Rant-Man's Notebook

By Jim "Rant-Man" MacQuarrie

Let's Do the Time Warp Again!

About a year-and-a-half ago, I wrote this piece for another website, Robot Fist!, which my friend Alistair Kennedy edits. Well, actually, I wrote a piece similar to this one, because now I've gone in and edited it a bit to make it not suck as much as it did then. So here's the new, improved version of my deconstruction of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Enjoy.

About 30 years ago, I found myself sitting in a nearly-empty theater watching something called The Rocky Horror Picture Show. (I was actually there to see the first film on the double-feature, The Phantom of the Paradise, which I will dissect on another occasion. But I digress.) This movie, which was a flop when it came out, has since become something of a cottage industry; it has been playing at midnight every weekend in movie theatres across the US. Its eventual release to video and cable was apparently delayed for several years due to its cult status. Most people between the ages of 18 and 45 have probably seen it at least once. Of those, a small but significant number have seen it repeatedly, some several hundred times. A few even go so far as to dress up as the characters, get up on the stage and perform along with the action on the screen. there's a whole liturgy to accompany the film; actions to perform, lines to shout out, objects to fling. It's a communal activity, and many people go as much for the audience participation as for the movie. So what is it about the RHPS that causes people to respond to it as they do? Why was Drew Carey doing the Time Warp a while back, and why do I care that he was doing it wrong?

Sure, the music is great, covering a range of styles from ballads to 50s rock 'n' roll, and Tim Curry is completely over the top as the Sweet Transvestite from Transexual, Transylvania, but there's something else at work here. I know I didn't sit through it 37 times just to look at Susan Sarandon in her undies (though that works for me, too), and I know that some other people didn't put on a corset and head for the Tiffany every weekend for two and a half decades just to hear Meat Loaf sing Whatever Happened to Saturday Night. Sure, the daring-for-its-time gender-bending provides an opportunity for teenagers to feel like they're being naughty and rebellious by going to the movie, and the audience participation aspect allows them to feel for a little while as if they're a part of the decadent goings-on, but there's more to it than that. There is something deep and primal about the movie that goes unquestioned, unexamined and unnoticed by the majority of the audience.

In fact, it's not too much of a stretch to say that the elaborate audience participation is really a deliberate distraction concocted expressly to allow the people who feel a deep bond with the film to not feel so foolish about it. It's a ritual, like a church service, designed to focus one's attention on the emotional impact of the experience and eliminate the self-consciousness that would inhibit the acceptance of its message. Contrary to what one might think, that message is not one of hedonism and sexual experimentation; it's one of acceptance and self-confidence.

If you were to take a survey of RHPS fans and ask which character is their favourite, it's likely that the majority would say Riff-Raff, the handyman. Riff-Raff is the Everyman of the movie; he is the heart of the film, and yet stands apart from it almost as much as the omnipresent narrator. It's no accident that Riff-Raff is portrayed by Richard O'Brien, who also wrote the script, lyrics and music. I maintain that Riff-Raff is the protagonist of what is essentially a geek power fantasy. Let's take a look at it. We can assume that if you're reading this, you've seen the movie, so I'm just going to jump right in. If you haven't seen it, I'll try to fill in the details for you, but you'll have to keep up as best you can. Oh, and I haven't seen the thing in a few years, so I might miss a point or two.

The movie opens with disembodied lips singing Science Fiction Double Feature, an ode to the cheesy-but-great movies of the 1950s, establishing the tone that the film will aspire to. Indeed, the film contains a great many visual equivalents of the pop-culture references in the song; there are homages to everything from Grant Wood's American Gothic to the RKO Radio Pictures logo, with brief stops for Michaelangelo and Elvis along the way. The Rocky Horror Show proudly proclaims its nerdly nature from the first verse of the opening song. It's worth noting that the voice is male and belongs to Riff-Raff, while the lips are female and belong to Magenta (Patricia Quinn), Riff-Raff's insestuous sister/lover. The two are an inseparable pair, and each serves a function in the fantasy to come.

The opening credits proclaim Brad and Janet (Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon) as the Hero and Heroine; if so, they are highly ineffectual, bumbling and awkward heroes. We laugh and mock from the moment of their first appearance. Brad and Janet are, from the geek perspective, the cheery "rah-rah" kids who always did their homework, were in all the popular clubs, and were voted "most likely to succeed." They weren't cool or extremely popular, nor were they unpopular, and didn't go out of their way to befriend the socially inept outcast types. Note that they are among the few characters who actually survive to the end.

