Rocky Horror week 4
This past Saturday I went to The Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Nuart for the fourth week in a row. If last week was an experiment in cultural participation, this week was cultural immersion. For the past three weeks I have attended this show alone. This week, two friends came with me, and I ran into a person from my past. I was invited to participate in the execution of the show by helping to hold up sheets on stage for the different bedroom scenes ( to imitate the color of the film, pink and blue, if you are familiar with the movie). I am starting to get to know people there and this week was an exercise in not only showing the friends I had brought there a good time, but being invited to participate with the film and the community in a social rather than academic context. This was the week where I looked forward to seeing people, and was not just seeking information.
After the film, there has been a long standing tradition to going out to a diner that is open all night. This week I was invited to participate in the extension of the experiential space. This space is vital for community building because this is a space where people have the opportunity to form stronger community bonds and learn about each other outside of the context of the film and the routine of being at the Nuart. In a post-Rocky ” you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here” effort, those that are not ready for the evening to end and are sufficiently ingratiated into the social fabric of this experience, sometimes continue the experience over food.
The setting of the establishment is important and the acceptance of the RHPS community, straight from the show, in attire and all, must feel welcome, and the mood must be an appropriate one for the hours between 3 and 6AM. This week there was discussion of the lighting design as being one inappropriate for four in the morning. The lights were too bright for the hour and put a strain on the eye. It might be perhaps more welcoming if the lights were less abrasive.
My second thought on this experience is about going with other people. There is a certain pressure when bringing people into RHPS, at least for me, that they have a good time, granted, I would not think to bring people who I thought would not have a good time in the RHPS world should I not be there. Rather than conduct interviews throughout the entire film, as I might have in previous weeks, I was compelled to call-back and be as participatory as I could to better the experience of the people around me, because I knew the people around me.
In any case, being around people I invited to see the show with me added a social function to the experience. Running into someone in this context who I knew from an entirely different context also compelled me to be more participatory in order o break through the awkwardly tinged surprise. This was a place that I would not imagine running into the person I ran into, and I can almost certainly say the same for him. The community is also full of smaller social circles within the larger one. It also seems like there are varying degrees of expectations with regards to socialization outside of the theater.
My next Rocky related thought has to do with homelessness of casts. I spoke with a woman who was in a different cast, and that cast was doing its final performance at the theater they were in for 12 years. It seems to me, from reading articles about the cast Midnight Insanity, reading Creatures of the Night and talking with this woman, that the issue of having a homeless cast, either due to conflicts with management, theater renovations or theater closures can set the community back. A RHPS cast needs a home. This is in part due to the logistics of being in a cast. There are stages to set up, props, costumes, lights, sound systems and all sorts of other accoutrements that need to be stored. Schlepping them every week to a theater is impractical. It is also more challenging to create a community if there isn’t a stable spot to gather.
Many of the articles I encountered from trade publications and popular press on the subject of The Rocky Horror Picture Show were announcements of theaters closing and The Rocky Horror Picture Show being the last show in the run of the theater. Many casts seemed to be housed in the 1980s in movie theaters that were single screens. Over the years many of these theaters couldn’t compete with multiplexes and had to close, often leaving the cast without a home. It seems like, as a cast, Sins O’ The Flesh has had a very long and healthy run thus far at the Nuart. The only times they have had to leave were during renovations, and once during the run of The Blair Witch Project.
And now for a thought that is not quite fully formed, but here it is anyway: the LARP aspect of going to The Rocky Horror Picture Show. For some people going to this experience is like going to church. For some people it is a social rite of passage. Others it is curiousity. I posit that there are live-action role play elements that are strongly present in the Rocky Horror experience. In role playing games players often choose to highlight their best qualities and minimize their worst qualities. Some people who are generally rule following might choose to play a deviant character as a means of catharsis. Shy people can project their desires onto their characters and play fantasy versions of themselves and in the process maybe be able to apply in-game skills to out of game contexts.
