*Trigger Warning* Why is The Rocky Horror Picture Show popular with the kinky and queer communities? I'm not part of those communities and I don't get it, please explain. It seems to me to be a story in which the kinky queer people are literally not human and try to recruit (and arguably rape by fraud) "normal" people.
Yes, but it’s also a story where kinky queer people are powerful and cool and sexy and fun, and ultimately the straight characters sing about how much freer they feel in a corset fishnets pool orgy. (And then the house, uh, is a spaceship and it takes off? Okay.) It’s also relevant that the movie was written by a nonbinary person; I think the intent was not to demonize kinky queer people, but to tell a story featuring them that also had elements of classic schlock horror and sci-fi movies.
And remember that this was the 70s, when sympathetic queer characters were thin on the ground, the distinction between “transvestite” and “transsexual” was not crisply defined, and the popular understanding of the difference between “seduction” and “rape” was even less nuanced than it is today. (Also, the “homosexual agenda” narrative of gay recruitment wouldn’t come around until the 90s.) This doesn’t make everything okay but it’s important context.
And I’d argue that some of the bad stuff in it is intentionally transgressive–isn’t saying “people who don’t conform to traditional gender and sexual roles are dangerous perverts,” but “you think we’re dangerous perverts? oh honey, you have no idea.”
Yeah, I’m defensive. This movie means something to me, on a level that’s not apparent on the screen, because I started going to midnight showings when I was fifteen. And it–counting the audience participation and shadow cast, because you really have to, there’s no point to watching this movie quietly at home–was probably my first experience with queerness being fun. I already knew it was possible to not be straight, but only as a tragic existence condemned to the shadows. Rocky Horror wasn’t the first time I learned two men could kiss, but it was the first time I saw two men kiss in front of a crowd that was cheering them on.
So, okay, not “therefore, Rocky Horror is flawless, QED,” but that’s why people like it. It’s an all-ages queer event you can attend without declaring yourself queer, it’s an introduction to queerness as silly and naughty instead of always being Very Serious Business, and you can throw stuff at the screen.
