Episode 029: It’s Just a Jump to the Right… of Acceptance? The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) with Wind Goodfriend

Join Alex and returning guest host Dr. Wind Goodfriend in a discussion of the psychological concepts in the outrageous but important cult class film, The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)! We do the Time Warp again to discuss the sex, sexuality, and gender-bending concepts that are all over this wild musical. The message here is, don’t dream it, BE IT!

Check our Dr. Goodfriend’s new Audible course, The Science of Love.

Additional reading, care of the “your thoughts” segment: Toward a Sociology of Cult Films: Reading “Rocky Horror”

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Legal stuff:
1. All film clips are used under Section 107 of Title 17 U.S.C. (fair use; no copyright infringement is intended).
2. Intro and outro music by Sro (“Self-Driving”). Used under license CC BY-SA 4.0.
3. Film reel sound effect by bone666138. Used under license CC BY 3.0.
4. Additional music: “Et Voila” and “Weekend in Tatooine”. Used under license.

Episode Transcription

FRANK-N-FURTER: I see you shiver with antici–

ALEX SWAN: PATION. You want to say pation pation anticipation, pation—anticipation, pation. I, I can’t wait.

FRANK-N-FURTER: —pation.

ALEX: Thank you. Oh my gosh, thank you.

ALEX: Hey everybody, welcome to the CinemaPsych Podcast! Where psychology meets film. I’m your host, Dr. Alex Swan, and today’s episode is a fun one. Fun one. We’re going to do the time warp again. Yes, that’s right! We are talking about the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Rocky Horror Picture Show—comedy, musical …The cult classic. You know the one that came out in 1975, directed and written by Jim Sharman. I hope I’m saying that right. Based on the original musical by Richard O’Brien and it stars very good—very good actors. We have Tim Curry as Doctor Frank-N-Furter in one of his best roles and I-I will swear by that, one of his best roles. Susan Sarandon in one of her earlier roles, Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick, the mayor from the mayor. Yeah, I believe was mayor from just—The Michael J. Fox Show. Why can’t I think of the name of the show? But anyways, Barry Bostwick—Brad Majors—and then Richard O’Brien, who wrote the screen—the not the screenplay… The musical play… plays Riff Raff so, and could begin because he wrote the music. Meatloaf also makes an appearance, Charles Gray in a fantastic role outside of his normal roles. Kind of a goofy role as the Criminologist. Anyways, we are going to be talking about this now. The other interesting thing about about this episode that you were about to listen to is it was recorded as a streaming episode. So we did this live on my Twitch channel, CogPsychProf. We did this live just so, you know, if you’re listening to this episode when it goes live or within 60 days of that recording, you can go watch the whole thing, and our breaks and everything like that on my on my Twitch channel. After that, it’ll be it’ll disappear because the point was to make the podcast episode and not and not a video to to keep so… So that’s why it will sound a little different. It’ll have a slightly different pace to it. There will be a couple of breaks where we will put in my call to action midroll and the sharing segment that I also plan to include in this episode from viewer—”viewers”—isteners like you, so stay tuned for this episode. It is a good one. We have a returning guest so let’s get right into it. Alright, my guest host today is friend of the show, Dr. Wind Goodfriend. She’s a professor of psychology at Buena Vista University in Iowa and this is her 4th appearance on the show—4 times! Wind, how are things going in the age of the COVID pandemic? It’s been almost a year since we last talked.

WIND GOODFRIEND: Yes, it has been a long year, although I feel like it hasn’t been that long since I got to talk to you. First, let me say thank you for having me back. That’s my honor and pleasure. Other than I, I feel like it hasn’t been a year since I’ve talked to you, in-in every other way it’s been a very long year, but the good news is my partner and I both got our first vaccine shot last Saturday, so we are optimistic things are going to get better soon.

ALEX: Yeah I will be getting—my wife and I will be getting our first doses tomorrow so that is looking… we are planning on having a low key weekend. Fingers crossed that we don’t have issues. But yeah, I I, that’s awesome. That’s awesome and I’m happy to have you back. It’s always fun talking movies with you and I understand that you are teaching a psych in film course this semester, and every week I believe you’ve been sharing the films that you’re discussing each week on Facebook. As we are Facebook friends… And so how—how is that class going?

WIND: You know, it’s one of my absolute favorite classes to teach. I developed it for the first time about eight years ago. It meets once a week. There’s a 40 minute lecture on the topic of the week then they watch the movie and they have to write a paper every week saying what was accurate, what was inaccurate, if there were psychologists in the film, how are they portrayed? Is this doing good in the general audience in terms of understanding psychological topics. So I love the class because I love movies like psychology, right? Funniest thing that is relevant to when I first developed this class was I would tell people about it ’cause I was excited and the by far most common question I got was are there enough movies to have a whole class on psychology of film? Of course my response was every movie is psychology so yes.

ALEX: Yeah, exactly exactly, yeah.

WIND: So it’s been a great and it’s my most popular class by far.

ALEX: Most popular class as far as how many people are in it or just what you’re expecting with student evaluations, that sort of thing?

WIND: Probably both. But definitely in terms—

ALEX: And this—and this is not the first time you’ve taught this class, right?

WIND: I think this is the 4th time I’ve been able to teach it? I think it’s every other year.

ALEX: Every other year. Oh wow, I didn’t realize you were doing it that often. The most I could probably get away with would be as a summer class and I’m weighing whether or not I want to do it this summer with all of the other responsibilities that I have to do this summer, like writing scripts and such. So I don’t know if I if I if I have the energy to do that. But I would like to, but I would like to.

