Scarlett Letters

So we've all heard about this, right? Fox is planning to remake Rocky Horror Picture Show for TV, directed by the man who gave us the squeaky-clean Xanadu and High School Musical. The article goes on to say, "The film’s sexual content shouldn’t be too difficult to navigate with a few trims. Though full of innuendo, it’s unlikely Rocky Horror would receive its original R rating by today’s standards." (Emphasis mine.)

Wow. Talk about missing the point.

::sigh::

I've written about Rocky Horror here before. I'm pretty passionate about it. It was a turning point, an education, an awakening, a shaping for me in ways I never could have predicted. And it was a cultural touchstone at a time when barriers were being broken all over the place. Kids see it today and view it as a camp send-up--and while it is certainly that, it's so much more. I said it in 2011:

What was, for us, a transgressive experience that broke rules and social barriers that had been becoming more brittle in the wake of Stonewall (not yet 10 years in the past when Rocky broke out as a cultural phenomenon), the rebellion of the '60s, the women's movement of the 1970s and so forth, is something entirely different to a generation that grew up with gender identity awareness and women's equality. What's transgressive for them is entirely different than what was transgressive for us.

What I think these guys are going to miss is the grand transgression that Rocky represented at the time. By baldly stating that "The film’s sexual content shouldn’t be too difficult to navigate with a few trims," it's clear they're planning to cut off its balls and make it even more of a cloud of cotton candy than the film (which I adore) did to material that can be presented as edgy and dangerous and still magnificently relevant. I don't get the impression, based on this little blurb from Entertainment Weekly anyway, that anything like this is in their plans, and it just, well, enrages me.

I remember being filled with fear when Tim Burton announced that he was adapting Sweeney Todd for the screen. My reaction to the Rocky Horror announcement is so much more than that. I don't think I'll be able to bear watching it when it airs. I fear castration of the material. I fear stunt casting. And I fear a complete and total missing of the point of the material, start to finish. Rocky Horror will, at its core, always be transgressive, dangerous, campy and awesome; it will survive what's sure to be a fiasco. But, well, like this year's Hugo Awards, we'll have to live through the fiasco first.

It must be something in the air.

Today's XKCD comic makes a point about time and age and change. It rings a little false to my ears, but that's because the character who makes the crack about the MTV generation is exactly the sort who isn't self-aware enough to get why it would ring a little false to anyone paying attention. Then, last night, I received a phone call from MM, a friend with whom I share a love of, among other things, Rocky Horror Picture Show, who attended a showing of the movie on Halloween and rather significantly disliked the pre-show the kids did. (Some of his reasons for that reaction will be discussed here; others are the subject of another post, I think, which I probably won't get to until next week for several reasons). And then there was the advertisement for the stage production of Rocky Horror that I'll be seeing tonight. The tagline in the ad: This isn't your daddy's Rocky.

When I saw that ad, it occurred to me pretty quickly that I was the "daddy" the ad was talking about, old enough to be the parent of a kid going to the show.

It's not like I'm not aware of my age; trust me, I'm aware every day. But stuff like this, references to things that were elemental parts of my life--especially Rocky, which had such a strong influence on who I am and choices I've made over the years--always sits me back and makes me think.

One of the things that MM talked about, in discussing the reasons he wasn't happy with the Rocky screening he attended, was the difference in the audience shout-outs, and how no one responded to some of the shout-outs he did. It didn't surprise me; some of the shout-outs he related to me were rooted in their place and time--the mid-to-late 1970s and contemporary events. We talked about some of the shout-outs usually heard at the Rocky venue where I attended, and I realized that they, too, were artifacts of their time and place. (For example, when Eddie bursts out of the freezer and Columbia yells, "Eddie!" Frank says, "One from the vaults," the audience at the Mini Cinema in Uniondale would shout, "A greaser from the freezer--a bat outta hell!" Who would get these references today except for 40-somethings like myself with long memories and perhaps not enough to do with themselves?) The cultural literacy required for comprehension of these references is an ephemeral thing. MM's dissatisfaction with the crowd was as much a symptom of age as it was of disconnection with what was a primal coming-of-age experience.

(Side note: I wonder if anyone has done a sociological study of how Rocky Horror shout-outs have changed over time along with audience demographics as measured against economic and social change. There's a master thesis for you! I also wonder if anyone has done an oral history of shout-outs from different parts of the country and different eras. That would be fun reading.)

What I'm trying to get at is that disconnect from primal experience. MM's unhappiness with his experience has to do with watching another audience adopting and adapting a cultural touchstone of our lives. What was, for us, a transgressive experience that broke rules and social barriers that had been becoming more brittle in the wake of Stonewall (not yet 10 years in the past when Rocky broke out as a cultural phenomenon), the rebellion of the '60s, the women's movement of the 1970s and so forth, is something entirely different to a generation that grew up with gender identity awareness and women's equality. What's transgressive for them is entirely different than what was transgressive for us.

And what I find, this morning, having had that conversation with MM and having seen that XKCD comic, is that I'm a little nervous about attending tonight's performance. I'm looking forward to it, of course, but I'm also pretty sure that my companion and I may be some of the oldest people in the room, and that this will be a very different presentation of material we've both grown up with and have great love for. (Note: I've seen other live performances of the show; it's the interpretation that I'm talking about here.) I'm virtually certain that something (or many things) will strike us as different or wrong. Bearing this in mind, I hope, will keep me from an instinctive, "Hey you kids! Get offa my lawn!" reaction. At the same time, I'm looking forward to seeing that change, that reinterpretation of old material for a new generation. After all, everything old is new again--maybe me, too. :-)


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Things I want to post about:
-- Rediscovering my smashed-penny habit
-- How we're taught to deal with product frustration
-- What Rocky Horror is and isn't and why