Deep Thoughts about Rocky Horror Picture Show

Let’s do the time warp agaaaaaain! (Except with ongoing enthusiastic consent this time, mkay?)

This week, Emily and Tracie talk aboutthe beloved 1975 film Rocky Horror Picture Show. From its influence on culture, fashion, music, and film to its catchy AF songs, there’s a lot to love in this genre-bending gender-bending mashup of B horror/sci fi, musical theater, drag culture, and comedy. But despite Rocky Horror’s important strides forward for LGBTQ acceptance, there’s some ugly (and period appropriate) disregard for consent.

Listen in as Emily and Tracie revisit this favorite of their high school years–at the late night, double feature, picture show!

CW: Discussions of in-film scenes featuring dubious (at best) consent.

Mentioned in this episode:

https://aninjusticemag.com/gently-ripping-apart-the-rocky-horror-picture-show-ce2ff8022e60

https://www.tor.com/2012/10/31/the-astonishingly-sensical-plot-of-the-rocky-horror-picture-show/

Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus episodes, video versions, and early access to Deep Thoughts by visiting us on Patreon. 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

I'm Emily Guy-Burkin and you're listening to Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, because pop culture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head? On today's episode, I will be discussing the 1975 classic Rocky Horror Picture Show with my sister, tracy Guy-Dekker, and with you, let's dive in Oof Y'all.

Speaker 2: 0:23

we had some serious technical difficulties while recording this episode. I think we pulled it off in the edit, but if you notice something weird, like maybe we're not quite in sync with one another at a certain points, that's what happened. Thanks for your patience. I think it's worth a listen. Anyway, have you ever had something you love dismissed because it's just pop culture, what others might deem stupid shit? You know matters. You know it's worth talking and thinking about, and so do we. So come over, think with us as we delve into our deep thoughts about stupid shit.

Speaker 1: 0:58

So Trace, this is another piece of media that either of us could bleed on and I am absolutely certain you saw this before I did, although it came out before either of us were born. But tell me what you know about Rocky Horror Picture Show, what you remember about it, how you were introduced to it, that sort of thing.

Speaker 2: 1:18

So I first saw it. They did they actually showed it on broadcast TV when I was maybe 16, but, like with commentary. So they'd like cut away to like the audience, because I guess it was filmed at one of the, you know, live presentations and so they'd like cut away to the audience for some of the most racy parts, although the whole thing's pretty racy, and here's the kicker. I watched it with dad.

Speaker 1: 1:46

I had no idea, oh goodness.

Speaker 2: 1:52

Yeah, that was an awkward 90 minutes. My recollection is sitting in, you know, in his living room on Olmstead Road and like being like oh, I didn't know it was a Frankenstein story. And then like being like really, really grateful for the cutaways to like the audience like throwing toast or whatever they were doing.

Speaker 2: 2:20

But I loved it. I mean, even in that awkward, weird broadcast TV edited version, I absolutely loved it. And so, because of seeing it that way, I somehow acquired a VHS which is maybe how you saw it Probably and watched it over and over and over again and bought. I had the CD, I had the soundtrack and I also had the Roxy Music from before it became a film, like when it was the musical show. I had both soundtracks and I just loved it. And then the first time I went to see it, I went to see it live. You know one of the screenings and you know how they do that thing where people who've never seen it before are declared virgins and have like V's put on their head and stuff. As I came into the theater they were like, have you seen it before? And I was like, yeah, I've seen it lots. And they were like, are you sure? I had no idea. I had no idea about the, you know, virgin thing and so.

Speaker 2: 3:20

I managed to escape ever having that virgin experience at a Rocky Horror screening because when I was coming into the first time I saw it, which must have been in Baltimore, or maybe it was in Cleveland and Ohio, and like while I was in college, I don't know, I'm not sure, but it was I was still. I was pretty young. I was pretty young like under 21 when I saw it the first time like like in 19 or 20. Yeah, so it is like the music is absolutely a part of the furniture of my brain.

Speaker 2: 3:52

In fact. I was just at a party last weekend and somebody said, yeah, you know, it's the home of happiness, and I was like, oh, denton. And then somebody else in the room was like Denton in Maryland or the one in Ohio, whatever. I don't remember what the other state was. I was like, uh, unclear, she didn't know we were referencing the movie, anyway. So yeah, it is like faked in to to my gray matter.

Speaker 2: 4:21

I did go to watch it again within the past couple years and was like, uh, oh, like watching it today after the Me Too movement, it's uncomfortable. I'm sure we'll get into that, but yeah, that's, that's what I know and remember. I know all the songs, every word, every beat, every woohoo, and I'm excited to uh, to reminisce with you about it. So why are we reminiscing about it? Tell me, like, why did you bring this one to Deep Thoughts.