WIND: Well, the best part about the psych in film class is that two of the three hours are the movie so…

ALEX: That’s very true. And that’s exactly what I did. Right, It is. I mean you can almost do it on autopilot at this point in time. I guess far as—Yes, don’t tell my provost. The interesting thing, and then you mentioned like, are there enough films to do that? First of all, it’s at at most like a 16 week class like yeah, I can figure out 16 films if we did a film right for 16—every 16 weeks, but I mean there is a database that exists just for cognitive science films at Indiana University. Like of course I can find 16 or 15 or 12 or whatever, however many you’re going to do. Like that’s such a silly, it’s just—it’s an out of the-that’s an out of the loop kind of question and it’s like, oh, bless your heart.

WIND: Right, I think they’re, I think they’re very limited and thinking only mental illnesses. And, of course, that’s not even my primary area of psychology.

ALEX: And it’s funny too, because you could totally find 16 films for that as well. ‘Cause like if we were to, if we were to to to quantify like the psychological concepts in all the movies, as you said, every movie is a psychology movie. It would definitely—psych disorders would far outnumber any other kinds of of psych concepts in the films, right? So even that kind of myopic thinking is “oh bless your heart”, kind of response from me, of course. But we are talking about one of your films this this episode here. We are discussing…. So I saw your posts and I think this was maybe what three or four weeks into the semester or something like that. I saw you post Rocky Horror Picture Show. And I’ve been thinking about that movie for awhile, it’s been awhile since I saw it. I watched it again today for our conversation. It’s been awhile since I saw it, but I have been thinking about it specifically for the things that we are going to talk about today. And when I saw you say that I was like, OK, I gotta sort of jumble up this schedule here for upcoming episodes because I need to talk to-I need to talk to Wind about this. I really do. Let’s just jump right in to our discussion of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. As as I mentioned at the start of the episode, this film has a really really fantastic performance by Tim Curry. And it’s it’s a bit of a bummer because I was looking him up recently and he suffered a stroke in the last two or three years, and it’s a real big bummer because of you know his filmography is amazing and he can’t he can’t really act anymore because of this stroke. He’s basically as many stroke survivors do, they lose a number of speech abilities. Tim Curry had that-had that issue and it was a bummer when I read-read about that and-and talking about this movie. So Tim Curry’s in it. Brian Bostwick, an early role for Susan Sarandon. And I mean, Wind what are the big things that we want to take away from this movie?

WIND: Well, let me tell you, I’m happy to have this opportunity to chat with you about the film because my students did not have the reaction I really expected when I showed them this film. And in hindsight, it makes sense. But this was the 4th film we watched. The third film was Memento and they were confused by that and I said and I said just wait. So then we watched Rocky Horror the next week and I am not making this up, I had two students email me and say, Dr. Goodfriend, I might have to drop this class because I’m Christian and I’m not sure I can keep watching movies like this. And I wasn’t really expecting quite that strong of a response.

ALEX: That’s an interesting response.

WIND: But it shows the the reaction that people have when they watch this movie. I think that if there’s a very divided reaction, some people when they watch this movie. It feeds their soul. It’s something that as I think we’ll talk about tonight, something that provides them this sense of relief and hope, and a way for them to reach out to people in their own community. And there have been a lot of articles about how this movie has actually sometimes even sel-saved people’s lives because they felt like, I can go to the live showings and I can participate in, I can find people who will accept me for who I am. On the other hand, there are a lot of people really hate this movie, which was most of my students. So they had some really interesting criticisms of the film, and some of those I-I can see, so I’d like to kind of talk about sort of both sides of this film, and really kind of critically think about “has it held up” since it came out in 1970-or sorry… Yeah, 75, it came out in 1975 as a film, that was originally a live play in London. Came out as a film in 75 and it has been—it holds the record for the longest film being released in theaters. I mean it’s still being shown, despite COVID actually. So it holds the record for sort of the most recurring film in all of history, but it’s quite controversial still.

ALEX: Yeah, so what are the major themes considering that you got emails from students about them specifically mentioning their Christianity. What are the specific themes that might have led to this reaction from the from your students?

WIND: Well so, my students are aware that when they take classes with me, they know that I am not shy about the fact that I identify as pansexual. And that my classes will have a progressive message, so I don’t think that was a big surprise. But this movie was kind of maybe pushing them a little bit, so the theme that I give them before they watch the movie this week was gender and sexuality and those concepts being fluid and on a spectrum as opposed to categorical variables. So if you think about sexual orientation, sex and gender as: male, female, homosexual, heterosexual, and that’s it. And pick one and there’s one that you should check. That’s maybe not the only way to look at the world, and so I talked about whether gender and sex and sexual orientation are malleable and continuous. And so I introduced the Kinsey model, which is a single continuum with heterosexual on one pole and homosexual in the other pole. And that’s a fairly well known model in psychology, a lesser known—

ALEX: It’s been around-it’s been around since what 1950…?

WIND: Yeah, late 50s something, I have the book on my desk here, but—

ALEX: That they made, and they made a movie…

WIND: Absolutely, that’s a great move.

ALEX: That’s going to be on the podcast eventually.

