• Play Title: The Rocky Horror Show
• Author: Richard O’Brien
• Written: 1973
• Page count: 55

Summary

Picture it – a dark, stormy night; newly engaged couple Brad and Janet get a tyre blow-out on a lonely stretch of road. They just need a phone to call for help but soon find themselves at the door of what looks like “some sort of hunting lodge for rich weirdos” (O’Brien 14). Actually, it’s “The Frankenstein place,” which is home to the likes of Riff Raff, Magenta, Rocky, Eddie and Frank, among others. Frank is “just a sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania” (18) who wishes to introduce his unexpected guests to pelvic thrusts, lust and forbidden fruits. This conspicuously underdressed host is an evil scientist in the process of creating his perfect, muscle-bound mate named Rocky (hence the ‘horror’ of the title). The rather naive young couple quickly succumb to the alluring motto of “Don’t dream it – be it” (47). Meanwhile, there is an oddly familiar backing track that includes songs like “The Time Warp” and “Sweet Transvestite.” Mr Frank ‘n’ Furter eventually comes to a sticky end, but it’s all in the name of fun.

Richard O’Brien’s musical is a homage to classic horror movies as well as science fiction favourites. It’s a screwball comedy, so an illogical and very funny plot is de riguer. The musical and subsequent 1975 movie version became cult classics. Does the work have a theme? Well, certainly not a preachy one, but it does promote the idea that breaking free of the shackles of conformity is healthy.

Ways to access the text: watching/listening

The most accessible and possibly best way to experience this musical is by watching the 1975 film version named The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Directed by Jim Sharman, this work was co-written by O’Brien and Sharman. The movie has a running time of 1 hour and 40 mins.

It’s also possible to listen to a recording of the movie soundtrack on YouTube. This is entitled “The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Audience Participation.” There are two files with respective playing times of 48 and 47 minutes. Please note that audience participation means you hear people shouting out perfectly timed extra dialogue, including various colourful obscenities. I listened to the full recording and the interjections got a bit tiresome.

Why watch/listen to/ The Rocky Horror [Picture] Show?

Well, it’s a serious slice of pop culture from the 1970s that also happens to hold bona fide cult status. Few people, with the possible exception of the under 30s, will fail to recognise Tim Curry in stockings and heels. The musical numbers are catchy, the actors are well-known, and the story is wonderfully absurd. It’s Dr Frankenstein with a penchant for half-brained, full-muscled hunks – combined with some B movie classic storylines about aliens who wield death-ray guns. In short, it’s shameless, exuberant fun.

Post-reading discussion/interpretation

_{The Delights of Chance Encounters}

It’s just over fifty years since The Rocky Horror Show was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre, London. This musical was, and remains, a landmark work in both the worlds of theatre and film. True, the special appeal of the story has somewhat faded and the original, hardcore audience have aged and maybe lost some of their enthusiasm. However, the ground-breaking nature of the play’s script is undeniable. O’Brien managed to do what many have painstakingly attempted yet woefully failed to achieve; he delivered an essentially subversive, hedonistic message to the masses with the aid of spot-on humour and fantastic songs and costumes. The majority of movies featuring cross-dressing or transsexual characters are niche projects with a subliminal desire to educate an audience, to elevate them above their conservative views. In contrast, Mr Frank ‘n’ Furter exudes an intoxicating aura of joie de vivre, and he wishes to teach us nothing except wild abandonment. The message wiggles effortlessly into people’s brains because there are no preachy undertones. And just for conformity, the play still ends with the conventional ‘bury your gays’ trope when Frank is killed by Riff Raff’s ray gun (grrrr). This acts like a satisfying palate cleanser for the more traditional audience members who have found the whole ordeal too bacchanalian. The musical is an alchemist’s dream because everything just comes together in the right proportions to create an immoral marvel.