Speaker 1: 4:52

Like you, this, this movie, is very much part of the furniture of my brain. I have a tendency to sing things to myself to the tune of other songs, so I'll be pouring myself coffee going coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee. I want to feel a lirty, so like that's just. It's just part of what I do, and I consistently go back to these songs because they are excellent.

Speaker 2: 5:24

And they're like catchy AF oh so catchy Like.

Speaker 1: 5:28

That's something that I think is really important and part of the reason why I want to talk about it. I was a sort of theater kid and that's how I was introduced to the film. Actually not, it wasn't exactly by you. I very vividly remember I was in the play my freshman year of high school and we had some sort of like Halloween cast party and someone played Time Warp and I remember being like this is fantastic, and it was soon after that that I saw the film. I think it was. You had the VHS and I was like I heard that song, I want to watch that movie.

Speaker 2: 6:00

Yeah, if you were a freshman in high school, then maybe I was a little older when the broadcast thing was. I don't know why you weren't there, that I was at Dad's house and you weren't there. Maybe you were performing in the play or something, maybe rehearsal.

Speaker 1: 6:14

Maybe the place that this film holds in LGBTQIA history is so important and I actually feel a little under qualified or a lot under qualified to talk about that. But I do want to talk about how you and I in high school felt perfectly comfortable saying we love Rocky Horror Picture Show, which I think shows how far the world had come, even in the 90s, when my high school guy friends were so virulently homophobic and like friends was, you know, the biggest sitcom on the air was so homophobic. So there's there is this important thread of what this film you know means for opening up people's eyes. It's also so incredibly influential in terms of style.

Speaker 1: 7:15

This was something I was not aware of, but as I was doing some research, the costuming for this show really influenced punk rock style, so like ripped fishnets and corsets and things like that. It was very influential and, as, as you said, it's part of the furniture of my mind. So I really want to take a second look at it now that we're doing this project with both kind of more critical eye, considering the fact that this movie was made nearly 50 years ago and so some things have changed a lot, but also with an appreciative eye because of what Richard O'Brien, the writer and actor who played riffraff, what he was able to create with this amazing, small budget, indie, very strange film that is so influential and so important. So that's that's why we're talking about it today.

Speaker 2: 8:12

Cool, so let's remind our listeners about the plot such as there is one.

Speaker 1: 8:19

So we start off with the lips where it's. The intro is a song about basically, films and love for old science fiction films. And then we are introduced to Brad and Janet, who are at their friends Betty and Ralph's wedding, and Brad ends up singing a song to Janet where he proposes to her that he's in love with her, he wants to marry her and they're going to go back to meet their old professor, dr Scott, who was where they met. It was in his science class. They head off to find Dr Scott to tell him the good news about their engagements, but they get lost on the way. They take a wrong turning and they get flat.

Speaker 1: 9:02

And this is back in the battle days, when you didn't have a phone in your pocket. So they decide to go back to the castle. They saw a little while back and see if there's a phone. The castle yeah yeah, a random castle. So they passed. So they get there. There's a whole bunch of very strange people there who are dancing and singing. Janet is freaked out and wants to leave, and then they are introduced to their host, dr Frankenferder, who is played with scenery chewing perfection by Tim Curry who who is not dead?

Speaker 2: 9:40

by the way, he is not dead. Who thought he was dead at this party? I was talking about Rocky Horus. I was like I was so sad when he died. I was like he's not dead. He's still alive, still chewing the scenery.

Speaker 1: 9:52

So Frankenferder invites them to stay the night, which basically tells them to stay the night. They are shivering, cold because they were out in November rain to get to the castle. So he has them, has his servants removed their clothes so they're just in their underwear, and then they they're given like bloodstained robes to wear. So he invites them up to the lab to see his newest invention, which is Rocky, who is a muscle man who Frankenferder has created. We learn that he created this man using half of the brain of his protege, eddie, who first, out of deep freeze, sings a pretty good song and then is Frankenferder. Before Frank and Rocky retire to the honeymoon suite.

Speaker 2: 10:45

And it turns out that Eddie is Dr Scott's nephew. Are you getting to that? I will.

Speaker 1: 10:50

Yes, did I.

Speaker 2: 10:51

Yes, yeah.

Speaker 1: 10:52

Okay, sorry. So Brad and Janet are each shown to their own bedrooms in the night. Frank comes to visit each one pretending to be the other and the term used in like describing it as he seduces them. But it is not okay. But there is a sexual something happens after Frank has seduced both Janet and Brad. Janet is kind of wandering around the castle feeling distraught about what is going on. Rocky has gone, running off because he's been chased off by riffraff and magenta, and Janet ends up back in the lab where she finds Rocky crying because he is frightened he's been chased off by the dogs and she starts to comfort him because he's hurt and she has this realization like, oh, she is very attracted to him. She has a song touch a touch, a touch me song and she and Rocky end up having some sort of interaction together.

