Queer Movies That Made Me Queerer: The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Happy Pride Month, everyone! This is the first entry in a series I’m writing this month on queer movies that were important to my development as a queer person. The first movie I’m discussing is 1975’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show, directed by Jim Sharman.

Warning! Spoilers ahead!

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The Rocky Horror Picture Show is the *definition* of a cult classic. Everyone knows about the weird musical movie featuring Tim Curry as an alien scientist/party host/queer icon with incredible legs. Based on Richard O’Brien’s stage musical The Rocky Horror Show, this film has entered the cultural lexicon decades before many were willing to engage with mainstream queer culture. Before the 2000s, very few films achieved such a feat, with the only exceptions being the likes of The Birdcage and Philadelphia.

The movie opens heterosexually enough, with Brad Majors (Barry Bostwick) proposing to his girlfriend, Janet Weiss (Susan Sarandon), following their friend’s wedding. However, things quickly take a turn when their car breaks down in a rainstorm, and they seek refuge in the mansion of the scientist Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry) on the night of one of his parties. We soon meet the, uhh, interesting characters who populate the mansion: Riff Raff (Richard O’Brien), Magenta (Patricia Quinn), and Columbia (Little Nell). Life-threatening and life-altering hijinks pursue from there that involve scientific experiments, sexual forays, cannibalism, and space travel.

Queer media, due to the perceived taboos of the subject matter, often inhabits the edges of genre and format, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show is no different. Released 49 years ago, well before queer stories could be accuratley presented in the mainstream, this movie certainly fell into that edge and thrived there. However, for a lot of queer people, even today, that edge is still where we live.

I’ll be the first to admit that I am a rather boring gay person. Part of that was my queer identity was developed in the South, in the suburbs of Atlanta. This led to a protective nature in my queerness, where I did not challenge gender norms, often did not mention my queerness even where applicable, and when I did, I did not often take controversial opinions that would make too big of a splash. It was all about assimilation; I kept my queerness in my personal life, but beyond that, I was just like everyone else. When I first left the South and moved to New Jersey to go to school, I soon realized that was not the only way to be queer. There was a wide spectrum of queer identities and expressions, and being queer in itself was a radical act.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show shows a queerness that is different from the queerness I had been living. Frank-N-Furter was unabashedly queer, and he looked hot doing it. Frank-N-Furter’s looks are iconic and have inspired looks across queer folk, from drag queens to everyday queer folk. The costumes also reference queer history, most notably with a pink triangle on Frank-N-Furter’s lab coat; pink triangles were used by Nazis to identify queer folks in concentration camps, who saw queer folk as a threat to the world they were violently trying to implement and went as far as to destroy the revolutionary gender clinic, the Institute of Sexual Research in Berlin. Rocky himself, too, is a reference to outward queerness, rarely dressed in more than some square-cuts, celebrating the male form.

Of course, this film is known for its musical numbers. Tim Curry’s performance in “Sweet Transvestite” serves cunt. “The Time Warp” is a staple of any theatre kid party. “Hot Patootie/Bless My Soul” is performed by Meatloaf! And “I’m Going Home” encapsulates many queer folks’ desire to return to a home that they can no longer return to. What’s particularly notable is that both Brad and Janet, the traditional, straight, high-school-sweethearts, picture-perfect couple blossom into their freer selves during their night at the Frankenstein Place. Brad is open to engaging in a sexual tryst with Frank-N-Furter, while Janet begins to explore the beauty of her sexuality in “Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch-a, Touch Me”; openness and acceptance of queerness benefits all, even cishet folks.

The unabashed queerness of this film was mold-breaking to me. It made me realize that there was no one way to be queer. As someone whose first exposure to queerness was in early 2000s pornography, dominated by hairless twinks and twunks, I mostly saw queerness like Rocky’s. But then there on the screen was Frank-N-Furter and Eddie and Riff Raff and Columbia and Magenta and even Brad and Janet. There was a spectrum of queer lives on the screen accessible for me to see. There was no one right way to be queer, no one right way to present yourself, no one way to be palatable to others. What was important was being a version of yourself, queer and all, that is authentic and catered not to others, but to what you needed yourself. That authenticity leads to a life that you could be proud of, that organically leads to real, deep relationships that exist because of who you are, not in spite of it.

One of the main plot points is the conflict between Frank-N-Furter and his domestics, Riff Raff and Magenta. All three hail from the planet Transsexual in the galaxy Transylvania. However, Frank-N-Furter is more than happy to continue with his new life on Earth, creating beautiful men and throwing wild parties. But Riff Raff and Magenta want to return, ultimately mutinying. There are a lot of parallels to queer life, of course; there is a desire by those in power for us to assimilate, make a version of queer life that fits into the world as it already exists.

But we must demand liberation. We must be willing to tear down society as it stands for the liberation of all queer people. We can’t be satisfied with a few parties and a cunty entrance. We must demand our right to exist as we see fit. Complacency and assimilation endanger us all. It makes us comfortable. It’s what allows politicians to justify horrors in our name in places like Palestine. It’s what allows anti-queer legislation to make traction because we are no longer fighting back. We must instead demand our right to live our lives authentically, openly, and queerly. We must stand up for queer rights for ourselves, in honor of those who came before us, and in the hope that those coming after us never have to consider that they need to hide their queerness.