Reviews and commentaries regarding The Rocky Horror Show often focus on the movie rather than the theatrical version. However, the interpretations usually highlight similar key issues. For example, many interpretations could be classed with Mark Siegel’s, who writes that the musical “is an Aristophanic attack against sexually repressive traditional mores and social institutions” (306). For context, Aristophanes was an ancient Greek playwright who specialized in comedy, and he was notably good at ridiculing his subjects mercilessly. O’Brien certainly employs ridicule to great effect when he targets the heteronormative culture of the 1970s. For instance, Brad proposes to Janet by singing the decidedly anti-romantic ditty “Damn It Janet.” Having just seen their boring friends marry (the Hapshatts), Brad feels that he and Janet should be next. This isn’t a Mills and Boon romance but rather a story of good-in-the-kitchen women and men in line for promotions. O’Brien goes on to shatter illusions about virginal brides, monogamy, and unwavering sexual orientation when Frank ‘n’ Furter seduces Brad and Janet on the same night. Nothing is sacrosanct. After Rocky is revealed to stunned onlookers, Frank completes the insult to the established idea of manhood by singing “I can make you a man,” before donning a bridal veil and getting mock hitched to the muscle-bound hunk. Through this sustained mockery of the normal, the abnormal manifests as a viable alternative in the story.

The play has been critiqued over many decades, which encourages some commentators to seek novel approaches. For instance, a consideration of the play’s various musical numbers has been completed by Nicole Biamonte and she has proposed the following, intriguing interpretation.

“In The Rocky Horror Show, flat keys and softer pop-music styles are loosely correlated with the conservative, heteronormative human characters, and sharp keys and hard-rock styles with the sexually open, queer alien characters.” (Biamonte 169)

This binary, be it expressed in musical keys or sexual preferences, is central to the story. A schism of sorts is being presented for our consideration. Christy Tyson considers the appeal of the play to an alienated, young audience, and comes to the conclusion that “The messages in Rocky are clear, simple and often repeated: It’s OK to be different; It’s OK to feel good!” (60). To be different and feel good means to unshackle oneself and transgress a little, or a lot. O’Brien’s quirky story facilitated a clean split between the older and younger generations: the stale squares versus the cool kids. As previously noted, the play’s lead character dies in the end and “Numerous commentators have construed Frank’s death as punishment for his hedonistic lifestyle and/or his queerness” (Biamonte 183). Thus, the binary still has an apparent safe side, which contrasts with the wrong side!

Jerry B. Brown and Judith Hoch have summarized their core reading of the movie as follows. This reading also looks at what is amiss.

“Rocky Horror is both entertaining and illuminating as a musical. However, the film’s main plot parodies the decline of the family and changes in male and female behavior that have shocked England and America in the post-War period. In the “betwixt and between” time that follows the end of empire, sex roles turn topsy-türvy.” (Brown and Hoch 63)

Brown and Hoch see the movie as a work that comprises four key scenes, namely, “American Gothic, The Creation, The Last Supper and The Ascent of the Space Age Puritans” (61). Indeed, many writers have concentrated on the strategic re-recreation of Grant Wood’s classic portrait named American Gothic in the opening scene of the movie. This occurs when Riff Raff, pitchfork in hand, and Magenta stand outside the chapel in puritanical costume. This portrait conjures up the essence of the pleasureless, stoical, protestant ethic of work … and no play; a world that O’Brien proceeds to undermine. ‘The Creation’ refers to Frank ‘n’ Furter’s diabolical creation named Rocky (à la Frankenstein). ‘The Last Supper’ is mocked by the revelation of Meatloaf’s (pun intended) dead body in a glass lid coffin, hidden beneath the dining table. The diners quickly realize that they are devouring Frank’s defunct ex-boyfriend. The Last Supper also foreshadows the death of the alternative, diabolical saviour, namely Frank. Finally, Riff Raff and Magenta, who have been revealed as aliens, return to their home planet of transsexual, in the galaxy of Transylvania (O’Brien 50). This is the final stage, namely ‘The Ascent.’ Various famous artworks shown in the movie from Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam to Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Last Supper underpin the interpretation outlined by Brown and Hoch.

