Despite a long-standing obsession with the soundtrack, the visuals and the abundance of references in mainstream media like The Perks of Being a Wallflower or… Glee, it’s only recently that I finally sat down to watch the critically acclaimed and beloved cult classic, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Simply put, I fell in love.
I managed to steer clear of horror for the majority of my life, but I could never deny a strange magnetism to the genre. There is something so terribly intriguing about the macabre. It was a curiosity disguised as repulsion and a fascination I could not bring myself to admit. So it’s ironic that many of my vivid childhood recollections of literature are, in fact, horror stories. An illustrated, condensed copy of Frankenstein and Roald Dahl’s The Witches still sits on my bookshelf, the latter a novel that left me too scared to sleep.
It never occurred to me to explore the strange but hardly coincidental phenomenon that my first exposure to queerness, particularly in the sapphic realm, was Curse of Chucky in 2013. I had never seen two girls kiss before. It was bizarre and absurd to me. Almost as absurd as a balding doll terrorizing a family. From then on, subliminal queer messaging through the means of botchy and underdeveloped lesbian narratives had not gone unnoticed. There’s a reason Jennifer’s Body and Death Becomes Her are few of my all-time favourite guilty pleasures.
But nothing was quite as unapologetic as Rocky Horror. The 50s were a decade decorated with low-budget science fiction B-movies, inspiring Richard O’Brien to craft his own stage musical – and eventually a film adaptation – of a story that follows newly-engaged virgin couple Brad and Janet’s encounter with a Transylvanian cross-dresser. However, as is the case with many queer horror films, Rocky Horror was a box office washout, particularly in the era of famously homophobic president Richard Nixon. However, such blatant and outright depiction of queerness quickly drew in the gay community and the film became a salient facet of queer culture. Depicting a flamboyant, outrageous gender-bending man as the face of a film is something that I’ve yet to see replicated in the modern age, let alone in an environment as repressive and orthodox as America in the 70s. While transgression had always been so central to the genre of horror, there was nothing more scandalous than sexual transgression.
Soon after began the tradition of the film’s “shadow-casting”. Suddenly, the rise of amateur shadow-casting troupes turned theater into a refuge that transcended a performer’s ability and talent – it celebrated passion and inclusivity. Midnight shows allowed for the working class ploughing through unglamorous day jobs to indulge in queer expression by night, cheaper and bolder than ever before. It birthed a daring community that exploded in the midst of bigotry and conservatism and garnered a following that continues to flourish to this day.
Horror has always been queer. Horror has always been ambiguous and erotic – concepts that are conveniently upsetting to traditionalists. Attraction being genderless is terrifying to people and there is something so primal about being afraid. The genre comically toys with the idea that sex that exists outside the confines of patriarchy is akin to monstrosity. However, ostracization is not a novel concept to queer people. If anything, seeing a strong central queer figure, albeit a villain, is gloriously affirming. Casting fear upon the masses as the self embracing village pariah is nothing if not empowering.
Overall, there is something undeniably inspiring about how accessible and unabashedly ridiculous horror, particularly camp horror, is. An eclectic genre that fulfills the artistic and satiric potential in the demonization of queer people, it strives to make the audience uncomfortable, and no one thrives in discomfort more than queer people.