background and analysis by Scott Miller.
(Essay too long to include.)
Certainly, at its core it tells a tale we’ve heard many times before, back even before Shakespeare, of braving a wilderness, of surviving lost innocence, of sexual awakening, about acceptance of difference, about birth and death, forgiveness and redemption, about the fall from grace of a transgressive god. And yet there is something special here, born as it was in the midst of the alternative theatre movement and at the beginning of the punk rock era. Of its first production in London, Jack Tinker wrote in the Daily Mail, “Richard O’Brien’s spangled piece of erotic fantasy is so funny, so fast, so sexy, and so unexpectedly well realised that one is in danger of merely applauding it without assessing it. That would be a pity. Because…I believe Mr. O’Brien has something quite nifty to say.” Rocky Horror explores American sexual hang-ups, the excesses of the Sexual Revolution of the 1970s, and the sometimes cruel myth of the American Dream. And because the show was created entirely by British artists, it has the advantage of genuine objectivity in its exploration and satire of these mostly American phenomena.
The original Rocky confronted and challenged its audience. Like Hair, Rocky was born out of the alternative theatre experiments of the 1960s. When it was mainstreamed (to the extent that Rocky Horror can be mainstreamed), when it was made slick and expensive, when the sets got better, when the score was orchestrated, some believe it lost its soul, its politics, its pre-punk sound, its edge.
Still, the Beast is
Feeding
People may ask how The Rocky Horror Show can be taken seriously today in a world in which AIDS and HIV make Rocky’s sexual high jinks may seem curiously quaint, at best, and at worst, dangerously irresponsible. How can this musical about sexual promiscuity and abandon, written eight years before AIDS first surfaced, speak to contemporary audiences? Is its appeal merely a longing for a time when sex was not deadly, when sexual experimentation was a symbol of hard won freedom rather than gross irresponsibility? Or does Rocky Horror still have something of substance to say?
Perhaps it’s Rocky’s underlying condemnation of America’s sexual puritanicalism and hypocrisy that makes the show still relevant. Rocky satirizes sex in America by personifying in Brad and Janet the two responses American society had toward the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 70s, which is in turn personified by the gender-vague, pansexual Frank N. Furter. Half of America – Brad – responded by fighting even harder than before to stop the progression of sexual freedom, to demonize homosexuality, to condemn sexual independence in women, to blame all of America’s ills on sex, to brand (or re-brand) otherwise healthy expressions of sexuality as dirty and inappropriate. The other half of America – Janet – responded with an almost manic sexual celebration and a kind of aggressive experimentation that today may seem outrageous. Both reactions probably made the early stages of the AIDS pandemic worse than it should have been. And Rocky Horror rightly criticizes through satire both reactions. Both sides went too far. Perhaps today we can see Frank’s death in Rocky Horror as the death of the Sexual Revolution, “murdered” by the onset of AIDS, even though Richard O’Brien couldn’t have possibly known that was coming.
The over-reaction to the sexual revolution by the conservative side of America is responsible for the horrific inaction on the part of the government to react and respond actively to AIDS when it first surfaced. Virtually nothing was done because the disease was perceived to be a “gay” disease and most Americans didn’t like talking about – or even acknowledging – gay issues in the 1970s and 80s. America has been weirdly uptight about all things sexual since its founding, but this time it cost us the lives of tens of thousands of innocent Americans.
But the manic celebration of sexual liberation practiced by the more open-minded side of America shares the blame as well. After decades of serious and sometimes deadly oppression, gay Americans were experiencing genuine sexual freedom for the first time. Finally, gay men and women could meet in public, could date (relatively) openly, could see themselves represented in movies and books. They were no longer required to live their lives in the closet (although many still did). Their reaction to this newfound freedom was to go crazy. Some gay men had sex with thousands of strangers. And they were determined that nothing would stand in the way of this new freedom.
The Rocky Horror Show is about a time in America when our nation stood at a crossroads. Sexual oppression was ending (or at least, beginning to fade) and America had to decide how it would move forward. But neither the people who celebrated this new era or the people terrified by it acted responsibly.
Rocky Horror is not about AIDS. It was written in 1973. But it is about sexual politics in America. And watching it now, we can see a moment in time when it wasn’t yet too late, when the devastation of a generation of innocent men and women should not have been inevitable. We can love the music, laugh at the jokes, and sing along with “The Time Warp,” but we should never forget that Rocky Horror is about something.
Commentators are always at a loss to explain the show’s endless popularity but, at least in America, maybe the answer is just too obvious. America is still largely both obsessed with sex and terrified by it. Rocky’s heroes, Brad Majors (originally named Ricky) and Janet Weiss represent that aspect of America’s sexual history. They embody pre-Pill, pre-Sex Ed American innocence. They are America in the twentieth century. This story dramatizes for us the enforced innocence and sex-only-thru-metaphor of America in the 1950s as it meets the sexual openness of the 1970s (Frank, et al.), resulting in either new sexual freedom (Janet) or renewed repression and fear (Brad). Even the film audience’s nicknames for the heroes – “asshole” for Brad and “slut” for Janet – bear out this interpretation. Brad reacts to Frank’s open sexuality the way half of America reacted to the Sexual Revolution of the 1970s, recoiling in fear, retreating into 1950s Puritanism; and Janet reacts as the other half of America reacted, diving head first into the excesses of free sex, reveling in her sexuality, exploring fearlessly the limits of human sexuality.
Rocky Horror is not just about sex and rock and roll. It’s not just mindless entertainment. Rocky is about things, issues that need discussing, questions that need answering, maybe more now in this cyber-age than before. Richard O’Brien once said, “We have a contract with life: the more intelligent you are, the more responsible you are. The more intelligence that’s given to you as a gift, the more you have to give back to society, the more your responsibility to make change, to improve things, is incumbent upon you. That’s the deal.” David Evans, co-author of Rocky Horror: From Concept to Cult, writes, “I remember how I felt, coming out into Sloane Square on that first night in June 1973. I felt such surging joy, such euphoric elation. I know I must have been grinning from ear to ear for hours. I felt empowered, validated, and no longer alone.”