In an interview with BBC Newsnight, O’Brien described his musical as the “root fairytale” with Brad and Janet representing Adam and Eve and Frank ‘n’ Furter as the serpent (YouTube). Instead of treating the musical as a deliberate attack on all things conventional, it’s more intuitive to consider the haphazard nature of circumstance. In his reference to the famous Genesis passage, the playwright reminds us that things often play out in unpredictable ways, while a desire for both knowledge and sensation underlies many of our major life choices. When Columbia sings her particular verse of “The Time Warp,” then an image of the dark, seductive figure takes shape.

Columbia: “Well I was walking down the street
Just having a think
When a snake of a guy gave me an evil wink
Well it shook me up, it took me by surprise
He had a pick-up truck and the devil’s eyes
Oh – he stared at me and I felt a change
Time meant nothing – never would again.” (O’Brien 17)

Brad and Janet fall into the clutches of Mr. Frank ‘n’ Furter and his clan of debauched followers. While Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is the inspiration for Rocky’s story, other Gothic novels are referenced too. Remember that these aliens come from the galaxy of Transylvania. There are strong echoes of Bram Stoker’s Dracula in this tale because, like Brad and Janet, the young, innocent Jonathan Harker finds himself at Count Dracula’s castle. Similar to Frank’s seduction of his innocent prey, Dracula’s three maidens advance on Jonathan, apparently to kiss him, thus bringing him to “an agony of delightful anticipation” (Stoker 42). The forbidden knowledge is sexual but with that comes a release from the traditional bonds of responsibility too. Poor Jonathan is lucky to escape Dracula’s lair alive since the Count has rampant desires too, but in the more modern tale of Brad and Janet, their sexual desires are simply awoken.

The literal turning point for Brad and Janet is when they take “the wrong fork” (11) on the road. Much like in Robert Frost’s famous poem, “The Road Not Taken,” life’s travellers often anoint past decisions as being informed, deliberate choices. Moreover, the same people assert, with the benefit of hindsight, that they chose correctly. What Frost’s poem truly expresses is the arbitrary nature of our choices, the often unalterable courses they set us upon, and our overwhelming, eventual need to make sense of what we’ve done. As O’Brien writes, we are ultimately just insects crawling on the planet’s face “lost in time, and lost in space … and meaning” (51). The Rocky Horror Show is a musical that illustrates, nonetheless, that people should always go with their gut feelings and all will eventually turn out okay – probably. In a fashion refreshingly dissimilar to Frost’s, O’Brien shows that choices made, even haphazardly, often reflect an unacknowledged internal desire.

Works Cited

BIAMONTE, NICOLE. “Style, Tonality, and Sexuality in The Rocky Horror Show.” Here for the Hearing: Analyzing the Music in Musical Theater, edited by Michael Buchler and Gregory J. Decker, University of Michigan Press, 2023, pp. 169–89. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.11969716.14.

BROWN, JERRY B., and JUDITH HOCH. “The Rocky Horror Picture Show: A Galactic Gothic Epic.” Studies in Popular Culture, vol. 4, 1981, pp. 59–66. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/45018077.

Frost, Robert. “The Road Not Taken.” Poetry Foundation, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44272/the-road-not-taken 

“Richard O’Brien and the Rocky Horror fairy tale – Newsnight.” YouTube, uploaded by BBC Newsnight, 8 September 2015, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLAi8HQMkYo 

Siegel, Mark. “‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’: More than a Lip Service (Le ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show,’ Du Bout Des Lèvres).” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 7, no. 3, 1980, pp. 305–12. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4239358.

Stoker, Bram. Dracula, edited by Nina Auerbach and David J. Skal, W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1997.

Tyson, Christy, et al. “Our Readers Write: What Is the Significance of the Rocky Horror Picture Show? Why Do Kids Keep Going to It?” The English Journal, vol. 69, no. 7, 1980, pp. 60–62. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/817417.