Sonora: Beefcake and Rocky Horror in the Sierra Mountains

I'm not sure why you would want to go  away from San Francisco, except maybe to see this guy, but if you do, you could do worse than Sonora, California, an old mining town about 140 miles east, in the Sierra Mountains.

But it's not all about wilderness treks; there's a historic downtown with three used bookstores, five antique shops, and Thai,Japanese, and a lot of Mexican restaurants.  Plus the Sierra Repertory Theater is producing A Chorus Line, Route 66, The Wizard of Oz, Cabaret, and Grease.  

An Art Show on the second Saturday of every month.


Sorry, for gay bars, you have to drive into Modesto.But there's a welcoming church and a Gay-Straight Alliance at the high school.

The high school offers tan wrestling singlets. 

Swimming.

Gymnastics.

A teenage powerlifter who keeps getting in the newspaper for breaking strength records.

More wrestling.


















And the Rocky Horror Picture Show every Halloween.

Are you spaced out on sensation, like you're under sedation, yet?

Rocky Horror Show Live: New Brads, Janets, and Rockies in Gold Lame Shorts

What can you do with a movie that encouraged a generation of LGBT people, "Don't dream it -- be it"?

That encouraged the audience to participate by talking back, throwing things, and playing along with the characters?

That audiences played along to, week after week, year after year, until they had every image, every word, every gesture memorized?

That spawned a dozen catchphrases and a warehouse full of tie-in books, magazines, cards, and toys?

What's left to do with the Rocky Horror Picture Show?

Revive the original play, which ran in London from 1973 to 1980.

It's considerably different from the movie -- new songs, different dialogue, Magenta and Columbia have different characters, and most interestingly, Rocky talks.  A whole new take on the Rocky Horror universe (you can read the script here).

Revivals began in  1990 in Britain.  In the U.S., a Broadway revival played from 2000 to 2002, with every beefcake hunk imaginable cast as the underwear-clad Brad, the gold-lame muscleman Rocky, and sweet transvestite Frank-n-Furter: James Royce Edwards,  Luke Perry, Micah Thompson, Jonathan Sharp,

There are new costumes, new cast dynamics, new subtexts -- being gay or transvestite is not nearly as shocking today-- and a raucous evocation of the long ago disco- and sex-obsessed era of the 1970s.

It's now playing everywhere, in high schools, colleges, community theaters, little theaters.  Halloween season is most popular, but it can be seen at any time.  According to the official show blog, here's where it's coming up in 2014:

The Grandview Playhouse, MA, April-May
The Bangor Opera House, ME, June
The Ivory Theater, MO, October
Downtown Theatre, CA, October
World Trade Center Theatre, OR, October
Oh Canada Eh?, Niagara Falls, October

So even if you've had some terrible thrills many, many times before, it's always exciting to go down to the lab and see what's on the slab. Let's do the Time Warp again.

Beefcake in the Home of Happiness

In The Rocky Horror Picture Show and its sequel-of-sorts, Shock Treatment, Brad and Janet are from Denton, a "typical American city."  But which Denton?

Fans claim Denton, Ohio, because Janet is shown with a copy of The Cleveland Plain Dealer, but there is no Denton in Ohio (the exterior shots were all filmed in England).

Richard O'Brien probably had no particular city in mind when he wrote the RHPS script, but he scouted out location for Shock Treatment in Denton, Texas before the 1979-80 Screen Actors Guild strike forced him to move the entire film onto a sound stage.

Denton, Texas residents are proud of their association with RHPS (and other films with a Denton connection, such as What's Eating Gilbert Grape and Benji).  It's been playing almost continuously since 1975, and scholars at the University of North Texas write papers on it.

There's not much else to do in Denton, population 113,000, snuggled in the no man's land between Dallas and Fort Worth, so everybody goes there for gay life,leaving one gay bar, a monthy gay night at the Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studio, and a Denton Pride planning organization.  There are two colleges with drama and musical performances, and high schools with sports teams.

Lots of high schools.  Denton is surrounded by tiny, ritzy suburbs, like Double Oak ("The Best Little City in Texas!")

Flower Mound.  Imagine spending your entire adult life telling people "I'm from Flower Mound, Texas."

Lantana, "an upscale census-designated place and master-planned community originally developed by Republic Property Group."

Quite a town slogan.

Lewisville, which has one of the largest communities of immigrants from Myanmar in the U.S., although this wrestler isn't.

And Rhome.

See also: Why Do Gay Men Like the Rocky Horror Picture Show.; Shock Treatment

Fox's Heterosexual Rocky Horror Picture Show

I'm not a purist who believes that The Rocky Horror Picture Show  is sacred writ.  I'm all for sanding down the plot inconsistencies, booting the jokes that mock women and the disabled, adding some racial diversity, and modernizing the dialogue ("You look like you're both pretty groovy.")

But I would have preferred the new version which aired on Fox last week to keep it gay.

The problem is, same-sex activity is not nearly as shocking  today as it was in 1975.  Richard O'Brien intended for Frank's same sex desire to be disquieting, and his "wedding" to be downright diabolical, far more sinister than Eddie's murder.

