An essay about the queer chaos and magic of the Rocky Horror Picture Show

“On the opening chord on the opening night of the original stage version at the Royal Court,” The Rocky Horror Picture Show director Jim Sharman once said to The New York Times, “an electrical storm broke out over London, and that lightning has been chasing it ever since.”

Over half a century later—including countless performances, screenings, books, theses, and adaptations—obsessives the world over are still grappling with the legacy of that once-in-a-lifetime, lightning-in-a-bottle magic captured by O’Brien, Sharman, and company those fifty fateful years ago. That debut 1973 stage performance may have been its first unleashing into the world, the catalyst that set an unprecedentedly momentous and unpredictable thunderstorm into motion. But even before then, we could say the clouds were already churning, that the downpours were already starting: In 1967, sex between men in England and Wales had finally been decriminalized, followed by the Stonewall Riots in 1969 and the UK’s first Pride march in 1972. But homosexuality was still listed as a psychiatric disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and explicit queer representation in mass media was still a distant dream. And then along came The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Lightning struck, not just once, but over and over and over again, electrifying millions of hearts one by one, a high-voltage thunderbolt of recognition and obsession.

I’m so excited about having my essay There’s a Light featured in Absolute Pleasure, an essay collection celebrating fifty years of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I first watched RHPS at a way-too-young age, and it was… formative. In my essay for the anthology, I remember the before-and-after threshold of that first viewing, which I recognise now as my first encounter with an explicitly, defiantly, unashamedly queer on-screen character, the one and only Frank-N-Furter…

The essay acknowledges being sexually confused by Frank-N-Furter as a queer rite of passage; explores the film’s world-altering influence as a piece of queer culture and centrepiece of a global subculture, phenomenon and community; gets into some of the mythology about its DIY production values (filmed in six weeks in a freezing near-derelict mansion); goes on a side tangent about the inclusion of biker culture and what that meant to me as someone raised by bikers; and the role of trust and audacity in making brazenly weird, balls-out art that can somehow be a transmission and beacon to wild and untamed things the world over. I’m really proud of it – and it feels especially poignant that such a personal piece is likely the last of my writing to be published under this name. To be published by the Feminist Press is also a literal dream come true.

Absolute Pleasure: Queer Perspectives on Rocky Horror is out now in the US, out in the UK later this month and available for pre-order now.