Throwing Rice

I saw The Rocky Horror Picture Show for the first time like so many of us did: in eighth grade with my theatre friends. We piled into my friend Scott’s TV room with an abundance of blankets and pillows and dimmed the lights. I wasn’t much of a scary movie person  (I’m still not) but I was reassured by my friends that it wasn’t that kind of scary movie--you know, the kind where high schoolers see each other murdered brutally at the hands of a middle-aged man in a mask. My friends were right, and I loved what I saw. The sequins and stilettos and screaming electric guitars. Those of us who had seen the movie sang along eagerly to the soundtrack, and it seemed that those of us who hadn’t would know the words soon enough. Not coincidentally, more than half of the people in that room grew up and discovered their queerness, myself included. 

Rocky Horror has its share of blood and guts, but ask any longtime fan about their favorite parts of the film, and you’ll likely find that the fear factor is the weakest ingredient. The film, which was a musical first in 1973, is a loving homage to and parody of the sci-fi/horror movies that gripped America in the twentieth century, from King Kong to The Day the Earth Stood Still. It turns every stock character and stereotype upside down: the innocent couple that finds themselves stuck in a house of horrors is not so innocent by the end of the film, and the main villain is, in many ways, really the protagonist. Ask the countless fans who dress up as Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Frankenstein who?) for Halloween every year. 

Upon Rocky Horror’s release, it was panned by critics and relegated to midnight showings at movie theaters across the country, where it found its true audience: moviegoers with a taste for spectacle, a love of the bizarre, and a healthy sense of humor. From those midnight showings, a cult phenomenon blossomed: audiences who dressed as the characters in the film and performed it live in front of the screen. In 1976, kindergarten teacher Louis Farese was credited as the first person to yell a cheeky phrase at the screen during a showing; when he saw Janet walk through the rain with a newspaper over her head, he hurled back, “Buy an umbrella, you cheap bitch!” Thus, a subculture was born. 

The L.A. Times attended a showing in 1978, when the shadowcast performances were already in full swing; one nineteen-year-old moviegoer was on his 127th showing and shared that, “to me it releases all my tensions.” (Overend). That sense of release is just as new in 2022, especially to an audience of viewers that has just spent a significant amount of time in social isolation. For many participants, this Halloween was likely the first in two years where they felt comfortable celebrating in a movie theatre or party environment; those who attend a screening of Rocky Horror don’t just bear witness to the story, they are a part of it. 

I attended a screening of the movie on Monday, October 31st. My partner and I dressed as Brad and Janet; we made a pit stop at Walgreens to pick them up a pair of tighty-whities, and I scoured my dresser for the right lacey bra. We laughed at how naked we felt, blasting Midnights by Taylor Swift while I blow-dried my hair. Our friends met us at my Clinton Hill apartment and we hyped each other up, volleying praise back and forth just like we Venmo’d each other the same fifteen dollars over and over. We held the prerequisite photo shoot, my partner and I joining hands and painting nervous expressions on our faces, as if we’d just watched an entire foyer of aliens do the Time Warp. I have a Type-A tendency when I take pictures with friends - I am often afraid that if I don’t look how I’d imagined in the photos, I don’t really know what I look like and my self-worth slips a little - but on Halloween, I felt that tendency dissolve as I let myself enjoy an evening off from self-editing. The bar was about a mile away from our place, and the walk felt shorter than twenty minutes; laughter can do that, making seconds and minutes disappear, I suppose. 

When we arrived at the gay bar where the showing was to take place, we were delighted to learn that the shadowcast would be performed by drag queens. Our Magenta and Columbia took the stage first, their voluminous auburn curls and jagged blonde bangs framing faces painted with neon and glitter. They set the tone for the rest of the night, sharing ground rules and guidelines interspersed with witty commentary and dirty jokes. My friends and I clasped each other’s hands, giddy with anticipation (pun intended). I looked around often at everybody else in the room, taking in what they were wearing and who they seemed to be. Unsurprisingly, the most popular costume by far was Dr. Frank-N-Furter; she plays with gender so deliciously that queer audiences flock to emulate her style, her corset and fishnets, her sublime confidence. She doesn’t just abandon the binary, she kisses it on the cheek before she serves its heart to her guests at a dinner party. It seems only natural that Monday evening’s audience, into whose lives the gender binary has grown roots like a malevolent plant, would like to step into her high heels. Of course, no character in Rocky Horror is off-limits to attendees of any gender; I encountered Brads, Janets, Columbias and Magentas, of whom no two looked the same. Of the other Janets I saw, none wore her tame salmon-pink dress and white cardigan, as everyone opted for the racier white bra/slip skirt combination. It was not a night for covering up. 

Memorably, I asked a giddy best-friend duo to take photos of my partner, a friend, and myself, and when we were done I returned the favor - only then did I notice that we were wearing the exact same thing. Their Janet was tall and stylish, with close-cropped, bleach-blonde hair; I wore a pink bra and lacy skirt, and my hair was wavy from the timely rainstorm outside, adding further authenticity to my costume. They oohed and ahhed over how beautiful they looked, illuminated in shades of red and blue. It was not the only celebration of self taking place in the room at that particular moment; everywhere I turned, people seemed to feel good about themselves. 

There is a sequence in the film where Frank-N-Furter and Rocky, her muscular creation in a gold Speedo, walk down a makeshift aisle. This takes place after the song “I Can Make You A Man,” in which Frank-N-Furter sings triumphantly of her plan to “make [Rocky] a man” in lieu of a high-protein diet or the gym. Rocky lifts weights beside her, almost in a vacuum - he already looks like a Greek statue - this is not the type of exercise that the doctor is prescribing. They link arms and smile and walk forth to a massive bed covered in velvet blankets with a stained-glass portrait of Rocky above its embroidered pillows. Other visitors from outer space dressed in suits and ties throw confetti and flower petals. Someone plays a wedding march on a screaming electric guitar. The usually-implicit path from the chapel to the bedroom is made explicit. It is also made campy and queer and joyful and rock-n-roll. 

In the gay bar that night, Frank-N-Furter (who stole the show in our shadowcast with her rendition of Sweet Transvestite, inciting howls from the audience with a well-timed wink) linked arms with Rocky (also fantastic, sporting a beard dusted with gold glitter) and stood at the foot of the stage. The audience parted and the drag queens stepped forth. They struck pose after pose, moving down a makeshift aisle made by people dressed up just like them. The floor was still littered with rice from the opening scene. It was as if we were celebrating another union, a union of the group as a whole, recognizing the things we had in common and the things we did not. Even now, as I fly on airplanes and shop in stores and go out for dinner and do all of the things that we do in our cardigans and button-downs, I think about puffing on the noisemakers and wearing the party hats and jumping to the left and stepping to the right; I think about what happens when we strip down, so to speak. When we go up to the lab and see what’s on the slab.