Today married men are commonly shown on tv commercials, eating soup.

How to restore that frisson of dread?

How about making Frank transgender?  Transpeople receive far more hostility and fear than gay men and lesbians.

How about Laverne Cox, arguably the most famous transgender person in the world, as Frank?

So far, so good.  Except:

1. Only a few lines are changed, mostly to eliminate profanity.  Frank is still a "sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania."

A transvestite is a man or woman in drag.  Not a transperson.

Columbia's story of first meeting Frank still has the line "He had a pick up truck and the devil's eye."

For awhile, I thought Cox was playing Frank as a male drag queen, but no, in all the interviews, she says "transgender."

2. This changes the dynamic of the movie immeasurably.  Making it more sexist.

The scenes where Frank seduces Brad and Janet no longer involve sex.  They involve Benny Hill antics of sexual harassment: leering, chasing, butt-slapping.

For that matter, all of the sexual activity is sexless.  When Janet sings "Touch me!", Rocky obliges by touching her...shoulder!

The attempted sexual assault ("You'd Better Wise Up, Janet Weiss") is much more violent, with Frank and Janet getting into a "girl fight" melee.

I guess we shouldn't expect oral sex jokes and breast-fondling with High School Musical director Kenny Ortega at the helm and two former Disney teencom stars as Brad and Janet.

Or anything gay.

3. It's way heterosexist.

The original had three gay male relationships -- Frank with Eddie, Brad, and Rocky -- and six heterosexual (count them!).  No lesbian, unless you count Columbia and Magenta grabbing at each other.

The new version has two lesbian relationships -- Frank with Columbia and Janet -- and seven heterosexual  (count them!).  No gay male.

And lesbian relationships are much more acceptable to the heterosexual "male gaze," so they're worth only about half as much in queering the text.

Meanwhile, the Transylvanians dance "The Time Warp" in strictly boy-girl configurations.

In the original, Rocky shows no interest in Frank during "I Can Make You a Man."  In the new version, Staz Nair plays him as obviously into the buxom leading lady.

In the pool scene ("Don't dream it, be it!"), Brad and Rocky look like they are about to kiss, but Janet intervenes.  Boys don't kiss!

This is a heterosexual Rocky Horror.

I don't care if there are  a few rainbow flags scattered about.

Why Do Gay Men Like "The Rocky Horror Picture Show"?

"Like" is too weak a term.  To gay men of a certain age, it is the movie.  It is more than a movie, it is salvation.

They don't attend the audience-participation midnight showings, with young oddballs throwing toast and rice, yelling nasty, often homophobic lines at the screen, and cheering when the "Frank the Fag" is killed.  They watch on VHS, alone, a private communion.

 Gay empowerment was not at all what Richard O'Brien intended when he wrote the script of a science fiction-horror musical comedy pastiche.  And it requires you to overlook or excuse quite a lot:

Frank N Furter is a villain!  He keeps Brad and Janet prisoner, turns them to stone with his Medusa ray, brutally beats his servants, kills Eddie and then serves him to his guests for dinner!  That's not just villainous, it's psycho-killer!

And what do you make of the song "Superhero", which Brad and Janet sing in the wreckage of Frank's lab at the end of the movie:

Superheroes come to feast, to taste the flesh not yet deceased
And all I know, is still the beast is feeding.

Not exactly uplifting, is it?


There's no one gay in the film.  The male characters are all bisexual, capable of sexual relations with men and women both, and the female characters are all heterosexual.

The main sexual awakening isn't same-sex, it's Rocky and Janet.

The "don't dream it, be it" scene in the pool isn't gay, it's a pansexual orgy, while Frank is floating on a life preserver from the Titanic.

That pink triangle on Frank's lab coat was not intended to be a gay symbol.  It just happened to be on the coat they bought for a prop.

So how did gay men of a certain age get around all that?

1. They didn't notice Frank's villainy.  All gay and bi men in the mass media of the era were villains, usually psycho killers.  It was business as usual.  They  simply didn't notice.

Instead, they remembered the scenes where Frank becomes a sympathetic character, longing for home:

I see blue skies through the tears in my eyes,
When I realize, I'm going home.

Telling about his first drag dreams:

Whatever happened to Fay Wray, that exquisite, satin-draped frame?
As it clung to her thigh, how I started to cry, 'cause I wanted to be dressed just the same.

2. There was same-sex desire!  Even the gay men in the mass media of the era never expressed same-sex desire.  Gay meant feminine and not interested in women, period.  You never saw a gay man with a boyfriend except Jodie in Soap, who was planning a sex change to become a woman for him.

Then Frank belts out:

A deltoid, and a tricep, a hot groin and a bicep
Makes me shake, makes me want to take Charles Atlas by the....hand.

3. There were penises!

You rarely saw men shirtless in movies of the 1970s, and costumers tried their best to remove all hints of a bulge.  But Rocky and Brad are both half-naked most of the time, in extremely bulgeworthy outfits.  Male beauty was celebrated, not erased.