Speaker 1: 12:03

While that is happening, dr Scott suddenly shows up at the castle and Dr Scott is who Janet and Brad were going to announce their engagement to. He is actually the uncle of Eddie and so he comes into the castle. Dr Frank and Ferdler already knows exactly who Dr Scott is. There's this wonderful scene where they all end up in the lab and they're shocked to find Janet and Rocky together. And there's the wonderful joke that always gets me it's Dr Scott, brad, dr Scott, janet, rocky, which is repeated like three times and makes me crack up every time. And in the midst of that, magenta appears through the hole in the wall that Dr Scott has just crashed through to announce that dinner is ready. And she says dinner is prepared, which is how I announce any meal. In my house. They have a very, very uncomfortable meal of some strange meat that Frank cuts with a, an electric knife which I guess were a thing in the 70s and riffraff.

Speaker 2: 13:14

Oh yeah, like an electric carver. It was a thing in the 70s.

Speaker 1: 13:17

Yeah, which riffraff hands out to everyone by hand like just throws little Like bare hands, bare hands. It turns out that they are eating, eddie, oh no, it's rather tend to subject Another slush.

Speaker 1: 13:35

Oh no, meatloaf again. So Dr Scott explains how he knows Eddie, why he happens to be there. Janet freaks out and kind of runs away. Frank runs after her, tells her she's about a sensual as a pencil. You're a sensual as a pencil. And the doctor ends up using the doosizer to turn everyone into a statue. So he turns Janet, brad, dr Scott and Columbia into statues and Rocky. And then he gets ready for the floor show where he unmeduizes everyone after he's dressed them up in corsets and stockings and garters and they have a big song number together. Riffraff and Magenta come in dressed in space clothes and tell him that the mission's a failure, they're leaving and they kill Frankenferder, they kill Columbia and they kill Rocky and they tell the remaining humans. So Brad, janet, dr Scott to get out of there and the castle takes off because it's actually a spaceship.

Speaker 2: 14:41

So it's a Frankenstein parody and also an alien thing and a sex romp and also like a musical like, but like almost like a burlesque. I mean they don't strip but they're dressed very risk game. It's also like a mockumentary crime drama, right With the criminologist who, like, narrates the thing. Just it just defies genre. It is it will not be pigeonholed into a single genre. Honestly, there's no way we could do it justice in a synopsis like this. You just have to watch it.

Speaker 1: 15:17

Yeah, this film epitomizes the writing advice that you should write the story or create the art that only you can create, because, clearly, rocky Horror Picture Show is something that only could have come from the mind of Richard O'Brien, and what I love about it is it also wears its inspirations proudly, like he was clearly inspired by, you know, be Horror and sci-fi movies from the early 20th century. He was inspired by musical theater. He was inspired by the gay scene and punk scene in terms of, like, the look of what everyone's wearing and the story that's in there. He was inspired by crime fiction, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 16:08

Like mockumentaries, yes, yeah.

Speaker 1: 16:11

Yeah, and so this is especially important for me as a creator, because I grew up with this sense that art has to spring fully formed from the mind of the artist, with no influence whatsoever.

Speaker 2: 16:28

Right, right, just sort of placed there by some divine hand.

Speaker 1: 16:32

Yes, and I've since learned that some of that has to do with how we treat marginalized creators. So if there is a creator from a marginalized group who has such beautiful art or fiction, or whatever it is that they create, that it cannot be ignored by mainstream society, the tendency is to erase their influences and to treat them as if they had come out of nowhere. So I cannot name Jane Austen's influences, though she had them, but because she is this incredible talent, we treat her as if she just popped up out of nowhere, right, and so that basically means that we can't follow her example of how she learned to write and how she became as good as she is. And so that's the other aspect about this that I love, because queer creators are in a similar kind of situation, where there's this sense that they kind of came out of nowhere, rather than recognizing their influences. And Richard O'Brien, he doesn't just recognize his influences, he names them. He names them all in that introductory song.

Speaker 2: 17:53

And we see them too in the action, right Like Rocky climbs the RKO tower carrying Frank. It's clearly a King Kong reference and within the songs too right when one of Frank's songs he sings whatever happened to Faye Ray?

Speaker 1: 18:14

Faye Ray.

Speaker 2: 18:14

Yeah, right, so like actors are named actors, actresses, characters are named throughout the film and in the different musical numbers and things.

