again without trust and intimacy — without love. Perhaps, this is no bad thing. But with his new anxiety and broken trust, he could end up alone.

Should they attempt to explain that they were abducted by aliens who compelled them to do erotic and immoral things to one another? Noone would believe them. If they are to retain their sanity — to know it was not all a hideous dream but frightening reality — they must remain together and hear one another’s ruthless testimony, all the while knowing they are trapped in a loveless marriage of their own design.

For many, part of your soul feels dirtied when sex has you for the first time. For some, it is a fleck of mud upon the cheek. For others, it leaves grit-filled gashes upon the knees, elbows and forearms. It may heal or it may become painful and infected. For others, it is an amputation – of the hands or the feet or even the head – from which there is no recovery. Perhaps the only instance in which discovering sex does not dirty the soul is within the confines of the marriage bed – between two people who are already unshakeably in love.

But who among us is left to testify to the validity of this speculation? 

The tragedy of Brad and Janet’s broken love is in its unnecessariness. Without their sexual adventure, Brad and Janet would have been none-the-wiser to the other’s potential for infidelity. They would not know the “terrible thrills” of having sex with strangers. Their sexual appetite would be for each other only, and they might have been content with one another their whole lives.

As they crawl through the mist at the end of the film, the Criminologist speaks once more. “And crawling on the planet’s face | Some insects called the human race | Lost in time, and lost in space | And meaning.” Meaning. This is the word that concludes the story. The rhyme breaks. The metre curdles. Brad and Janet are naked in the nihilistic “void” that had first called to them.

What, then, is the moral of The Rocky Horror Picture Show? It is not a cautionary tale about prejudice — nor is it a celebration of “queer visibility” in a time of prejudice. It is a testimony. A world in which sex driven by lust can be as pure and without consequence as sex driven by love? It is a science fiction.