We're introduced to them immediately following a wedding, just in time to witness Brad's proposal, in which Brad reveals his core insecurity and Janet her petty vanity in the song Dammit Janet. Commenting on her engagement ring, she sings "it's nicer than Betty Monroe had," and by the time they decide to seek out their mentor, Professor Scott, to share their happy news, the audience has been pursuaded to view them with an amiable disdain that any high school outcast is quite familiar with, having held the same view of the majority of his peers for most of his school career. To further tip their hand, the filmmakers have a subtle bit of business going on in the background; while Brad and Janet are singing about their engagement, the church staff (Tim Curry, Patricia Quinn and Richard O'Brien in disguise) are removing the wedding decorations and dressing the church for a funeral, serving to establish a bit of credibility with the goth types and set the iconoclastic tone for all that is to follow.

The next song (the movie, as a musical, is primarily driven by the songs; each scene is pretty much a set-piece built to contain the music, most of which drives the action), There's a Light Over at the Frankenstein Place, includes our formal introduction to Riff-Raff. Brad and Janet, their car having broken down, are stuck in the rain on a dark country road, having to walk back to the last lighted building they've seen, a creepy old mansion in the middle of nowhere. Curiously, in the midst of this dark and miserable situation, they sing a song of hope. The second stanza is sung by Riff-Raff while looking out the upper window, presumably watching the soggy strangers approach. His verse is an odd one, recognising the coming darkness and calling upon "Morpheus" (the god of dreams) to bring the sun and light that he needs.

Brad and Janet arrive in the midst of a bizarre party featuring about a hundred strange bikers in black leather and day-glo coloured shirts and/or vests, all wearing the perennial mark of the terminally cool, Ray-Ban sunglasses. These people are only around long enough to do the Time Warp (which features Riff-Raff extolling the virtues of madness and darkness and the void calling him) and to witness the birth of Rocky. Riff-Raff is the first person the Heroes encounter, and he greets them with the same mix of humility and disgust that he directs at everyone, including his employer. He introduces them to his sister, Magenta, the maid, and also to Columbia, "a groupie." This trio has a strange dynamic, again very similar to what one might find among the "odd" kids at any high school; Riff-Raff and Magenta are part of the household staff but very much apart from the goings-on, while at the same time their relationship reveals them to be very much marching to their own drummer. They seem to have some measure of contempt for Columbia (more on that later). It should be pointed out that while the whole film is drenched in sexual themes, they really take a back seat to the psychological aspects that concern us here.

Finally, we are introduced to the central figure of the film, Dr. Frank N. Furter, played by Tim Curry in his breakthrough role. Frank is an outrageous character, embodying all the terrifying aspects of overt and uncontrollable sexual power. It turns out that Frank is building a man of his own, a muscle-bound boy-toy named Rocky Horror, modeled after the ideal man found in the Charles Atlas ads that used to run in the back of comic books. Shortly after Rocky has risen to life and questioned its meaning, Frank's last boy-toy, Eddie (Meat Loaf), emerges from the deep freeze, on his motorcycle and with saxophone in tow, to ask Whatever Happened to Saturday Night? Before too much time passes, Frank dispatches him with a pickaxe, much to Columbia's horror.

In short order, Frank has had his way with poor dumb Rocky, Brad, and Janet, and Janet has found comfort in the arms of Rocky, just before Dr. Scott shows up looking for his nephew, Eddie. Riff-Raff and Magenta continue to hover disdainfully on the sidelines, grudgingly carrying out the master's orders. Following a tense dinner in which more revelations occur concerning the relations between Columbia and Eddie, Eddie and Frank, Columbia and Frank, and the fact that Frank & Company are aliens, all the guests are taken captive and forced into a bizarre "floor show."

The floor show is instructive from a psychological perspective; each character gets a solo in which he or she responds to the "liberation" brought by Frank. Columbia shows that she is completely defined by her relationships. She has no value as a person apart from her attachment to others, and uses drugs to dull the pain of this empty life. Rocky reveals that he is a creature of unthinking lust and self-absorbed vanity. Brad cries out for his mommy and promises to repent from his sin, until he realizes that he likes it. Janet celebrates her newfound sexuality, and Frank sings the movie's anthem, Don't Dream it, Be it. While the song revels in hedonism, it also touches on the larger theme of taking control of one's life and choosing one's destiny.