Speaker 1: 18:26

So yeah, there's no pretense about this being a fully formed Athena stepping out of the mind of Well, and the fact that it's a Frankenstein story, which means that it is part of this long tradition that started. We know exactly where Frankenstein started and that is now a trope. So it's impossible to define or describe this movie. You kind of just have to watch it, and that's because it's all the weird shit that Richard O'Brien carries around in his own head. And it has not only created a remarkable film, but it has spawned so much art Some of it like the midnight showings that you went to where people throw torest, and so on.

Speaker 1: 19:18

The audience participation, yes, but it's also inspired a great deal of costume choices and art and other things. I also and I was not able to follow up on this as much as I wanted I read and I wanted to like double check it that the term Easter egg in terms of like something hidden for a viewer to see comes from this film.

Speaker 2: 19:41

Yeah, I remember reading that too, because they actually did like an egg hunt for the cast or something and you can actually see them in the like there's one under a throne or something, one under the under Frankenfurter's throne?

Speaker 1: 19:51

Yeah, and it was not intentional, like they just didn't find all the.

Speaker 2: 19:56

They find it, they had to start filming again. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 20:00

So just amazingly influential. And like I do find that so inspirational, that like the weird crap in your head is something people want to see.

Speaker 2: 20:12

You know, I think I am willing to bet that Richard O'Brien took a lot of golf flak whatever the right word is shit for his weirdness, you know, for the things that he liked. I'm sure he was, you know, teased and and maybe even worse about it, and then he was able to turn it into this piece of media that is so beloved by so many. That's really sweet, and he is an amazing songwriter.

Speaker 1: 20:41

Those songs are so good.

Speaker 2: 20:43

In those early days when I was first like when I was really enamored and I bought both the sound tracks and stuff, like trying to find other things that he had done and really coming up short. Like it's like it's the. It's the thing that he got any kind of recognition for, yeah.

Speaker 1: 20:59

He has. There's a film that is kind of like a sort of sequel. It takes place in Denton. It's stars Brad and Janet, although they're they're not played by Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon, and actually Patricia Quinn, who played Magenta, and little Nell, who played Columbia, are both in it and it's actually a really, apparently a very good satire of what we now have for reality TV, even though it came out like 81 or 82. Richard O'Brien was also an actor in the film Dark City, where he plays an alien.

Speaker 2: 21:36

So of course he does.

Speaker 1: 21:37

Yeah, but I also I wonder if part of why you had trouble finding it is he got started in theater and I believe he probably continued to work in theater.

Speaker 2: 21:48

It was also like the mid to late 90s and I haven't looked since. In the ways that we were able to search then are not like what they are now.

Speaker 1: 21:58

So yeah, yeah, didn't have a computer in your pocket. It's just phenomenal and fun. Like it is fun, yeah, and I actually have been listening to soundtrack, but even with my kids in the car although there have been a couple of things where explain things, I'm like I've not played touch a touch a touch me for the kids Because that I'm like okay with defining a transsexual and transvestite, but the I want to feel dirty, I'm not comfortable explaining to my children. Yeah, but it's also a product of its time. So let's start with the.

Speaker 2: 22:36

Beck-Dell test yeah, it barely passes, barely passes.

Speaker 1: 22:41

So we have four named female characters. We've got Janet, of course. There's Betty Monroe, who is now Mrs Ralph Hapshat, right, ha ha ha. There's Columbia, who is the groupie, and Magenta, who is one of Frank's servants. So there are four named female characters. They do talk to each other. Janet asks Magenta if Frank is her husband, but that's about a man. And I think Janet says you're very kind when Magenta is drying her hair. And then Columbia and Magenta.

Speaker 2: 23:23

Well, janet definitely asks if something about the lab, because Columbia says I've seen it.

Speaker 1: 23:31

Oh, yes, that's right. That's right. I'd forgotten that. Yes, all right. And then there's the point where Columbia and Magenta are watching Janet while she is seducing Rocky and talking about what Janet is singing yeah.

Speaker 2: 23:49

You mean she, she, uh-huh.

Speaker 1: 23:53

So it passes Barely. It's a low bar.

Speaker 1: 23:58

It's a low bar, but it's not great about gender in terms of women. It's very obviously comfortable and OK with gender bending. Yes, from men in any case, although the unconventional conventionists are all dressed in like tuxedos and like masculine coated clothing and they are not all Cis men. Cis men, yes, thank you. So there is some of that and that's fantastic. Like Frank spends pretty much the entire movie in a corset and garters, yeah, there's points where he's wearing a dress, like an actual dress, yeah, and all of, and he wears a lot of makeup, a lot of eye makeup.

