Cult Classic Countdown to Halloween: The Rocky Horror Picture Show
“Reviews were savage…the play was hissed and booed, and it lost four thousand dollars” (Weinstock 5). Take a trip downtown to Cinépolis Chelsea Cinemas on any given Friday or Saturday night, and you’ll never believe those words were written about The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
When the clock strikes midnight, a rowdy crowd of theatre kids, glam rockers, and otherwise misfits gather to, in screenwriter Michael Varrati’s words, “worship” the sexual sci-fi comedy of errors that is Dr. Frank-N-Furter’s world. Fishnets, feather boas, and corsets adorn all – regardless of sexual or gender identity. And when the famous pair of red lips predictably fades onscreen to introduce “a science fiction double feature,” the theatre does not hush. Instead, it comes alive – a living, breathing entity – carrying out the storytelling as the self-proclaimed actors, writers, directors, and critics.
Since 1976, Rocky has served as a ritual of togetherness, a safe space for the LGBTQIA+ community, a celebration of all bodies, and a refuge of acceptance. Above all else, it’s fostered joy.
RHPS is not just a film – it is an “investment,” as Varrati notes. Fans take one of the show’s most famous quotes, “Don’t dream it. Be it,” to heart, stocking their closets with intricate costumes, meticulously applying makeup, memorizing multiple roles, and going for the second, tenth, and hundredth time. It has been a longstanding tradition that “shadow casts” mime and lip-sync every single moment of the show in full garb as the film plays.
One member of the New York shadow cast, actor and makeup artist Savannah Shearouse, could not afford a subway swipe to travel three miles downtown to the theatre -- so she walked there every single weekend. Now she is a “full swing,” which means that she has the entire show memorized from every single character’s perspective. “I would spend like two hours in front of the mirror working on my makeup, making sure that I looked right,” she recounts. “I was obsessed with screen accuracy. I would do the face shaping contour to make my face and bone structure look like Little Nell.”
This level of commitment is a testament to the passion behind the many ritualistic traditions of the film – audience participation, props, and dancing, to name a few. The experience is loud, raucous, and quite frankly – everything a movie theatre normally isn’t. It’s this feeling of rebellion and otherness that has inspired droves of fans to continue performing or viewing the show night after night.
Varrati, who has written extensively in the horror genre, and served as both curator and host of San Diego Comic Con’s “Queer Fear” panel, remembers that this cinematic revolt is how he first became fascinated with the film. “I understood implicitly that these movies were different than the kind of movies I was seeing at the multi-plex,” Varrati explains. “It was different than the kind of movies that were being marketed to me and my friends at school. And there was a sense of the forbidden about it, this idea that there was this other kind of cinema for this other kind of audience. And I suppose before I even knew myself, I recognized that I was an ‘other’ kind of person. So I was drawn toward that, and I wanted to know everything about it.”
He points out that perhaps Rocky isn’t everyone’s thing – but for the people who really connect with it and “see themselves,” it is an incredible outlet of…well, geeking out. “Ironically,” he says, “My first Rocky Horror audience participation was just with my friends in front of the TV being really, really nerdy kids.”
Of course, it would be an incredible disservice to not acknowledge the sustaining impact that this film has had on the LGTBQIA+ community. It was released almost forty years before same-sex marriage was nationally legalized and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was repealed. In fact, it was released over forty years before it was determined that the Civil Rights Act protected workers regardless of sexuality and gender identity, which only happened in June of this year.
Even with these strides of progress, the community continues to face significant adversity and the permeating threat of violence, particularly the transgender community. And as for media representation, non-hetero/cis characters are often stereotyped, subjected to horrific trauma, and/or used as a cautionary tale.
“The fact that [Rocky] was made by a queer person and features queer people who are powerful is something,” Varrati explains. “Up to this point in cinema history, either we didn’t exist at all, we were pushed to the side, or we were created to fulfill a stereotype. We were either this kind of like queer coded villain or the sidekick or the person who gets killed right away. There was always some sort of moral finger-wagging that occurs when queerness is represented onscreen.”
Not only does the film feature characters of the LGBTQIA+ community at the forefront – those characters are three-dimensional, powerful, and joyful. “There was no visibility and no representation and no celebration [of queer people in film],” Varrati points out.
The Stonewall Riots had occurred only seven years prior to the popularization of the Rocky film, and the New York City shadow cast continues to honor that by attending the NYC Pride Parade each year. “Getting to walk past Stonewall is what it’s all about,” Shearouse affirms. “It’s a wonderful, painful, beautiful experience.” However, one of her favorite highlights was a trip to Rhode Island’s Pride Parade, where performers diligently re-enact the Time Warp “ad nauseum, forty times in a row.”
“The adrenaline of that forty minutes…” She pauses. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever felt. . . Their fans for Rocky Horror are frothing at the mouth. They love Rocky, they love Rocky, they love Rocky.”
The performances feel personal for Shearouse, as her connection to Rocky Horror helped her to be open about her own sexuality. “I felt it was a safe environment in which to [come out],” she explains. “It was the first time in my life that I could be identifiably gay, and it was just so freeing and amazing. . . I’d never gotten to be in an environment where there were that many gay people. It opened so many doors I didn’t even know I needed.”