In the RHPS world, the atmosphere is highly sexual, and in general, potentially offensive. It is a place where people scream obscenities with a public. People can choose to wear the legal minimum of clothing, come in costume, dress like a character, or wear their mundane clothes. Talking to strangers is encouraged. Talking during a movie is not only encouraged, but is almost a required element of being there. Much like a line from the song “Time Warp” RHPS is ” in another dimension-with voyeuristic intention.” A participant can make the choice to have a persona that is entirely different from who they are outside of the RHPS experience. Much like a game, once comfortable with the at-Rocky persona, one might learn from those experiences and be able to apply things learned from the experience to extra-experiential contexts. This might be in the context of sexual identity, breaking out of an introverted shell, or any number of other things.
RHPS is a learning experience where people learn by example. In returning week after week people remember lines and remember people. It is a classroom where those with knowledge share that knowledge with those willing to learn via weekly repetition. It is also a learning experience with optional homework. The film is out on VHS, DVD and laser disc. Some of them have audience commentary options. There is the script for The Rocky Horror Show available for purchase and there are audience scripts floating around on the internet. An inspired or ambitious newcomer can practice on their own, or at least consume media that will help them in their ability to participate more the following week.
An advertisement for the home video release of the film in 1990 from Rolling Stone showcases the phrase “Dream it in your living room. Be it in the theater.” (Rolling Stone, 1 November 1990). This is a movie that people can and do own on home video and still go see it in a theater. The theater is the space for the game to be played. The start time is as soon as a player arrives at the theater. The end time is when people get home. The experience may or may not extend past the theater experience depending on the level of participation. Dressing up for the experience is a way to extend the experience until there is no sign of any out of the ordinary attire. Going to a space that is not one of RHPS exhibition takes the experience out of a LARP and into an ARG-alternative reality game, where the game continues into a world that might be oblivious to the game being played. The winning of the game is in the completion of the experience for a given week.
In high school I participated in a thing called “Oakgrove.” This was a student run retreat held every semester. People would go for a weekend to the mountains and talk about personal subjects in a safe space. There was a saying about not living life from one Oakgrove to another. The point was giving people the tools to express themselves to other people and cope with real world issues. If people lived from one Oakgrove to another, then there would be a significant amount of time where human connection was being shut off.
The point of the experience of The Rocky Horror Picture Show seems to be something similar. The “Don’t Dream It, Be It!” philosophy seems to encourage the ability to be the person you wish to be, and are able to be in the context of the theater space outside of the theater, and using the safe space of, in this case, the Nuart as training grounds for being the person one wishes to be.
Jane McGonigal in a recent TED talk spoke about the skills people learn through playing games and the ability to make the world more like games so that people can be their best possible selves. She notes qualities of gamers as being qualities necessary to change real world problems. The issue with real world problems is that there aren’t a whole lot of chances for an “epic win” where as in an imagined, fantasy, or non-normative space there is a larger sense of optimism about the ability to complete a task because of the potential for an “epic win.” I also posit that some RHPS regulars have an outlook on life such that they are more capable of “being it” rather than just “dreaming it.” Jane McGonigal posits that if we can imagine the world a certain way, then we are capable of making it so.
That talk is here:
In conclusion to this long and rambling post, communities where people feel safe and welcome are important. Joining a new one can be like entering another world. It is scary being alone in a strange place, but that is how new things start, and if you aren’t a little bit scared of what lies ahead, then why go ahead? I dance Tango and that is a community that I have been finding it hard to break into, but I am doing it. It is scary but meaningful. It is meaningful because it is full of potential for experiencing what it means to be human and what it feels like to be alive and with other people.
There is no better feeling in the world than the bliss of feeling alive and connected to other human beings. Gamers feel this, dancers feel this, religious groups feel this and fans feel this. There are cultural houses of human connection at designated times, in designated spaces all over the world: the San Diego Convention Center in the last weekend of July, sports arenas on game days, rock concerts, church/temple services, the Nuart on Saturdays at Midnight, Oakgrove, nightclubs, in World of Warcraft… and the list goes on.
