Category: Rocky Horror Show

January 2006

http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0601/nfr.html

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington announced his annual selection of 25 motion pictures to be added to the National Film Registry in December 2005. This group of titles brings the total number of films placed on the registry since its creation by Congress in 1988 to 425.

Under the terms of the National Film Preservation Act, each year the Librarian of Congress names 25 “culturally, historically or aesthetically” significant motion pictures to the registry. The list is designed to reflect the full breadth and diversity of America’s film heritage, thus increasing public awareness of the richness of American cinema and the need for its preservation. In making the announcement, the Librarian said, “By preserving American films, we safeguard a significant element of American creativity and our cultural history for the enjoyment and education of future generations.”

“The Rocky Horror Picture Show” (1975)
The ultimate “midnight movie,” “Rocky Horror” revolutionized prevailing notions of audience participation during film screenings. Words to remember: “It’s astounding, time is fleeting, madness takes its toll.”

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Mr. Askland would like to point out that the US Supreme Court has defined legal censorship for material that is “Obscene” – In order to qualify legally as obscene the material must be devoid of any artistic, aesthetic or scientific value. Since the RHPS has now been added to the National Film Registry, it would not appear to meet the legal definition of obscene.

December 9, 2004

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,11710,1369643,00.html

President Bush wants ‘pro-homosexual’ drama banned. Gary Taylor meets the politician in charge of making it happen

What should we do with US classics like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof or The Color Purple? “Dig a hole,” Gerald Allen recommends, “and dump them in it.” Don’t laugh. Gerald Allen’s book-burying opinions are not a joke.

Earlier this week, Allen got a call from Washington. He will be meeting with President Bush on Monday. I asked him if this was his first invitation to the White House. “Oh no,” he laughs. “It’s my fifth meeting with Mr Bush.”

Bush is interested in Allen’s opinions because Allen is an elected Republican representative in the Alabama state legislature. He is Bush’s base. Last week, Bush’s base introduced a bill that would ban the use of state funds to purchase any books or other materials that “promote homosexuality”. Allen does not want taxpayers’ money to support “positive depictions of homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle”. That’s why Tennessee Williams and Alice Walker have got to go.

I ask Allen what prompted this bill. Was one of his children exposed to something in school that he considered inappropriate? Did he see some flamingly gay book displayed prominently at the public library?

No, nothing like that. “It was election day,” he explains. Last month, “14 states passed referendums defining marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman”. Exit polls asked people what they considered the most important issue, and “moral values in this country” were “the top of the list”.

“Traditional family values are under attack,” Allen informs me. They’ve been under attack “for the last 40 years”. The enemy, this time, is not al-Qaida. The axis of evil is “Hollywood, the music industry”. We have an obligation to “save society from moral destruction”. We have to prevent liberal libarians and trendy teachers from “re-engineering society’s fabric in the minds of our children”. We have to “protect Alabamians”.

I ask him, again, for specific examples. Although heterosexuals are apparently an endangered species in Alabama, and although Allen is a local politician who lives a couple miles from my house, he can’t produce any local examples. “Go on the internet,” he recommends. “Some time when you’ve got a week to spare,” he jokes, “just go on the internet. You’ll see.”

Actually, I go on the internet every day. But I’m obviously searching for different things. For Allen, the web is just the largest repository in history of urban myths. The internet is even better than the Bible when it comes to spreading unverifiable, unrefutable stories. And urban myths are political realities. Remember, it was an urban myth (an invented court case about a sex education teacher gang-raped by her own students who, when she protested, laughed and said: “But we’re just doing what you taught us!”) that all but killed sex education in America.

Since Allen couldn’t give me a single example of the homosexual equivalent of 9/11, I gave him some. This autumn the University of Alabama theatre department put on an energetic revival of A Chorus Line, which includes, besides “tits and ass”, a prominent gay solo number. Would Allen’s bill prevent university students from performing A Chorus Line? It isn’t that he’s against the theatre, Allen explains. “But why can’t you do something else?” (They have done other things, of course. But I didn’t think it would be a good idea to mention their sold-out productions of Angels in America and The Rocky Horror Show.)