WIND: Great movie, Liam Neeson is-is really good in that, yes, agree. So people in psychology are kind of familiar with that continuum. Maybe not so much outside of psychology. So for some of my students I was introducing them to Kinsey’s model. But I also introduced him to the Storm’s model, which I prefer to Kinsey. So Storm’s has two continua. One continuum is attraction to the same sex one attraction and one is attraction to what we might call the opposite sex, although I don’t actually agree with it being opposite. But that means it’s more like a traditional graph. We have an X axis and a Y axis and that means you could fall anywhere in the graph. So if you have high levels of both variables, that puts you in what used to be called bisexual, what is now pansexual or omnisexual, and then you can also have low levels of both, which leads you to the label of asexual. But it just offers more options flexibility and of course the idea that you can move around in that graph.

ALEX: Yeah, exactly, kinda like a Cartesian plane. You-it’s 2-dimensional. You know who are you attracted to when are you attracted to all of these kinds of variables can change? Yeah, I like that model as well. The the high. I don’t know if I would call them models, but the two I will do air quotes around models here because they are not scientific, but the two that I show my students because I don’t spend. I don’t have any classes where I spend a lot of time on this idea itself, but the two that I use are either the Genderbread Person which is now, I think in version four, which has adopted a lot of features of Storm. And then the the Gender Unicorn, which also has features of Storm where pretty much all the aspects that are discussed, gender, gender identity, or I think no, sorry gender is identity, gender, expression, sex, sex assigned at birth, and it cuts out attraction to romantically attracted to, and I guess we’ll call it ’cause I can’t think of the word right now, cognitively attracted to. So there are two like you’re you’re sexually attracted to people or you are just like I like that person because “they’re a person” kind of attraction. So the two separate attractions and both exist on a all of them exist on continua yeah, and so those are the ones that I show an it’s-it’s astonishing to me how few of my students, who are of course younger than us, don’t actually know either of those models, even in even in the Internet sense of the of the word “model.”

WIND: So that leads me to an interesting question about the role of this movie in terms of generations. So when it came out in the 70s the LGBTQIA+ population didn’t have a lot of movies like this. So it was really-it was really pushing the boundaries. It was not really intended for a general audience. It was intended to appeal to this very specific audience, and many disenfranchised people were drawn to this film because it was intentionally for them. It was doing lots of things like breaking the 4th Wall, where Tim Curry turns to the camera and looks directly into it, and-and some people will argue that this is the first movie that that did that, and I’m not sure if that’s 100%. I don’t know if that’s accurate, but some people have claimed that at least he does that.

ALEX: And, and there’s also the Criminologist is talking directly to us.

THE CRIMINOLOGIST: I would like, if I may, to take you on a strange journey. It seemed a fairly ordinary night, when Brad Majors and his fiance Janet Weiss, two young ordinary healthy kids, left Denton that late November evening to visit a Dr. Everett Scott, ex tutor and now friend to both of them. It’s true there were dark storm clouds. Heavy, black and pendulous, toward which they were driving. It’s true also that the spare tire they were carrying was badly in need of some air, but they being normal kids and on a night out well they were not gauge little storms by the events of their evening. On a night out. It was a night out they were going to remember for a very long….

WIND: So it does things like that, where in the 70s it was really important and it’s still important to a lot of people today, but my students when Tim Curry calls himself a transvestite, there are sort of audible gasps, like that’s not a word that you can say anymore.

ALEX: Right, and that they are from the planet Transsexual.

WIND: Right, so when they wrote their papers, one of the big criticisms that my students had of this generation, and they’re all, pretty much sort of, you know, 18, 19, 20 years old. They said, “it’s not OK that the trans people in this film were made to be aliens, because that’s dehumanizing trans people.” And “I thought that this movie was going to be holding up trans people.” And you know saying that they were good and the fact that Frank is a villain for most of the movie was something that they did not appreciate. Now he’s kind of switched at the end. There’s sort of like a plot twist where he’s actually the guy you’re supposed to sort of empathize with and root for. But they that kind of got lost on them, at least for some of them. And many of my female students did not appreciate that he kind of sexually assaults Janet and Brad.

ALEX: Both of them. Yeah.

WIND: He-he disguises himself as someone else. He does things without their consent. Now they eventually consent, but they said not only is that sort of glorifying sexual assault, but it’s also associating the LGBTQIA population with sexual assault and with him and with hedonism in general. That, like all people in that community, are sexual predators, basically. That they’re, recruiting, right, which is a horrible stereotype of people in the community.

THE CRIMINOLOGIST: There are those who say that life is an illusion and that reality is simply a figment of the imagination. If this is so, then Brad and Janet are quite safe. However, the sudden departure of their host and his creation into the seclusion of his somber bridal suite had left them feeling both apprehensive and uneasy, a feeling which grew as the other guests departed and they were shown to their separate rooms.

WIND: And so the vast majority of my students said this movie is reinforcing all these really negative stereotypes. And it’s it’s horrible. And….I had kind of had those responses myself, but it wasn’t really articulated in the same way for me because I grew up with this being a cult classic loved by the LGBTQIA.

ALEX: Right, so that’s all, and that’s all I’ve heard from that community too. Like I got really good friend and he was on the show recently. We did the X-Men, Michael Alexander, he does— I can’t remember exactly when he did this, but he recently went to a, you know, an RHPS show wearing a Frank-N-Furter costume… The girder and everything.

WIND: Fish nets and all that, yeah.

ALEX: Yeah, exactly!