Into the middle of this quasi-orgy of self-discovery, Riff-Raff and Magenta reveal their true selves. Stepping out in space-alien attire, they point ray guns at Frank, chiding him for being "too extreme" and declare that they are returning to Transylvania because Frank has failed in his mission. Note that the two don't say that Frank is wrong or evil, but that his lifestyle is too extreme. One defining characteristic of the classic geek is that they are very much libertarian at heart; "do your own thing and leave me alone" is pretty much the motto. Frank, in aggressively pushing his lifestyle on others and using them for his own pleasure, has violated that principle. At this point, Frank performs a quite moving song, I'm Going Home, with which anyone who ever felt like he didn't fit in can identify. He completely engages the audience, along with a number of the other characters, who appear to completely forgive him for everything he has done to them.

Alas, it is not to be. In short order, Riff-Raff and Magenta use their laser guns to dispatch not only Frank, but also Columbia and Rocky. They then turn to Dr. Scott, and Riff-Raff apologises for what happened to Eddie. Here is a key point in the movie's theme. Riff-Raff shows compassion for the hulking monster on the motorcycle, who nevertheless didn't deserve to be hacked to death. Dr. Scott replies in true Reactionary Conservative style, declaring that Eddie was a bad egg and "society must be protected," eliciting a threat from Riff-Raff that he'd better get out soon or he'll be killed as well. The good doctor and his young acolytes flee the mansion just before it blasts into space, leaving them crawling on the ground. The narrator then steps in to comment on the pointlessness and futility of life on earth before the credits roll.

So, what does all that mean?

Each of the characters represents an archetype. Starting from the center, we have...
Riff-Raff: The Everyman, the protagonist, the one we are to identify with. Riff-Raff is every weird kid who ever got hassled on the playground.

Next we have three varying feminine roles:
Magenta: The geek girl. Every geeky guy knows at least one girl who is "different from the others;" she "gets" him, they're best friends, and he usually has to repress his romantic feelings for her lest he frighten her away. The geek girl can mingle with, and maybe even be friendly with, the popular people, but her heart is with the outcasts and underdogs.
Columbia: The Needy One. Columbia is everybody who pretends to be something they aren't in order to be popular. She sells herself out to be part of the in-crowd. Her entire identity is defined by whomever she is currently attached to; she has no value at all apart from her relationships. She's also something of a slut, an occupational hazard of the role. And Janet: The Good Girl. Janet is "good" not from any compelling moral standards, but simply out of concern for what others might think. She's all about appearances, a people-pleaser with no opinions of her own.

Moving on, we now find four drastically different representations of masculinity:
Rocky: The Jock. Rocky is, quite frankly, an idiot. His function is to flex his muscles, and it's worth noting that he is the only character that Riff-Raff displays any overt hostility toward, torturing him with dripping candle wax and driving him from the castle, then releasing the dogs to chase him.
Eddie: The Bully. Eddie is described as a "no-good punk," and it fits. He doesn't last long enough to have any interaction with Riff-Raff, but we can assume that it wouldn't be pleasant. Dr. Scott: The Authority Figure. Dr. Scott uses his intelligence as a weapon.
Brad: The Conformist. Like Janet, he isn't motivated by beliefs about right and wrong, but by opinions of what's socially acceptable and what isn't. Brad tries to act like a "real man" but he hasn't got it in him and it shows.

Finally, we have Frank. He is every geek's nightmare. He is aggressively omnisexual, directing his lustful intentions toward everybody except, of course, Riff-Raff and Magenta. Frank is brash, loud, flirtatious, demanding, tyrannical, and self-absorbed. Half the time we admire his audacity, the other half we're appalled by his callousness. Where the outsiders ignore societal expectations, Frank attacks them, tears them down and burns them in his wake. He is both inspiration and cautionary tale.

As the film ends, the giants are slain: Overt masculine posturing (Rocky), violent thuggery (Eddie), hedonistic selfishness (Frank), clingy neediness (Columbia): Dead. Pompous judgementalism (Dr. Scott), straight-arrow conformity (Brad), prissy and shallow virtue (Janet) revealed as hypocritical and humbled. Only the two independent loners (Riff-Raff and Magenta) walk away unscathed, returning together to their paradise in the heavens.

Sitting in the darkness of the Lowe's theatre, the lonely viewer feels a kinship with Riff-Raff and Magenta; for a brief while the scales are balanced and there is justice in the world; all the stuck-up and arrogant jerks get what's coming to them, and the geeks win.

And that's why it's been popular for 29 years.

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