Cutting off funds to theatre departments that put on A Chorus Line or Cat on a Hot Tin Roof may look like censorship, and smell like censorship, but “it’s not censorship”, Allen hastens to explain. “For instance, there’s a reason for stop lights. You’re driving a vehicle, you see that stop light, and I hope you stop.” Who can argue with something as reasonable as stop lights? Of course, if you’re gay, this particular traffic light never changes to green.

It would not be the first time Cat on a Hot Tin Roof ran into censorship. As Nicholas de Jongh documents in his amusingly appalling history of government regulation of the British theatre, the British establishment was no more enthusiastic, half a century ago, than Alabama’s Allen. “Once again Mr Williams vomits up the recurring theme of his not too subconscious,” the Lord Chamberlain’s Chief Examiner wrote in 1955. In the end, it was first performed in London at the New Watergate Club, for “members only”, thereby slipping through a loophole in the censorship laws.

But more than one gay playwright is at a stake here. Allen claims he is acting to “encourage and protect our culture”. Does “our culture” include Shakespeare? I ask Allen if he would insist that copies of Shakespeare’s sonnets be removed from all public libraries. I point out to him that Romeo and Juliet was originally performed by an all-male cast, and that in Shakespeare’s lifetime actors and audiences at the public theatres were all accused of being “sodomites”. When Romeo wished he “was a glove upon that hand”, the cheek that he fantasised about kissing was a male cheek. Next March the Alabama Shakespeare festival will be performing a new production of As You Like It, and its famous scene of a man wooing another man. The Alabama Shakespeare Festival is also the State Theatre of Alabama. Would Allen’s bill cut off state funding for Shakespeare?

“Well,” he begins, after a pause, “the current draft of the bill does not address how that is going to be handled. I expect details like that to be worked out at the committee stage. Literature like Shakespeare and Hammet [sic] could be left alone.” Could be. Not “would be”. In any case, he says, “you could tone it down”. That way, if you’re not paying real close attention, even a college graduate like Allen himself “could easily miss” what was going on, the “subtle” innuendoes and all.

So he regards his gay book ban as a work in progress. His legislation is “a single spoke in the wheel, it doesn’t resolve all the issues”. This is just the beginning. “To turn a big ship around it takes a lot of time.”

But make no mistake, the ship is turning. You can see that on the face of Cornelius Carter, a professor of dance at Alabama and a prize-winning choreographer who, not long ago, was named university teacher of the year for the entire US. Carter is black. He is also gay, and tired of fighting these battles. “I don’t know,” he says, “if I belong here any more.”

Forty years ago, the American defenders of “our culture” and “traditional values” were opposing racial integration. Now, no politician would dare attack Cornelius Carter for being black. But it’s perfectly acceptable to discriminate against people for what they do in bed.

“Dig a hole,” Gerald Allen recommends, “and dump them in it.”

Of course, Allen was talking about books. He was just talking about books. He never said anything about pink triangles.

November 1, 2003
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3190176.stm

The Rocky Horror Show film, banned in Singapore for nearly 30 years, is finally making its debut in the country, according to reports. The 1975 film of the musical, starring Susan Sarandon, was banned by Singaporean authorities because of it sexual and masochistic content. The movie will be shown for the first time at an outdoor Halloween party on 1 November, the Straits Times paper said. Only people who are more than 21 years old will be allowed to watch the film.

The film sees a couple stumble into a castle run by a deranged, cross-dressing scientist. It also stars Tim Curry, Meat Loaf and Richard O’Brien, who wrote the musical. Singapore’s government is known for its strict censorship of entertainment, including films, TV programmes and pop music. Cult favourite Singapore recnetly banned episodes of the US comedies Six Feet Under and Ally MacBeal, and the film Zoolander, where one of the characters plots to assassinate the prime minister of Malaysia. The film has proven to be a cult favourite with fans all over the globe, with cinemas encouraging fans to dress up as the characters for interactive screenings.

The Rocky Horror Show musical made its London debut in 1973 at the Royal Court Theatre, and became a massive hit overnight. Jason Donovan donned fishnets and corsets to play Frank ‘n’ Furter in the silver anniversary production of the show. Others who have played the role include Darren Day, Anthony Head and former champion skater Robin Cousins, as well as Robbie Williams’ friend Jonathan Wilkes.