Iâve recently seen some The Rocky Horror Picture Show discourse. And like people are questioning if Rocky Horror is transmisogynistic. Of course it does. Dr. Frank-N-Furter is intentionally a transmisogynistic villain. Thatâs the point.
Itâs intended as ironic of course, as deliberate camp. The musical is intended as a parody of old sci-fi and horror movies, mixed with a camp drag aesthetic inspired by the contemporary glam rock movement. The mad scientist villains in the movies being parodied were often queer-coded, and vaguely effeminate.
So to parody that, Frank-n-Furter goes far beyond the queer-coding, and is outrageously effeminate and evil. He rapes people, kills them with an axe and serves them for dinner and force-fems them to take part in his climactic stage show. He is a Frankenstein parody, who literally makes an artificial man in order to fuck him (a joke about Frankenstein Iâve seen on tumblr). And does it all while wearing stockings, a bustier and heavy make-up. He is deliberately the ultimate evil man in a dress trope, referencing Psycho and all effeminate mad scientists in media.
That Frank-N-Furter isnât explicitly a trans woman doesnât matter. The musical deliberately blurs the line. The line âIâm just a sweet transvestite, from Transsexual, Transylvaniaâ is like a perfect encapsulation of how horror movies treat transfemininity. âMen in dressesâ (transvestites) trans women (transsexual) and a symbol of predatory horror movie villainy (Transylvania) are all conflated, making a pun of out how they all begin with âtransâ.
Of course, itâs intended to be ironic. Itâs a parody of queer-coded villainy in old horror movies by turning it up to eleven, so that you canât take it seriously. The whole movie has this drag show camp aesthetic that it celebrates, and the supposed representatives of heteronormativity, Brad and Janet are turned in the end. Frank-N-Furter becomes a symbol of a hedonistic queer liberation âGive yourself over to absolute pleasure.. Donât dream it, be it.â
This is the clear intent of Rocky Horror, and itâs how it became a âqueer classicâ. Does it work? Iâll admit that I enjoy the movie version. The glam rock aesthetic is fun, the songs are catchy, and they keep coming at a quick pace. A lot of it is admittedly that I love the old horror and sci-fi movies itâs parodying, so my cultural touchstones are similar. Iâm the kind of person to get a thrill out of knowing that Frank-N-Furter at one point uses the exact same prop that Peter Cushing used in the second Hammer Frankenstein movie.
That is a different question however from how well it succeeds at subverting the transmisogynistic tropes it handles. Even in the most sympathetic possible account of the musical, itâs doing the equivalent of handling live grenades. Is it the creators tropes to subvert in the first place? Is it the fans?
Letâs talk about Rocky Horrorâs creator, Richard OâBrien. He is certainly a weird and contradictory person, he identifies as a third gender and â70% male and 30% femaleâ, and is using estrogen. So arguably he is a transfem enby and thus transmisogyny-affected. But heâs also a transmisogynist who doesnât believe trans women are âreal womenâ.( I would like to know what exact percentage of âfemaleâ as a transfem person turns you into a bad fake trans woman.)
Of course the important thing about OâBrien is that he is rich. He is in a vastly different class position than the majority of transfems. So while he may be taking estrogen and living as a third gender, he is simultaneously isolated by his own wealth from the effects of the transmisogyny he bolsters in the media (see Caitlyn Jenner for another example of a wealthy transfem doing the same thing).
And OâBrien is rich because Rocky Horror is a huge success. The stage show has seen tons of productions, the original ran for 7 years in the West End, and the movie is a slow but certain money maker, with probably the longest theatrical run out of any movie in history. He is swimming in residuals.
This raises the more interesting question of Rocky Horrorâs position in the wider culture, and itâs status as âqueer mediaâ. Itâs a movie which is just not passively watched but celebrated and performed by its fandom. People show up in cosplay to showings, âshadow castsâ perform while the movie plays. And of course the original stage musical is still performed.
So we have to ask ourselves, what are people performing? And who is performing it? And Iâve already answered the former question earlier. Rocky Horror is largely an ironic performance of transmisogyny. And the fact is, the majority of people doing that performance are not the main targets of transmisogyny. They are largely TME cishet, queer and trans people. Itâs âironicâ transmisogyny to be sure, I think most fans of Rocky Horror who have any understanding of what it is doing view Frank-N-Furter as the true hero of the show. But is it really their thing to be ironic about? Are transmisogyny-exempt people really the people who should reclaim with irony and camp transmisogynistic tropes in horror media? I donât think so, and thatâs why there is so much resentment about Rocky Horror from transfems. And itâs creator doesnât help, because while heâs arguably transfem, he also spreads transmisogyny in the media.
It illustrates a lot of things, for example how imprecise âqueerâ is as a description of people. Itâs an umbrella term, and does group together people who have much in common. But it also erases the material differences within the community. Queer people arenât all equally oppressed.
So Rocky Horror status as queer media, as a campy celebration of queerness and parody of anti-queer tropes in genre films is kinda grating. Because it enables TME queer people to perform and celebrate Rocky Horror, because they are queer and itâs about âqueernessâ, when there are specifically transmisogynistic tropes parodied in the musical. It isnât really their place to do so.
It appropriates specific transmisogynistic tropes in the media by thoughtlessly subsuming it into the general anti-queerness which it is part of.
Of course there are transfems who got to explore their gender at Rocky Horror showings. But I think the reason they did that is because mtf crossdressing is accepted as part of a camp ironic performance in such a context. It makes it feel safer to perform femininity in public, because you can backtrack and say itâs purely ironic. Thatâs no different from the comedy crossdressing in American Halloween parties, and I think we can all agree those are often transmisogynistic.
And of course, Rocky Horror is an example of how cis men can perform femininity, and get celebrated for it in mainstream society, while escaping the effects of transmisogyny that transfems experience, and in fact often furthering that transmisogyny. Itâs often a (negative) performance of transfemininity, in which actual transfems play no part and are mocked.
Tim Curry is a very good example. He made his career from playing Frank-N-Furter, and he probably couldnât have done that if he was actually transfem, and not just crossdressing for an ironic performance on stage and screen. Like I donât have anything against him in particular, quite the opposite, heâs one of my favourite actors, love him in everything from Clue to Muppet Treasure Island to Gabriel Knight. My objection is to the patriarchal and transmisogynistic system that favors cishet men like him.
Speaking of crossdressing on stage, the drag culture which Rocky Horror is inspired by of course has a complex history. Itâs deeply rooted in both African-American and queer culture, and transfems have played major roles in drag. But Rocky Horror is if anything even an appropriation of drag culture. It represents dragâs commercialization and recuperation into the mainstream. It took drag out of the gay bars being raided by the police and onto the more respectable West End stage, making a lot of money in the process.
Rocky Horror beyond any qualities it has as a stage and film musical, due to its popularity represents a lot of complex issues. Itâs important to queer culture, but it also represents the commercialization and recuperation of queer drag into the cishet mainstream. And within the queer community, it is a shining example of how TME queers can appropriate specifically transfem struggles as their own. It shows how cis men can gain wealth and fame performing transmisogynistic caricatures (even if they are ironic and donât mean it).
Iâm not saying if you enjoy the musical that you should stop enjoying it. But maybe if you are TME, Dr Frank-N-Furter is not your âproblematic queer iconâ to reclaim.
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