Magnum opus

  A while ago, I was at a friend’s birthday party. I talked to her friends there about some films, and somehow The Rocky Horror Picture Show came up. Some girl said that film was awful, and I said it was far from it. I argued that it was very profound, and she said that she’d seen it a million times and that it was just some idiotic b-movie.

  So, to fix this impression, here’s a brief analysis of the original play (it’s easier to analyse, and the film doesn't differ much; WARNING, SPOILERS!):

  First of all, you can see that the typological numbers 3 and 7 appear many times throughout the play (like they do in the Old Testament):

• Brad mentioned three ways that ‘love can grow’ (‘Good, bad, or mediocre’);
• Frank has three servants and sings three songs on his own (Sweet Transvestie, I Can Make You a Man, I'm Going Home);
• There were three singers in There’s a Light (in the original play Brad had a verse of his own, which was removed due to length);
• Rocky was created in seven days;
• Rocky was seven hours old when he sang in Rose Tint My World (‘I am just seven hours old, / Truly beautiful―to behold; […]')
• &c.

  Also, in the film, Janet notes that they pass three motorcycles on the way to Dr. Scott’s (‘Gosh, that's the third motorcycle we're passing!’).

  The film basically shows three manners of escapism, a means of escaping life's lack of meaning (once again using the typoligical number): sexual promiscuity and destruction of inhibitions (represented by Frank, and, to a lesser degree, by Eddy), use of narcotics (heavily implied by Columbia), and strict adherence to tradition à-la 1950s (represented by, once again, the trio of Brad, Janet, and Dr. Scott).

  Each one is shown as a miserable failure:

• Frank admits in I’m Going Home that his depression and ennui lasted for the whole time he was on Earth: ‘Every day, it’s been the same / (Feeling) / Like I’m outside, in the rain [...]’ On the other hand, he still continued to think he was superior to all around him  and he may do as he please―switching lovers at will, torturing his servant Riff Raff, and eventually (at the purest demonstration of this vice) stating he finds Riff Raff inferior to him (in the original play, instead of cowardly climbing the curtains, his last words were ‘Do your worst, inferior one’). He displays many other vices, such as cruelty (towards Riff Raff and Eddy), hypocrisy (makes   Brad and Janet cheat on one another, but is outraged at Rocky when he sleeps with Janet and even threatens to murder her), &c. Also, although the sexual liberation ‘freed' Janet, it also brought her great confusion and left her ‘lost’.
• Columbia admits she’s completely dependent on the drug to give her any hope, after Frank deserted her:

‘It was great when it all began:

I was a regular Frankie fan.

But it was over when he had the plan―

He started working on a muscle man.

Now the only thing that gives me hope

Is my love of a certain dope:

Rose tints my world, keeps me safe

From my trouble and pain.’

• The downsides of the trio's traditional approach is shown from the beginning of the play, when Janet's first reaction to Brad's parodically kitschy proposal was not ‘Yes!’ or ‘I'm so happy!’, but ‘Oh, it’s nicer than Betty Munroe had!’ referring to her friend as Betty Munroe and not Betty Hapshatt, hinting that the wedding was just a part of a rat race and doesn't really display any deep union), and thinks first and foremost of what her parents will say about him and not about her own views of the wedding. Also, when the three encounter Frank's liberal and promiscuous lifestyle, their world is collapses (as one can see in the end of the play). Furthermore, the trio's individual reactions display the major   downsides of their approach: Dr. Scott shows his hidden racism (note the double entendre of the way he described his nephew's company: ‘I knew he was in a bad crowd, but it was worse than I'd imagined: Aliens'); Brad, who's treated Janet as a cowardly fool (though only subtley), is terrified with his newly discovered sexuality, and most likely his loss of position as the one ‘wearing the pants’ (shown in his monologue in Rose Tint My World: ‘It's beyond me: / Help me mummy! / I'll be good, you'll  see, / Take this pain away! / What’s this? Let’s see: / I'm feeling sexy... /  Oh! What’s come over me? / Whoa! Here it comes again―’); and Janet feels that Frank's libertine way of life ‘released' her, improved her life, gave her   confidence, shown her ‘reality’, and expanded her mind, and she describes his lust as ‘sincere’ (‘Oh, I feel released, / Bad times deceased: / My confidence has increased, / Reality is here. / The game has been disbanded, / My mind has been expanded: / It’s a gas that Frankie’s landed: / His lust is so sincere’). All in all, their world is very narrow and cannot handle exposion to what’s outside of it.
• Eddy, who combined drug abuse with a libertine behaviour (as well as a hinted frequent violent crime in Eddy―‘But when he threatened your life with a switch-blade knife…’), suffered a terrible fate: his brain was split in half, and he was eventually brutally killed by Frank.