Speaker 1: 24:48

Interesting fact the designer, the makeup artist who did the makeup for Rocky Horror Picture Show is the same makeup artist who did David Bowie's Lightning Bolt for Aladdin's Sane, which is really cool. And something that I think is really interesting is in that floor show at the end, everyone is dressed like Frank at that point and all of the men are still shown to be sexy, including Dr Scott. Now he is not in the full get up, but while he's singing he lifts his leg and you see that he's wearing the garters and stockings and high heeled shoes. And I think that that's a really important moment because it is an anti-Abelist message about the sexiness of all body types, including those in wheelchairs, and that is so subversive. I mean, that would be hugely subversive today, let alone 50 years ago, 75. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 25:44

I think it's interesting. So that's about gender, and I think sexuality is wrapped up in it. The men aren't wearing house coats, right. They're wearing stockings Like fishnets and high heels, so like feminine coated sexy things, right. So I think that's significant. I was thinking about it as we were getting ready to record it, and one of the things that I think is really interesting and good about sexuality and queerness in this film is that it does not erase bisexuality. In addition to the binary of gender male and female that we have been given by Western culture, we've also been given a binary about sexuality queer or straight and this movie actually pushes back against both binaries which is really cool.

Speaker 2: 26:36

So we see, I mean Frank is unashamedly bisexual. We see, repeatedly like, like sexual, really Well, yeah, yeah, although I don't know if was that a term in 1975?

Speaker 1: 26:50

Yeah, Honestly, I don't know if it.

Speaker 2: 26:52

I don't know either. People would self-identify us, but yeah, but that is for sure agreed, agreed. Columbia is also shown to be bisexual. Columbia is, and we see that Brad actually is.

Speaker 2: 27:05

Because, he says just don't tell Janet about his time with Frank. So I think there's something that I really deeply appreciate about that in this movie, and like multiple truths can be held at the same time, like the actual treatment of these women is incomplete. I think Janet is just I don't even know what the words are it's sort of she's just the walking personification of you would like kink if you tried it. That's all there is to her, your vanilla and virginal, only because you haven't tried anything. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 27:59

That's it.

Speaker 2: 28:00

That's all there is to her character.

Speaker 1: 28:02

Yeah, that's not a character. I know that O'Brien, in writing this, was trying to lampoon the buttoned up conservative, straight world, and one of the best indications of that to me is at the beginning, when they're at Betty and Ralph's wedding, the getaway car They've got just married on it. But on the side it's like she got hers, just wait, tonight he'll get his. Yeah, and that is very much a lampooning of the expectations of sex within heterosexual marriage and that the wedding is for her, the ring is for her and the sex is for him. And so I can appreciate the attempt to show that women can enjoy sex, the attempt to show that Betty and Ralph just don't know better, because that is the world that they live in. And if they were to rose tint their world, if they were to stop by Frank and Ferdinand's castle, they too would have an awakening. And there's two sides to that. On the one side, yes, I do think that that aspect of straight culture needs to be lampooned.

Speaker 2: 29:33

Yeah, it's so reductive, it's so deeply reductive, that women give sex to get love and men give love to get sex. That is so reductive and gross as if all humans don't need both. I mean sorry, I guess, asexual folks.

Speaker 1: 29:50

I actually don't.

Speaker 2: 29:51

But as if everything's not on the table. We can't want and desire and give and receive love and sex and different iterations thereof, regardless of our gender, mm-hmm.

Speaker 1: 30:06

And you know that view of sexuality is like still alive and well in 2024. Oh yes, absolutely, and so like absolutely. I appreciate that the issue that I have with the way that Rocky Horror Picture Show shows it is that, like Janet's not a fully-formed character. Now, part of that's because no one in this film is a fully-formed character.

Speaker 2: 30:31

That is absolutely true.

Speaker 1: 30:32

Yeah, and they play up the oh what shall I do? Kind of aspect of her damsel in distress, as just as much as they play up you know life's cheap, or that type, like for Brad Right, it's intentional, you're right, you're right, yeah, but it also completely ignores consent.

Speaker 2: 30:56

And that's Completely ignores consent Is where it's a problem. Not only that, it does that old trope of kind of excusing the lack of consent by suggesting the victim of the deception and or assault enjoyed it and therefore it's OK. Yes, the enjoyment justifies the lack of consent, or the coercion or the deception, like that's the sort of revenge of the nerds type, yes, which is after this movie.

Speaker 2: 31:27

But that trope of like you know, if she enjoys the sex that she didn't fully consent to, then you're off the hook for having not received the consent in the first place.

Speaker 1: 31:38

Yes.

Speaker 2: 31:39

Yeah, and that doesn't fly in 2024.

Speaker 1: 31:42

Yes, and you know I don't want to say to be fair because it's not fair. Continuous enthusiastic vocal consent is a, sadly, relatively new concept. Yeah, Like in 1975, no means no was progressive. Yeah, so like I don't want to say to be fair to Richard O'Brien, because that was never OK To put it in context, though, but in context, yes, I also think that a woman writing this would have pulled on different levers. Yeah, but that like. But it's impossible to say.