WIND: When I was in high school and college, a lot of people were going to this live show and it was the celebration of being yourself and being authentic and not being shamed, not being made to feel guilty. Celebration of you know, being nonbinary, being genderqueer, and so that’s how I interpreted the film. And why I wanted to show it my students! So I don’t know if it’s because many of my students are from rural Midwestern areas, I don’t know if it’s because my University has a Christian affiliation. Not every student who goes here is Christian, but it is explicitly an affiliation of the University. I don’t know if it’s just this generation. I mean when I talk to my students in a class like I teach the class on psychology of gender. And I talked to them about cisgender versus transgender, and they’re like who cares if they don’t? They grew up in a culture in a generation where it’s not a big deal.

ALEX: And yeah, and I hope that continues.

WIND: Yeah and it’s a fantastic change. But I don’t know that this movie is gonna hold up for a generation that was raised with more acceptance.

ALEX: I mean more. Yes, I would say more acceptance, but we also want to make sure that we are celebrating differences. And so even if they are like nonchalant about cis versus trans and all of that stuff, we still need to celebrate those differences. And I think that, and this is my personal opinion, I think this movie does celebrate and-and because I watched it today, I was specifically looking for those things. After looking at our notes and seeing what you had gotten from your from your class, I was specifically looking for these things. And yeah, I get the villain of the villainization of Frank-N-Furter, but I think the last—maybe it’s not the last—maybe it’s the, I guess, it’s the penultimate musical number because I think the last musical number is Frank-N-Furter pleading for his life or something like that. But I think the penultimate one where they are de-Medusa’ed and they’re all wearing the same thing as Frank-N-Furter. And if you had the subtitles on, if you, if you read those lyrics, they’re all saying this is actually really good. This is really nice. This feels feels right. And I mean if you think if you take Brad’s character for example, like he was totally against it, right from the start and even when he is quote unquote, sexually assaulted by Frank-N-Furter, and he says, “OK, yeah you can, you can, you can go down on me, that’s fine.”

WIND: So the flip side in favor of this film is the idea that if everyone were really honest with themselves, maybe everyone would be at least a little bit pansexual, right? And and the idea that, you should not be ashamed of that. That you should embrace that and and celebrate it and that song at the end. Don’t dream it, be it. That’s an inspiring song, right? That’s kind of the take home message that I always came off of this film with like, be yourself. Be authentic. Be proud of who you are. Don’t let society tell you who you have to be. That’s the message that I-I wanted my students to get out of it. But I don’t, I don’t know. I mean, I just read an article today where it was basically, “does Rocky Horror hold up?” And some of the live participation traditions are being sort of frowned upon now. So an example of that is it used to be that whenever Susan Sarandon would appear on the stage, the audience would yell “slut” at her. That’s not cool today, you know. That’s-that’s shaming, that’s shaming a woman who’s simply trying to enjoy sexuality. It doesn’t hold up in today’s culture, so it’s interesting to see it from the next generation’s view, and-and to start—maybe I’m-I’m not, I don’t know. Maybe it got ruined for me, which makes me really sad.

ALEX: I think another viewing, I think another viewing is in order.

WIND: Going to it live, I think that’s what I need to do.

ALEX: Yeah, when it’s back live again for sure or or at least go to when they do it when they’re when they’re back, theaters are back at it, go to another midnight screening because you know that you know that will keep happening. I don’t know if technically the pandemic has destroyed its record, has destroyed its record, but you know, we’ll see. That midnight viewings will be back, I think. I think it’s OK. I-so here-here’s what I’ll say as I here, I’ll drop my my thoughts about just the film in general. From a filmmaking standpoint, the film is a mess. It’s a real. It’s a real mess. It has a some semblance of a plot, but not really. It’s basically musical numbers meshed together and you don’t really—you don’t actually really know what Rocky Horror Picture Show means until Rocky in the credits is named Rocky Horror because he’s only named Rocky, he only gets the name Rocky in-within the movie. In the dialogue, he’s never called Rocky Horror during the film, and so it’s just like what is going on? What are-what is happening? You get a sense of what is happening with Brad and Janet.

WIND: Sure, it’s a sexual awakening for Brad and Janet.

ALEX: Ye-yeah, it’s it’s a sexual awakening for both of them absolutely, and you get-you get that. So they have character development, but nobody else really does. In the movie, nobody else really does, maybe Rocky, but that’s it.

WIND: How the audience sees Frank develop right?

ALEX: I-I-I-I even-even there, I think his character development is extremely thin and he does change from— I would never have called him a villain, by the way. I think he’s a tragic figure. He’s a misunderstood person. We don’t have the full back story about Eddie or what Columbia has in this whole thing. It seems like she’s a fan of Eddie, but she was also afraid of fan of Frank, right, but there’s not enough regular dialogue to get you to these points. And—

WIND: He does kidnap them. He does kill—

ALEX: I still don’t—

WIND: someone, you know, know his parallel of course, is Frankenstein right. Which is the actual—

ALEX: Dr. Frankenstein.

WIND: Right right, the scientist, not Frankenstein’s monster. So the parallel is that in the book, Frankenstein—Doctor Frankenstein is the bad guy. The monster is the good guy.

ALEX: I I I I still don’t think Frank-N-Furter is a villain or a bad guy.

WIND: I don’t think he is, but he’s portrayed that way through most of the film, and my students did not like that. They basically said your perpetuating the stereotype that people in the LGBTQ community are recruiting and sexually obsessed and hedonists and that they are selfish, right? I I started to kind of see their point.