  The play also shares common features with the Greek tragedy:

• One of the most important themes in the play is Frank’s hybris. It is displayed in several ways, among them his tyrannous control of his servants, his switching of lovers emotionlessly, and, most importantly, his creation of Rocky (once again, three ways). The creation of Rocky mirrors the Biblical Creation of Adam, which is the highest form of hybris―attempting to be God Himself―and, like his predecessor Lucifer, winds up dead/in Hell. Furthermore, the irony in Frank’s aspirations is more emphasised in the film: he aspires to become God, but he decends to the level of an animal when he eats Eddy.
• Eddy's ‘sins’ are not something that comes out of nowhere. Columbia says that he's been maltreated by society (in Eddy, she sings, ‘Everybody shoved him, / I very nearly loved him, / I said, “Hey, listen to me, / Stay sane inside insanity!” / But he locked the door and threw away the key’). This, in a sense, resembles the continuing suffering-sin-suffering cycle in the history of the house of Labdakos. Furthermore, Rocky, having half of Rocky's brain, is very impudent towards Frank, which is a form of hybris resembling that of Antigone’s.
• The narrator serves as some sort of a chorus elder throughout the play, the entire cast serving as the chorus itself.

  It should also be noted that both Eddy and Rocky were capable of speaking, moving, &c. in the original play, and both decided to be rebellious towards Frank. It also implies that Eddy might have originally been very intelligent, and it is rather ironic that he still chose the life of a ‘No-good cheap little punk’, as his uncle Dr. Scott described him.

   At the end of the play, all three forms of escapism, as well as Frank's and Eddy’s hybris, all lead to a tragic end, though unlike in the Greek tragedy, whether or not Brad, Janet, and Dr. Scott realised their errors is debatable, Frank has not shown regret till the last minute, and the narrator, instead of finishing the play with a lesson, simply speaks of man's futility. The reprise of Science Fiction Double Feature, which began the play with implications that the play would be very action-packed an exciting (‘See androids fighting Brad and Janet’ &c.), ends the play with a very melancholic tone.

  To sum it up, Richard O'Brien captured with the skill of a true master the whole confusion of the sexual liberation of his decade and the previous two decades (the play was written in the early ‘70s). He demonstrated very subtley the conservative hypocrisy (which we still see today, in the behaviour of quite a few American Republican politicians), as well as the drug culture and destruction of morals, which often accompany extreme sexual promiscuity (as can be seen in many sleazy contemporary clubs). He also dealt with the themes of escapism and life's meaning very intelligently, as well as freedom versus law and conformity (as is hinted at the title, which can be interpreted as a hint towards the Nadsat word ‘horrorshow’, meaning ‘good’, from A Clockwork Orange, which was written in 1962). Not only this, but this very deep inspection of his was done very subtley and made into a play even the common folk can watch and enjoy: the plot, the music, the wit, &c., resembling the works of Shakespeare (that entertained the common folk with stories of love and treachery, or with wit and action, while provoking the high-brows’ thought).

  In my humble opinion, O’Brien was in the Second State (read two posts back) when he wrote the play. He said he was an uneployed actor during winter when he wrote the play, and that he saw himself as Eddy (who was described as starkingly ugly in the play), but the director of the film thought he would be more suiting as Riff Raff. The play seems to show O'Brien's feelings of futility, coming to no decisive conclusion about mankind's true meaning. And he did it as only a true genius can.

  (END OF SPOILERS)

  About two months ago, a new series went up on HOT V.O.D Young (a V.O.D channel aimed for children and teenagers) named Split, which tells the story of a young girl named Ella Rozen who seems to be designated as the next Prophet of the vampires and prevent a war between humans and vampires. It has many sub-plots: she develops an affair with Leopold ‘Leo’ Sachs, the vampire who’s supposed to introduce her to the vampire world; her brother Gai develops a relationship with the school’s principal's daughter; and Phathon, the brother of the reigning Prophet Ardac, attempts to rush the coronation of the next Prophet and become the next prophet himself. There are many other sub-plots developing throughout the series, but they would spoil the series, which (so I’ve heard) is to be aired on British television.

  The series has so far got the attention of mostly underaged girls, who were mostly attracted to Leo’s character (played by the oh so gorgeous Yon Tomarkin, son of the fucktard-racist-though-allegedly-skilful-sculptist Yig’al Tomarkin), and has received a terrible reputation as plagiarism of Twilight. This is really absurd; this series is very deep and intelligent, very respectful towards its viewers intelligence (with complicated plots and witty, intelligent humour, as well as surprisingly good taste in music), and very well written and directed (except for the occasional dei ex machina, which can be overlooked, because the new details are not used just for one plot twist). It deals with themes such as disinhibition (so to speak, represented by the vampires) and order (represented by the humans), racism, violence, and political conflicts. A certain vampire says that becoming a vampire ‘makes you a lot more “you” ’, and later nearly dies of dehydration, refusing to bite because he's ‘not a beast'. It was also hinted that the series deals with the Jewish pretentiousness: another vampires says to a former vampire hunter who lost his memory that he hunted vampires because he envied the vampires skill, intelligence, and strength, which surpasses humans’ greatly. The vampires are said to live among humans, looking just like them, but they're still different: garlic can kill them, they can’t go near rice without compulsively counting all grains, &c. I interpreted this as a hint to the Jewish community abroad, and perhaps a hint to the Jews who oppress the Arabs similarly to the way they were oppressed. Or maybe this is a hint at the Gog and Magog War?

  Anyway, this series is very highly recommended. I was surprised myself at how good it was.

  To sum it up, there’s more to this stuff than meets the eye, and I have to stop talking like an aspie.

  Unum diem...

  (P.S.: I'm going to be in Japan, and shan't be back till August. Just to let you know.)