Speaker 2: 32:19

But someone who has existed in a female-coded body, who also was as subversive as Richard O'Brien was yeah, maybe it's impossible to say, but it's impossible to say yeah Because you're right about that None of them are fully formed. So my saying like Janet is not fully formed is like, yeah, so, trace, and you know, it was subversive that Janet, you know, like the moment when she like rips off a piece of her slip to tend his wound and then like looks around and bites her lip, like even showing her desiring sex with Rocky, was subversive in 75.

Speaker 1: 32:59

Yes, yeah, and you know other aspects of it. So showing Columbia and Magenta, first of all, the voyeurism, that like non-consensual voyeurism also not OK, right, but like showing them enjoying each other sexually, is incredibly subversive. Showing like, unapologetically, frank is attracted to men, so subversive.

Speaker 2: 33:25

And also sleeping with women.

Speaker 1: 33:27

Yes, yes, and particularly like. The idea that women would find Frank attractive too is subversive. Yep, yep, columbia makes it clear I loved you, frank. Yeah, and Janet. You know as icky as that scene is. She does giggle and say like, well, ok, as long as you don't tell Brad. And she also. She giggles when Frank kisses her hand and says on Chante, so like he is desirable in heterosexual pairings, even presenting as he does. And that's amazing yeah.

Speaker 2: 34:05

I love that. There's like the fireworks going off outside my head right now, before Klee, you know thinking about men's bodies, actually, right. So we've got Rocky in his little silver speedo, who's like a bodybuilder you bury muscley and then there's Meatloaf, who's small fat, and Brad, who's just slim, and then Frank is wiry in that sort of like androgynous way, so like we have a big diversity of male body types, all of whom are sexually desirable in one way or another.

Speaker 1: 34:46

What's interesting is that there's this diversity of bodies that are sexy in men. You don't see it in the women. Now, one possibility I know Richard O'Brien is queer. I do not know if he is a gay man or if he is bisexual or I don't know, but it's entirely possible that this is like partially about Richard O'Brien is casting people he finds sexy, which is a diverse group of men, and then he's not particularly interested in women.

Speaker 2: 35:23

Yeah, it's possible.

Speaker 1: 35:24

It's possible and it's a lot to ask of three women basically, particularly in 1975. These days you have a hard enough time getting any kind of diversity of anything in a film, let alone body type. But things to think about what this says about sexuality, what this says about sexiness yeah, it is talking about diversity too.

Speaker 2: 35:49

We are talking about all white people.

Speaker 1: 35:53

A couple of the unconventional conventionists are black.

Speaker 2: 35:57

Yeah, but they're extras.

Speaker 1: 35:59

They're extras, yes, but yeah, everyone is white in this film, and that is something. When they did a remake of it Wait, they did a remake. Oh yeah, you don't remember this. No, they had Laverne Cox play Frankenferdor. What? How did I miss this when this was like 2013, 2014. It might have been right after you had your baby, yeah.

Speaker 2: 36:28

When? Yeah, mike, I wasn't. Yeah, my kid was born in 2013.

Speaker 1: 36:32

Not Vantage the world.

Speaker 2: 36:33

Yeah, your kid was born in 2012. My kid was born in 2012.

Speaker 1: 36:41

My kid was born in 2013. I have not seen the remake because I just can't. I can't, even though I think it's important and amazing that they are trying to include more diversity into this important film.

Speaker 2: 36:57

We've talked in this project about how it's easier to self-insert and feel resonance with media where there's pro-dagnists who look like you or who share identities of some sort with you, so I really appreciate that, but I just I didn't even know it happened. I am definitely going to sneak it out For whatever reason, I just can't. I totally get why you wouldn't, but I want to see it.

Speaker 1: 37:22

And I think Laverne Cox's Frankenferdor is inspired casting. But yeah, I have such affection for this movie, despite its serious problems with consent.

Speaker 2: 37:37

Yeah, those scenes in the identical rooms with the different filters, the same room but the different filters, where Frank pretends to be Brad and Janet. I can't watch them now. The rest of the movie those scenes are painful. They're painful to watch. Yeah, With today's eyes they really are.

Speaker 1: 37:55

You were talking a little bit earlier about Byer Asher. This film also kind of does ace erasure. There's no sense that it's OK to be asexual and that's an important part of the rainbow. So the idea that, oh, you just need to try it and then it'll be great is upsetting. Yeah, it's an upsetting message to put in an otherwise very open kind of film.