ALEX: But let’s take that stereotype. Let’s take the kernel of truth in that stereotype. Where did that kernel of truth originate? And it is. Is it really a kernel of truth? Is it really a stereotype?

WIND: Well, I’m I’m not sure I understand what you’re asking.

ALEX: That LGBT individuals are are villainized, are hedonists, are recruiting and—

WIND: They’re villainized, yes, but, they’re certainly not sexual hedonists who recruit people.

ALEX: Right. That that’s my point.

WIND: You’re talk—I’m in this community.

ALEX: That’s, but that’s my point. My point is that your students are were expressing this to you, and it gave you pause, but I wouldn’t consider those stereotypes. I would consider that propaganda.

WIND: But it’s it’s the same kind of issue that I have with TV shows like Will and Grace, where Jack-Jack—OK, he’s hilarious. I’m going to give the writers that it’s a funny show, but he’s also perpetuating all of these super negative stereotypes about gay men, right?

ALEX: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

WIND: I mean, is that really progress? Why can’t we just have a gay character who’s like, I need to buy floor wax like just a regular person, you know?

ALEX: I mean, that’s kind of what—Oh my gosh, his name is going to escape me right now. Oh no. David Rose’s husband in Schitt’s Creek.

WIND: Oh, Eugene Levy.

ALEX: No, that’s his dad. No his husband, the guy, the the character he marries is your “I need to buy some paint.”

WIND: Yeah yeah, yeah. Yeah, sorry he was just on SNL. Levy I can’t.

ALEX: Yeah yeah, Dan Levy was just on on on SNL, but no. So his character, David Rose, has a husband, and and I am being a bad Schitt’s Creek fan right now because the name is escaping me and this is this is bad. This is bad. So yeah, but I I go back to I go back to—OK, so yeah, stereotypes and all of that, but I honestly think that what your students brought up, in reference to stereotypes is more is more aligned with propaganda.

WIND: And I agree with you, but they’re saying this is this is negative propaganda. They’re saying this is the negative propaganda.

ALEX: I would not say the movie is negative propaganda, no.

WIND: I never thought about it in that way until two weeks ago, when my students all told me it was.

ALEX: I think that’s-I think that’s the lens. I think that’s the lens that they are viewing it through, to be fair.

WIND: Dan Levy.

ALEX: Yeah, Dan Levy was the David Rose character, yeah.

WIND: Sorry anyway, no but, P\point is, I I think you and I, maybe because we’re older than my students, we don’t think of it in that way, but my point is that if some 18 year old sees this on Netflix or Amazon Prime or whatever streaming thing they have and they just they’re like, “oh, I’ve heard of that movie, I’m going to watch it” and they see it and they think wow this is so mean to LGBTQIA population—like they don’t have the historical context that we do. So I think from their lens it’s actually really bad. And that’s why I’m saying like most of the people who watch this are not in a class where we’re going to be talking about it, you know what I mean?

ALEX: Right right right, yeah, that’s true, yeah. Yeah, so I don’t know how you bridge that to be honest because I have not met any— So I like the movie ,but I like the movie for the same kind of reasons that I like Clue. Yeah well, I mean, it helps, but for the same reason that I like that I like The Room like, I hate-like, I like to hate to like The Room, but I like The Room it’s it’s got some great quotables in it, but I mean it’s it’s a cult classic for reason.

WIND: Yes, so this me is the ultimate cult classic film right? It’s got this underground following. It’s got a specific audience. It ended up making way more money than it originally did when it came out like this movie to me is the definition almost like the epitome of a cult classic. But that means, I think for most cult classics, if you come into it not knowing what you’re about to experience, not having that historical context, think most general people when they watch films that are considered cult classics are not going to like them.

ALEX: Yeah, I agree. I think, if people have a negative reaction to this movie. Reading about it first thing, read about it and then maybe participate in some of the things that make it a cult right? Make it-make it a cult—God, that’s no, that’s terrible. Make it make it something more than just a movie.

WIND: So there’s a particular line in the film when I was reading about it that stood out to me as really maybe the key line. Besides at the end where they say don’t dream it, be it which I think is a really important take-home message earlier in the film, there’s another key line which is when Tim Curry is talking about Rocky, but he says I didn’t make him for you. And the writers, I don’t know if they’re saying this afterward or not, but they say that that line was referring to the movie itself is kind of a meta-line saying I didn’t make this film for you where you is like the general cisgender heterosexual audience. Like we don’t care if you don’t like it, it’s not for you.

ALEX: Yeah, exactly exactly and I will, even if that might be apocryphal, I I 100% would agree with that because I think it takes more than one viewing to get the full feeling of it. Because because of the fact that it’s got such a loose semblance of plot. Kind of hard to keep threads together.

WIND: I also told my students that they had to use the closed captions when they watched it because so many of the lines are either really fast or they’re kind of dropped in terms of like their the enunciation of the line. I said you have to look at the closed captions because the lines matter.

ALEX: Right. Yeah, the lines matter. The lyrics of the songs matter. I was even thinking about Eddie’s song, about love and rock and roll. To your earlier point of like just being you and and just like loving who you are and what you do and you know he comes and breaks back into Frank-N-Furter’s Mansion is like “it’s all about rock and roll baby” and he gets murdered for it so he gets murdered in a really awkward way but he gets murdered for it and-and it’s-it’s a-it’s a-it’s an interesting juxtaposition. Considering that Frank’s MO, at least with Brad and Janet is to awaken them, you know. So yeah, it’s really, this is, let’s let’s take a pause here and we will be back from a quick break.

