returning to The Rocky Horror Picture Show
If you ever want to see some fans, in a participatory community, and why I love media, then you should go to a shadow-cast weekly performance of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I went fairly regularly for a couple of years of high school, returned for my 18th birthday, and have come back, yet again, this time with an academic purpose.
In high school it was a place to go, without parental supervision, where young people could explore themselves and interact with an interesting community. It was “safe” because it was all within the confines of four walls, with a public, in a theater. There were rules that apply to theaters. I got to go, and express myself. I got a taste of deviance in a world full of restrictions. I got to see choices. I got to make choices. I was young, and nervous and as a result, always went with a group. This is also in part due to the nature of the film, and for those under 17, the requirement that a parent or other adult be allowing this experience, so we always had to find someone older, or con someone’s parent into taking us, and picking us up. It is challenging to be mobile in the city of Los Angeles if you don’t have a car, and at an hour when the buses don’t run.
I remember the first time I went with a friend driving. He had just gotten his license. We got ready at his place, and went. It was exhilarating. Eventually we got bored. Slowly, the people I went with stopped having interest, or perhaps school got too consuming and it no longer seemed like a good life choice to spend Saturday nights from midnight till 4AM out. I don’t quite remember why we quit, but we did.
I went back for my 18th birthday with a couple of friends. I wanted to remember why I didn’t go, and wondered if it would be any different if I were legally the right age. I wanted to liberate myself from a number of factors. One was my boyfriend during all of high school. I wanted to escape him. I wanted to reminisce about what I did in high school before I left for college. Perhaps it was what I was looking for in the experience that made the experience less fun.
I went back, for the first of eight weeks (hopefully) of RHPS regularity because it is a great example of participatory culture and the transformation of a cinematic space. I am writing a paper for a course I am taking in graduate school about “film exhibition after 1970.” I wanted to talk about the relationship between movie theaters and community/ communal expression, and this film, especially with the Sins O’ The Flesh cast at Los Angeles’ Nuart Theater can provide that. I went looking for community and I found it.
It was the first time I went alone to this film. There was something great about meeting and re-meeting people. There was magic in knowing I had no social function to perform other than what I wanted. I did not have to host anyone, or be friends with my friends. I had a magical night. Everyone was so nice. The interest in community makes everything feel warmer. I got to see the Nuart Theater in a way I never had before. I, thus far, have never been a huge fan of movies. Most of my research has been in television and digital media. The communities that seem to be emerging and industrially important had been the communities I had interest in. The geeky, comic-con, fairly straight edge communities. My eyes have been opened to cinematic communities and cinema in general, as well as the cinema as a communal space.
This very same night I went to a public pre-screening of the newest episode of Glee. It was my first time watching television in public and with a public. It too was transformative in similar way, akin to watching in a theater, yet different. Because we were in public at an outdoor screening on the lawn at The Grove, there was more of an incentive to get to know strangers, as if it was first and foremost a social gathering of “gleeks.” There was also the experience of watching with a public where the audience sighed, laughed, awww-ed, and sang along, with each other.
So much of our media consumption is in private. Television gets piped into our houses. Internet is wired into our houses and our mobile devices. People have found shame in some of what they choose to watch. I will always prefer to watch narrative with a public over by myself, if that public is as interested and engaged with the text as I am. Even if it is just a few friends who happen to all be huge fans of a show, watching on a small television in a small apartment with each other is preferable to watching on a big television alone.
Fanthropological Findings 