Speaker 2: 38:28

Yeah, well, our listeners don't know, but we've had some multiple interruptions in this recording session, so I actually have no sense of how long we've been talking Really, but I wanted to ask have we hit on the things that you wanted to make sure that you talked about, about this film?

Speaker 1: 38:42

There's one thing I wanted to mention. Because of this film, I wrote a paper for my gym class about Charles Atlas. So when I was in high school we had a gym gym environments. For various scheduling reasons I could not get into just regular gym class and so I was stuck in a weight training class with all of the wrestlers and football players. Wrestling was the big big sport in my school. It was not fun and the coach had this rule that, like you couldn't get an A unless you did an extra credit report on weight training. And I was like I do not want to do a report on weight training, so I convinced him to let me write a paper about Charles Atlas.

Speaker 1: 39:41

That is so funny, you know.

Speaker 2: 39:45

One thing that I wanted to just quickly know and we don't need to delve deep into it, but I feel like it should be mentioned is that drug culture and drug use was much more prevalent in the Broadway or the stage version of the show than in the movie, although it's there, I thought you were a little reference to it, but they're yeah, they're less overt.

Speaker 2: 40:06

And Eddie, one of the things that Dr Scott says that Eddie did wrong was that he shooted up junk, and that's what made him a punk was that he was a drug user. One of the things he also liked rock and roll horn and the motorbike, so it's not just the drugs and I don't. I don't actually have anything like super insightful to say, but just I just want to name it as another plane of subversion and, in terms of being subversive, of contemporary mainstream culture that O'Brien was tapping into with his mashup.

Speaker 1: 40:38

I feel like we can talk about rocking and mentioning at least acknowledging that that was a piece of it.

Speaker 1: 40:44

For people who are better versed in 20th century music. There is also and I'm going to link to this in the show notes because I don't feel confident talking about it, because I don't know enough about it but this film can also be kind of an be an allegory for musical transition between, like fifties and sixties rock and roll to, like the seventies, glam rock. Talking about Eddie, he had a certain naive charm but no muscle, and there was in this article that I'll link. They were talking about how, like that is kind of the difference between musicians in the fifties and sixties were just musicians, whereas glam rockers were personas, so they had to have muscle or something to show, basically in addition to their music. And I found it really fascinating. But kind of went over my head just because I don't know musical history that well, but I found that really, really fascinating.

Speaker 2: 41:39

Okay, I'm going to do my best to synthesize or at least reflect back some of the things that we've talked about.

Speaker 2: 41:45

Again, we had so many interruptions like, please, like, fill in for me. I'll start with the art making, because in some ways to me that feels one of the things that's uniquely guy girls to talk about, which is the idea that Richard O'Brien, with this film and and the stage show before it, really gives us a piece of art that only he could create, which is beautiful because it's all the weird stuff that he loves all mashed up together into a singular whole, and that's a really beautiful and in some ways empowering vision of what art can be, especially when placed in opposition to the unrealistic expectation that art is somehow, like placed, fully formed, into the mind of the creator by some divine inspiration and has no influence from other artists. We also talked about the power of this film in terms of how beloved and embracing is the word I want to use and just like fun and celebratory is for members of the LGBTQ community for so long, and the way that it's reception, we can sort of track greater acceptance in mainstream culture of LGBTQ culture, in so far as you and I were able to be vocally Rocky Horror Picture Show fans in the mid to late 90s as cis, straight, ish, female high school students and college students in my case we cannot escape the fact that our understanding of what is acceptable when it comes to consent has changed drastically and dramatically since this film was made. And this film just does not stand up to today's standards when it comes to consent. It just doesn't. It does beautifully, in fun ways, push back against both the gender binary and the sexuality binary, both the gender binary of male, female and the sexuality binary of queer or straight.

Speaker 2: 44:03

Let me see the music is fantastic, catchy AF. What else?

Speaker 2: 44:09

Not a lot of not a lot of racial or ethnic diversity in the cast, but there is some body type diversity, at least among the male presenting characters, in a way that feels actually like body positivity, not only meatloaf Eddie as a fat body and still sexy individual, but also Dr Scott as a disabled person who still is given the chance to have you know at least a moment of acknowledging sexuality and sexiness.

Speaker 1: 44:45

I love him singing you that weird German accent. Like why is he German? His name is Efrit Scott. He taught it dead and high.

Speaker 2: 44:59

Okay, oh, you pointed out the fact that O'Brien was lampooning sort of straight laced, conservative, mainstream heterosexual culture and the notion that the way I phrased it was that men give love to get sex and women give sex to get love. We see that in multiple ways of that sort of straight laced vanilla inherited gender and sexuality being lampooned in ways that don't age perfectly. Not quite as bad as the consent thing, but not great. What am I forgetting him? What do you want to make sure that you lift up in the highlights real here at the end, Gosh?