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ALEX: So we are back with Dr. Wind Goodfriend, we are talking about The Rocky Horror Picture Show everyone, and I wanted to continue our discussion, Wind, about, the one of the criticisms that you heard from your students about which is at the end—spoiler alert everyone—that the the people in the house where Jad—Jad and Branit go—gah—Brad and Janet go, are actually aliens from the planet Transsexual, which is again not a term that is used anymore, in the Galaxy of Transylvania, and it didn’t strike Brad and Janet as weird when they said the words Transylvania, because that’s just the name that place where vampires come from, I guess in-world, so they were like, what’s Transylvania? It turns out it’s a galaxy somewhere else, so they made the they made these creepy people aliens and and your students said what exactly?

WIND: Most of my students thought that was reinforcing a negative stereotype that trans people are not even human, so they they reacted against that and said why? Why would a movie that supposedly celebrating LGBTQIA people make trans people aliens? ‘Cause it’s making it seem like they’re not even human beings, so it seemed like it was dehumanizing them.

ALEX: Yeah, and so-so this is the 1970s, of course, and I’m not giving a pass to some of the other criticisms they had about. You know, the sexual assault and things like that. You know that. Just not OK, regardless, right.? But this whole idea of aliens and the othering, I do agree that I think your students may have missed the point of the choice. To do that from the, you know, the writing standpoint, both from the play and the screenplay. In the beginning scene, there is a wedding and it is-i’s an extremely bland wedding. And I think Brad, was the best man or something like that. And-and congratulating his friend and they’re like being really weird next to each other. It was like it’s like, like weird, are you guys even friends or is there some like sexual tension? And-and, Janet is pining for Brad and they’re dating and she’s just like swooning over him and he he sings a song and he keeps, you know, tiptoeing around, asking her to marry him. And she just like, come, come on, tell me this, do it. And you can sense frustration from Janet, right, and I’ll specifically say sexual frustration and in this-this particular scene and then following musical number set the stage for the rest of the movie—that occurs in Frank-N-Furter’s Mansion—as sexually repressive. It-it, the whole thing stinks. And the interesting thing is that the preacher or the pastor or the priest, whoever, is played by Tim Curry. And they actually have him centered in frame in the back of the photograph that is taking up the entire wedding party, and I think he’s spying on Brad and Janet.

WIND: I never noticed that, Alex.

ALEX: You never noticed that? OK, you gotta watch it next time you gotta watch it next time and the two people with him I believe are some of the people that you see later. I don’t know if it’s necessarily Columbia, Magenta, or…

WIND: Riff Raff, I think it’s Riff Raff. Wrote all the music, by the way. Guy who plays Riff Raff wrote all the music.

ALEX: OK, I think that’s I think that’s that makes sense. So so this this whole sexually repressive undertones that are being set as the stage ,right. And so when these two sexually repressed individuals, Brad and Janet, end up making it to having their tire flat and end up going to Frank-N-Furter’s Mansion, that there’s something wrong about all of these people who are acting in very strange ways. And that seems alien to them, and the screenwriters just made that real, right. They just were like, oh, this is alien. OK, right? They were aliens.

WIND: So it’s so a couple of my students pointed that out and they said like so, I think that the alienisation is both sort of metaphorical and literal, and it’s-it’s representative of the fact that mainstream culture was-it was alienating the community, right? And so right, It’s it’s taking it to that satirical level. And I think that’s true I, I think that was the intention, but again, two of the students in my class made that connection. The rest of the students were like why are they bad aliens? So, I’m just saying like without I feel like it-it’s a movie that you need somebody to explain to the cis, hetero, 19-year-olds of the world like this is what’s really going on, because I think without that kind of guidance it’s lost on at least many of them, at least in my experience, at least in the students in my University. Now that maybe is not representative of all the 19-year-olds in the world.

ALEX: Right, I think it does definitely depend on region, which is what brings me back to my earlier point of of, you know, making sure that we identified the differences and celebrate them. When I showed my students the other day, the Genderbread person and the Gender Unicorn, I was like look everyone’s different. Yay! And I said clap with me, please. And they did. They did. yeah, so so I mean it. It does— different areas of the country do need different kinds of educational pro-educational priorities for sure, and that just might be that their reactions to this movie might just be one of those areas that our region of the of the country needs a little bit of, you know, and there’s nothing wrong with that, as long as you’re receptive to it, I think there’s nothing wrong with that.

WIND: So the the good news, I think from from my experience here with my students says even if they didn’t get the movie, their response was this movie is so mean to the LGBTQIA population. Why are they stigmatising and you know, enforcing negative stereotypes? So the good news is my students didn’t like that, they know that they didn’t like what they perceived to be transphobic or homophobic, so my students were defending the community, which was nice. And-and so even if they didn’t like the movie the reason they didn’t like it was because they perceived it to be transphobic and so that makes me happy that my students aren’t transphobic.

ALEX: Yeah yeah, right exactly yes. I will say that, even-even if they thought that the movie is transphobic, they should have conversations with with trans people and find out whether or not it is actually transphobic. Get it from directly from the horse’s mouth. And I, like I said, I have not heard that from this community and while as an outsider, it may seem like it, I I see the other aspects of of the movie shining through, especially like you said, the last musical number. If you don’t dream it, be it that sort of thing, right?

