In Part 1, I talked about Rocky Horror Picture Show creator Richard O’Brien’s late-life identity crisis and realization he felt of neither gender (I continue to use male pronouns in reference to O’Brien because he seems to himself). I then looked at several characters from the film in turn, analyzing them for potential meaning to back my theory that the film is largely about America’s fears of sexual deviancy. Let’s continue in that vein, non?
BRAD MAJORS: If Janet is openly pleased by her discoveries, Brad goes out struggling against his own. While she gained a sexual identity, the existing identity of Brad was subverted. His fate is the great terror at the heart of every homophobe: The ultimate Straight Ideal converted to homosexuality. Setting out as an innocent, patriotic young man set to be married, by the end of the film he’s roiling with angst over his encounter with Frank-N-Furter:
“It’s beyond me
Help me mommy
I’ll be good you’ll see
Take this dream away
What’s this, let’s see
I feel sexy
What’s come over me
Here it comes again.”
Brad’s lines from “Rose Tint My World” are characteristic of many people struggling with their sexual identity. He begs to become “normal” again, as he is emotionally unequipped to process the unacceptable desires and sensations Frank’s awakened. Unlike Janet, he’s failed to come to grips with this new self by the end of the film – he gives in despite his inhibitions, but the inhibitions remain.
Brad is actually the most obvious display of what O’Brien’s doing – most people pick up on the film’s spoofing of B-level sci-fi, but it’s also a mockery of “gay panic” and its effect on us all. That Richard O’Brien would spend the next three decades continuing to struggle with his own identity explains how he managed to instill his characters with so much pathos and – yes, in Rocky Horror of all things – realism. He simply wrote what he knew.
EDDIE and COLUMBIA: If Janet and Brad represent America’s fears for their children, Eddie and Columbia represent the opposite side of the coin – America’s fears of their children. They could be seen as counterparts to Brad and Janet – a fellow pair of doomed young lovers ruined by Frank-N-Furter’s “lifestyle.”
The major difference between this pair and the “Virgins” is that the former were already “no-good kids.” Eddie, obviously, is a complete trope – the leather-clad motorcycle punk with greasy hair and a switchblade. This role was actually the one O’Brien imagined for himself, originally – that he forgo the most masculine character in the story for the mean-dog-kicked-one-too-many-times that is Riff Raff is interesting. It’s hard to pick up on in the film, but Rocky’s brain is actually half of Eddie’s – hence the scar and the fact he was “on ice.” Despite his put-downs, Frank obviously saw something desirable in Eddie’s personality that he wanted to transfer to his Atlas-like creation.
Columbia is actually a role custom-made for the tap-dancing busker Little Nell – she’s not in the original stage play. Aspects of the female assistant of the play were split between Magenta and Columbia. Credited as “A Groupie,” Columbia is trapped between her obsession with Frank-N-Furter and something “very nearly” like love for the late Eddie. She’s easy to compare to Janet, who is also trapped between an appreciation of Frank and her feelings for Brad. For Brad and Janet, Eddie and Columbia are foreshadowing.
DR. SCOTT: Dr. Scott only needs a brief mention, because his role is mostly limited to moving the plot into the third act. However, it’s worth pointing out that, together with the Criminologist narrator, his is the voice of traditional moral authority in the film. I also suspect that his rivalry with Frank-n-Furter really was the primary motive behind his visit that night, since he quickly shrugged off the death of his nephew when Riff Raff brought it up. If Riff Raff embodies moral hypocrisy, it’s noteworthy the figure of authority is quick to side with him, especially to save his own skin.
DR. FRANK-N-FURTER: And now, the topic I’ve dreaded. What to say about Frank-N-Further? Where to begin? I think I can only scratch the surface here – maybe I’ll return to Frank sometime in a post dedicated solely to him, which is fitting.
The first time I saw Rocky Horror, the opening line from “Don’t Dream It” caught my attention like nothing else in the film.
“Whatever happened to Fay Wray?
That delicate satin draped frame
As it clung to her thigh, how I started to cry
‘Cause I wanted to be dressed just the same.”
This turned out to be the key to the film. What could easily be mistaken for a homophobic story about an evil transvestite immediately revealed itself to be a satire of those very fears. The pathos of Frank-N-Furter in this and the two songs that follow, “Wild and Untamed Thing” and “I’m Going Home,” is simply too strong for this to be a cut-and-dried case of transplotation.
Which isn’t to say Frank is a good guy. He murdered Eddie after stealing half his brain, turned people into statues and made them perform for his amusement. But like Rocky, he falls into the classic early 20th century concept of the sympathetic monster, doomed from the start for reasons not entirely of his own making. As I said in the entry for Riff Raff, Frank is killed by the hypocrisy of his culture, which apparently considers his lifestyle “too extreme” while condoning Riff Raff’s.
In that interview with Dominic Wells that kicked off this whole thing, O’Brien suggests some of Frank’s personality was based on his own mother, an emotionally abusive woman that disowned her working class British family to affect a posh nobility in New Zealand. While O’Brien is mostly referring to Frank’s egomania, the comparison can be carried farther. Frank-N-Further also fled his home to try to become someone else in a distant land, dragging others with him who, like O’Brien, rebelled. Actually, it is O’Brien that rebels in both cases: In real life he left school and fled back to England, while on celluloid and stage he mutinies as Riff Raff.
If only we could all emit a ray of pure anti-matter into the people that scarred us.