Speaker 1: 45:46

just like how fun this movie is, like how much fun it seems like the people had making it. I mean even the fact that you know the term Easter egg comes from it, because they had an Easter egg on while they were making this film. It doesn't take itself too seriously, which is wonderful. I mean that's part of the reason why it's beloved. You know, like people don't like pretension and Richard O'Brien had no pretenses. He was making the weird, funny, hilarious, queer, sexy thing he wanted to watch. That's wonderful, that's really lovely. Oh, and just the influence that this film has had on so many aspects of culture, including fashion, makeup, the fact that the makeup design was the same guy did Bowie's lightning bolt music, Just there's. There's so many things I also really want to like. Just take a moment to appreciate the fact that Mary Wollstonecraft, Shelley wrote a scary story, like because it was raining one day and years later, this kind of like yeah.

Speaker 1: 47:00

I love that. That's like, it's so cool, that's really cool, yeah, and so like that that I. One of the things I tell my kids and I think is really important, is important to remember, is you have no control over your legacy and in some ways that can be worrisome or scary and in some ways that is so wonderful, like there is no way she could have foreseen this. No, ripple's flowing outward from that story that she wrote. It's amazing, it's amazing it is. And I said, 80 years later, I'm off. It's like 150 years later, 170 years later I don't remember exactly when she wrote it, but it was like 1800. 1818. So 1818. So 160 years later. Twice what I said, twice what you said I was off.

Speaker 2: 47:47

I mean that's remarkable. 160 years later. You know this like story that she was telling her friends to scare them. One night now has had this kind of like and that's like so many iterations down right, because probably Richard O'Brien has read, had read the novel before he wrote this, but that's not what he was actually like feeding on he was feeding on the interpretations and possibly even interpretations, of interpretations.

Speaker 2: 48:16

Yeah, it's pretty cool, which actually also circles back to the original point that you made about influence. Yeah, cool, all right. Well, I'm going to say it's all over. Your mission was a success. Your lifestyle is not extreme. Sorry, it's probably false, but it was funny in my head, so next time, next time I'm going to bring my deep thoughts about reality bites. My last one was breakfast club, so I'm kind of on this like Gen.

Speaker 1: 48:48

X.

Speaker 2: 48:48

Gen X coming of age. Yeah, yeah, slice of life, movie kick. So that's where I'm going. Next, winona Ryder was like my self, like she was the one that was going to play me in the movie for a long time, and I haven't seen this movie again in a long time, so I'm looking forward to. It was one of the movies we watched after I had that foot surgery when I was 15.

Speaker 1: 49:11

Like, you came and sat in my bed with me and we watched reality bites. And then we might have watched a couple others, but that's the one I recall watching with you. Yeah, so cool.

Speaker 2: 49:22

All right, so that's what I'm bringing next time, and I think you have some interesting listening comments.

Speaker 1: 49:27

There were a lot of comments about what made people a reader after the Ann McCaffrey episode so I thought it was really cool that you were, that I mean that you got to tell McCaffrey in person like you made me a reader and knowing she's probably heard that from a lot of people, but still it's meaningful to you that you got to say it to her and I wish I could have said that to the person who made me a reader. But we were asking people like you know what made you a reader? Andrew said what really made me a reader was a summer reading program at our local public library where you earn points not just for the number of books but also the length and complexity. I was in the young adult and adult sci-fi section by age 10 and racked up all sorts of points. I can't recall ever cashing the men.

Speaker 2: 50:10

So Ray from Public Libraries.

Speaker 1: 50:13

I also loved. Ann had to say the first chapter book I ever read on my own was Basil of Baker Street by Eve Titus and I know Ann Basil of Baker Street is like about a mouse detective and I know Ann loves Shaw Combs, so I that fits. I love that I never looked back. Mrs Frisbee and the Rats of Nim, the Boxcar children and Maudi in the middle are the three early ones I remember absolutely loving and I've read Mrs Frisbee and the Rats of Nim. I'm familiar with the Boxcar children. I've never read Maudi in the middle. So like got some books to read. And then Barb, who is probably about 20 years older than us, I think, said my first read from start to finish book was Heidi and Black Beauty. But it has been years since I thought of that and I loved Ann McCaffrey. I read everything she had. Me too, barb, me too. So this has been super fun.

Speaker 2: 51:05

I will see you next time. See you next time, hey you, yeah you. You're a deep thinker, I can tell. Let's make it official. Head on over to our website, guygirlsmediacom, and make sure you don't miss a single deep thought. You can get me and Emily in your inbox every week. What are you waiting for? Thanks for listening. Our theme music is Professor Umlaut by Kevin MacLeod from incompetechcom. Find full music credits in the show notes. Until next time, remember pop culture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head?