WIND: Right! And I’ll say that earlier I was saying I’m not sure, if the movie will be perceived in the same way by the next generation, right. So does it hold up? But I will emphasize the point of this movie is still absolutely essential in the modern world because in the year 2020, there were more violent hate crimes against the trans community than in any previous year, right. So while maybe it seems like a lot of the next generation is more accepting of trans people, there is a minority that is a backlash response to this I think, and that is extremely troubling and dangerous and horrible, so the importance of showing the new generation like this kind of empathy and perspective is really important.

ALEX: Yeah, I agree, and it might be a case where you know, as the as the movie ages, it’s going to end up being one of those things where a good chunk of the audience views it in similar ways as they do you know, a movie like Gone with the Wind, maybe. I mean, there are lots of things wrong with that movie compared to Rocky Horror, but but I I feel like that—I mean because films represent the artistic-the artistic vision at a single point in time. It’s hard to-it’s hard to say whether or not something holds up. I personally think it holds up at least till now. We’ll see what happens in another generation, but at least till now.

WIND: In three years, it’s going to be the 50th anniversary.

ALEX: Is it? Oh my God!

WIND: So, I think there will be a resurgence of this film. That would be nice. It’s gotta be celebrated in in pride communities. 50th-50th anniversary of Rocky Horror. That’s a big deal.

ALEX: Yeah, I think you know, with the pandemic behind us in three years or four years, with the pandemic behind us, right? Hopefully we should be able to do that, you know.

WIND: Right? There was going to be a big 45th anniversary which was 2020, right? So that didn’t happen but, 50th is even better!

ALEX: Right, I mean you can, why not? Yeah yeah. Will there be a time after COVID?

WIND: Alex… Why not?

ALEX: Definitely do it.

WIND: “Why not” is a great sum up of this entire movie.

ALEX: Exactly why not? Yeah, why not, yeah?

WIND: You don’t know until you try.

ALEX: Indeed, indeed. So some-so some fun things, some fun things about this movie, so we can sort of end on a, we’ll say, a lighter note here. Some-some fun things. You had mentioned that it’s a Fox property, right? Or at least Fox. Oh yeah, it was a 20th Century Fox film. That’s right.

WIND: It was 20th Century Fox.Disney purchased 20th Century Fox in 2019.

ALEX: Doesn’t exist anymore.

WIND: Which makes Frank a Disney Princess.

ALEX: Yeah, although I think you might…. I think you might have some pushback on that.

WIND: I don’t think Disney—

ALEX: because we-what—well, I agree with you, but here’s what I’ll say. Here’s what I’ll say. You know how Angelina Jolie has played Maleficent to more of-a more of an anti hero then she was portrayed in the original Sleeping Beauty film? Right, just got a whole back story. You know what her motives were against the King and all that stuff.

WIND: Sure, you end up rooting for her.

ALEX: Yeah, you’re like hell yeah! Yeah, go Maleficent—although your name still means evil. So I think-so what I would what I would say is to that as far as Disney is concerned, Frank-N-Furter is on the same level of as Maleficent. We’ll, we’ll give him that. I don’t know if he gets to be a Disney Princess, though I’m sure that’s what he wants though, right? ‘Cause he’s just a transvestite from Transylvania.

WIND: I think he would love to be a Disney—

ALEX: From transsexual in Transylvania, yeah? Exactly.

WIND: I mean not that I think Disney Princess is really something to which anyone should aspire.

ALEX: To be honest, I don’t think he would aspire to it either.

WIND: Right, he would say I’d rather hang out with these other people.

ALEX: Yeah, exactly. So on that on that musical note, what is your favorite song or musical sequence from the movie? Think you may have hinted at it with Don’t Dream It, Be It.

WIND: I love Don’t Dream It, Be It because of the message.

FRANK-N-FURTER: Don’t dream it. Be it. Don’t dream it. Be it.

WIND: But it’s you know, of course, the classic is the Time Warp.

ALEX: Aw, that was going to be my answer. And I’ll tell you why it’s my answer and it’s not because of the song. The song doesn’t make any sense. It’s because the Criminologist describes how to do it, right, with feet, right and then and then he’s doing it on his desk and he’s jumping around. It’s so good because he’s supposed to be, you know, stiff upper lip Brit talking about Brad and Janet having the harrowing time of a lifetime right?

WIND: It’s just a fun thing everyone wants to join.

ALEX: Exactly, it’s a silly little musical number that makes absolutely no sense. But I was thinking about it, knowing that, knowing that you know the the-they end up being aliens at the end of the movie. I’m like, I wonder if that’s how they get back to you know, Transylvania.

WIND: Spend a lot of time thinking about the physics of the plot.

ALEX: No, I I but this is what I do, Wind, this is what I do. I test the internal consistency and internal logic of movies and I can’t, I can’t, I can’t stop.

WIND: So were you, so were you, offended earlier when I said negative things about Michael Bay because I know that the physics of Michael Bay movies are really—

ALEX: No Michael Bay movies make me no no Michael Bay movies make me enormously anxious for all the property damage.

WIND: Yeah, well.

ALEX: I can’t, I can’t. I can’t do it. I can’t handle it.

WIND: They’re no Rocky Horror.

ALEX: Yeah exactly, but in any case I just what I was thinking when I was watching. I’m like I wonder if the Time Warp is what they’re saying is how they go from planet to planet. I don’t know because you know it’s like warp. Although to be fair, you know there was only, I mean the original series of Star Trek came out about 8 years prior to that, so you know it could be a reference of that, we’ll see.