4. There was transformation.

I feel released
Bad times deceased
My confidence has increased
Reality is here

After years and decades of being told, over and over, that he, like every man who had ever lived and who ever would live, longed for women and shuned the touch of men, that same-sex desire did not and could not exist, he heard Frank sing:

Don't dream it, be it.  Don't dream it, be it.  Don't dream it, be it.

He left the theater with tears streaming down his face, transformed, literally saved.

I was lost, but now I'm found.  Was blind, but now I see

See also: Beefcake in The Home of Happiness

A Gaggle of Rockies from "The Rocky Horror Picture Show"

Arguably one of the main draws of The Rocky Horror Picture Show is Rocky, the gold lame-clad muscle hunk who is created by Dr. Frank-n-Furter and experiences sexual awakening:

I am just seven hours old, truly beautiful to behold,
But somebody should be told, my libido hasn't been controled.
Now the only thing I've come to trust, is an orgasmic rush of lust.

Where else in cinema of the 1970s are you going to see so much bodybuilder physique?  And ever after, in the many Rocky imitators who gather every week for "absolute pleasure."

Here is an assortment of Rockies from various stage productions and homages.

Frank says specifically that Rocky has "blond hair and a tan," so this guy s technically doesn't qualify, but he certainly has the physique for the job.

A spike-haired teenage Rocky in gold-lame pants.

I'm not sure if I buy Rocky with a beard, and black shorts seem rather a sacrilege.  Oh, well, look at those abs!

He's got the dopey King Kong grin right, and even better abs.

A reclining Rocky with clean-cut all-American looks and leopard skin shorts.

Helmet hair, but biceps to die for, and I'm warming up to the idea of leopard skin shorts.

A British butler-looking Rocky.


















I love a Rocky with a blatant bulge.

A gaggle of Rockies.

Shock Treatment: Romance is Not a Children's Game

In the summer of 1981, I went to see Shock Treatment, which was widely advertised as "the sequel to The Rocky Horror Picture Show!"  

Ok, so it starred Brad and Janet from the original movie, played by different actors (Cliff de Young, Jessica Harper).

No other characters from Rocky Horror, no references to Rocky Horror, no sweet transvestites, no gay relationships, no references to gay people except for a racist/homophobic anecdote!

But once you get over your initial disappointment, Shock Treatment presents an interesting conceit: the world is a tv studio, and everyone a player (shades of Shakespeare).  Everyone is under surveillance, everyone is acting in a show within a show within a show.  There are no private moments; everyone is always being observed, commented on, controlled.

And they're trapped.  Like many stories with gay symbolism, there is no way out.  This is the whole universe.

The story is a heterosexist fable: studio owner Farley Flavors is in love with Janet, so he hires Drs. Cosmo and Nations McKinley to institutionalize Brad in their psychiatric-hospital Faith Factory program.  To make Janet forget about Brad, they groom her to star in her own show.

Jessica Harper has a much stronger voice than Susan Sarendon, the original Janet.  Shock Treatment is worth watching just to hear her paeon to egotism, "The Me of Me"

Deep in the heart of me, I love every part of me
All I can see in me is danger and ecstasy
I'm willing to die for me.
One thing there couldn't be is any more me in me

Or to feel the throbbing sexual energy as she walks through red-draped hallways and cruises "young blood."

Janet:  I want some young blood, I want some young blood, and I'm going to get it somehow!
Brad: I'm looking for love....
Janet: I'm looking for trade!

The gay symbolism comes when the various couples prepare to bed down for the night.  Cosmo and Nation begin an SM game, with evocations of the danger of the "jump to the left" that comes with acknowledging one's same-sex desire.

Nation: What a joke.
Cosmo: What a joke!
Nation:  You feel like choking, you play for broke.
Cosmo: Romance is not a children's game.
Nation: But you keep going back just the same.

But even more evocative is "Look What I Did to My Id," in which the cast is in the dressing room, preparing for Janet's big debut, and hoping in vain that it will allow them the freedom to escape:

Cosmo and Nation: With neurosis in profusion, and psychosis in your soul.
Eliminate confusion, and hide inside a brand new role.

Ralph: This could take us to a new town nowhere near here.

I've used that line many times over the years.



The key to escape is not power, not love, but as in Rocky Horror Picture Show, desire, a passion that vitalizes, sets priorities, and makes life clear.

Judge Oliver Wright and Betty Hapschatt, suspecting a nefarious purpose behind the studio, hide in the rafters all night to investigate without being observed.  When they discover that Brad and Farley are twin brothers separated at birth, they break Brad out of the asylum, take him to confront Farley Flavors, and reunite him with Janet.  Then the four find a way out and exit into glorious sunlight while singing about sex:

Some people do it for enjoyment.
Some people do it for employment.
But we're going to do it anyhow, anyhow
No matter how the wind is blowing.
We just gotta keep going.

It's not far from Frank-n-Furter's "Don't Dream It, Be It."

Not a lot of beefcake, although Gary Shail, who played the lead singer of Oscar Drill and the Bits (Janet's opening act), was somewhat attractive.  He also appeared in Quadrophenia (1979). 

See also: The Rocky Horror Picture Show.