A Rocky Horror Shadowcast in NV. (Photo: Peter Wilson)
In addition to serving as a safe space for the LGBTQIA+ community, the show’s success is a vehicle of body positivity. Shearouse shares that one of the key messages in the experiences is that “all bodies are beautiful, all bodies are sexy, [and] all bodies are performance ready.” She mentions that when a performer is cast in the show, the first role they take on is “Trixie” – the ominous, seductive lips in the opening sequence – which, in live circumstances, translates to a striptease.
“Any time someone is doing Trixie, we are like, “You are so beautiful. You are so powerful. You’re gonna get up there and people are gonna scream,’” Shearouse laughs. “And then we all make so much noise and we make such a big deal about it. There is nothing better for body positivity than getting naked in front of a crowd of people and having them scream their faces off. It’s very, very affirming, and very positive.”
The community of Rocky Horror is its heart – beating a continuous rhythm of love and comradery. Audience members and actors alike scream and gasp and laugh and sing and dress in a way that is taboo in the outside world. Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of Rocky Horror is that the actual outsiders, deemed “virgins” by the regulars, are the people who don’t arrive in a corset, partake in cantankerous retorts, and embrace the wackiness wholeheartedly. In a way, this is an ode to the film itself.
After all, it is the plain jane Janet and Brad who stumble into Dr. Frank-N-Furter’s world – not the other way around. In the Rocky universe, the community is built on otherness and uniqueness, and the pressures to conform (except, of course, when it comes to the ritualized retorts) are overrun by the desire to release inhibitions. The participants are able to enjoy and revel in this experience, surrounded by others who share the same passion that they do.
“[This film was for] the theatre nerd who didn’t know where he fits in,” Varrati asserts. “The punk rock kid who understood this was sort of like a middle finger to the establishment. And all of the ways those things cross over. It was communal, and it is communal, and I think that’s why it continues to thrive.”
As a performer in the shadow cast, this comes even more to the forefront. Not only do these actors don fishnets and do the “Time Warp” – they do it in front of a live audience. Shearouse explains, “I was born and raised in the South in a very conservative mindset. And I just thought that those things were inappropriate and should be hush hush and not spoken about. And it freed this, I think, humor. I don’t know if I would have considered myself a funny person before Rocky Horror. . . I was very uncomfortable with comedy. Getting onstage with these idiots, who many of [which] have little to no experience in performance, gave me experience as an actor and a performer to do crazy shit and to give absolutely zero fucks. . . The whole point is to be as ridiculous and stupid as you can possibly be. So like, you’re allowed to look dumb. And I think that I thought that acting and performance was this high art form where you had to be like, perfect and clean. . . I lost that humor from my acting, and Rocky Horror gave it to me.”
Although the community of RHPS thrives on silliness, its significance goes much deeper. As with any family, it can be both a rowdy company of joy – and a support system to lean on in times of pain.
One Halloween night, Shearouse was preparing to go on as Dr. Frank-N-Further for the midnight show, when she got the devasting news that her best friend (also an avid Rocky fan) had died. Although she could have called out, she chose to perform. “I made it through the shows because I knew that she would have wanted me to perform, and it felt like I was performing for her honor and for her as a performer,” Shearouse shares. “I remember feeling that she was there, that the joy and the silliness and the camp of it all was a celebration of life, and for me, a celebration of her life.”
And indeed a celebration is Rocky Horror – somehow, despite horrible reviews and gasps of shock and discomfort, it invites us to the party over and over again. For Varrati, it can be described as “complete queer liberation” and “the beacon in the storm for the people who are looking for it.”
For Shearouse, it is “a great home.” Perhaps the most wonderful thing about Rocky is that it means something different for all of us. And as long as there are fishnets and the weirdos who wear them, we will “shiver with antici……………..pation” for many years to come.
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Works Cited
“A Brief History of Civil Rights in the United States: Introduction.” A Timeline of the Legalization of Same-Sex Marriage in the U.S.
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“From the Archives: The End of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.” National Archives and Records Administration, National Archives and Records Administration, obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2012/09/20/archives-end-dont-ask-dont-tell.
Liptak, Adam. “Civil Rights Law Protects Gay and Transgender Workers, Supreme Court Rules.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 15 June 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/06/15/us/gay-transgender-workers-supreme-court.html.
Pruitt, Sarah. “What Happened at the Stonewall Riots? A Timeline of the 1969 Uprising.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 13 June 2019, www.history.com/news/stonewall-riots-timeline.
Shearouse, Savannah. “Interview.” 3 Sept. 2020.
“TRHPS Official Fan Site: History: Rocky Horror Timeline.” The Rocky Horror Picture Show: The Official Fan Site!, www.rockyhorror.com/history/timeline.php.
“TRHPS Official Fan Site: Participation: A Virgin's Guide.” The Rocky Horror Picture Show: The Official Fan Site!, www.rockyhorror.com/participation/virgins.php.
“Understanding the Transgender Community.” HRC, www.hrc.org/resources/understanding-the-transgender-community.
Varrati, Michael. “Interview.” 19 Sept. 2020.
Weinstock, Jeffrey Andrew. Reading Rocky Horror: The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Popular Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.