WIND: I don’t know.

ALEX: I don’t know either, but that that is also my favorite sequence.

WIND: That’s a good one.

ALEX: I also like, well, I also like Janet. The the beginning song between Brad and Janet, where everybody is just saying Janet over and over again. And it’s—a great throwaway line in the movie where, you know, Brad is always introducing himself because he’s such a stand up guy. And he and he always introduces Janet too. And he’s like this is my fiance, Janet Weiss. And at one-at one time he says Janet Vice. The German way. And she’s like Weiss. And I was like that is wonderful and nothing else is done with that ever again. But it’s just like do they even know each other or they just-or do they just want to get married so they can have sex?

WIND: Well, isn’t that like a Freudian slip because he’s referring to the vice of sexual attraction?

ALEX: It could be. I have to watch the context of the scene again, but it just caught my attention and I was like, huh? Ha, because it also turns out that doctor—Dr. Everett turns out to be German. And they didn’t know that, and so it’s like this whole thing is weird.

WIND: It’s a weird movie.

ALEX: Yeah it is a strange movie. I think what you should play next for Sensation and Perception is Yellow Submarine, the animated Beatles movie.

WIND: The way that the class works is I gave them a list of 30 topics and they vote basically on which topics we’re going to cover, and I don’t tell them what the accompanying movie is, so I had a bunch of topics that no one picked this semester, so we’re not going to watch the movie that I would have shown. The class is in charge of the topic.

ALEX: Gotcha, I just going from I just because I’ve had similar issues with Memento and then people being super confused by the quote unquote end of the movie.

WIND: They did not enjoy Memento either. Which is my favorite movie of all time.

ALEX: Yes, it’s up there for me as well. Top five I would say for me just because of of how well put together it is. But what I’m saying is in relation to what you’re saying about what you were saying about Memento and them then not liking the end of Rocky Horror is that I showed Yellow Submarine one time and my students are like, were you expecting us to be high watching because I am completely lost? Yeah, because that’s the kind of movie that is. With all of its bright colors and all sorts of things. So yeah, I mean. I it would be a great trifecta. Tell your students this is what filmmaking is about.

WIND: They would I think they would just drop the class. I mean I I freaked him out so hard and then I told them like, OK the next movie, I think the next movie after that I was like this is a normal movie like it’s got a plot. People saw it in the theater….

ALEX: Welcome to the “Your Thoughts” segment of this episode. So I asked my colleagues, our colleagues, Wind-Wind and myself, our colleagues in the Society for the Teaching of Psychology Facebook Group, if they were to use Rocky Horror Picture Show in their classes, what would they want to talk about? So, Scott Morgan added how would you define normal versus abnormal, adaptive versus maladaptive behaviors, conformity versus nonconformity. And of course what we’ve been talking about this episode, sex, sexuality, sex, gender, etc. Madeline Brodt imagined talking about this movie in a multicultural class, including as a subculture how queer folks have created a community around the film, as we have mentioned a few times in this episode. Shana Punim wrote about-wrote about how she would talk about the history of transgender identity, the evolution of terms, as we have mentioned here, and juxtapose this film with the documentary Disclosure, which is on currently on Netflix, about how tropes of trans characters are either victims of violence or the violent villains-villains themselves, which we have, we have mentioned here. You could do as she says: You could do all of this with just Disclosure. And you wouldn’t need to show Rocky Horror, but you could do both of them. I think both of them might be good. Crystal Young mentioned queer culture as well. Alexander—great name—Beaujean shared a-a-a an article written specifically about the sociology of cult films and Rocky Horror, so I will link that in the episodes show notes. And then I think, a very very great response by Miko Hishiki, talking about anticipatory responses in EEG, because of Frank-N-Furter’s mention of anticipation. That-that sort of thing. And then Jess Hartnett in one of the final comments brought a different perspective to it. The idea of midnight showings, the idea of interactive lines and dressing in costumes, and and connecting with larger groups. And why are, why do we do that kind of thing, which I think is an amazing sort of out-of-the-film context discussion that you could have with this film, and as we’ve mentioned. So thank you to all of all of you who mentioned various ways in which you could use Rocky Horror as a teaching tool. And the kinds of topics that you’d like-you’d like to talk about with respect to this film. So let’s jump back in to the discussion with Wind Goodfriend.

ALEX: Well, I want to thank Dr. Wind Goodfriend for joining me to have a lively discussion on the Rocky Horror Picture Show. We’re going to do the time warp again and so, Wind up before we say our final goodbyes, what is it that you would like to plug for our listeners?

WIND: Something relatively new since the last time I was able to be with you is that I’ve written an Audible original audiobook available only through Audible. It’s called the “Science of Love” and it goes through 10 lessons or lectures or chapters on theories and interesting research on the psychology of sex and love.

ALEX: Nice, I am going to get my hands on to that one considering our discussion today. So the “Science of Love” available on Audible. I will link that in the description for this episode. Wherever you get podcasts… I will go find it. You’ll have to, you know, free trial or or have an Audible subscription to do that. But you I will link that and so and I think I think that everyone should check that out. I’m definitely getting my hands on that too. And so thank you again, Wind, for joining me. It’s always a pleasure talking movies with you.

WIND: I love being here. I hope you have me back.

ALEX: Definitely… and for everyone else, until the next episode. Thank you for listening.