Rockiest Horrors

[still from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, 1975]

America’s heavyweight boxers are forgettable journeymen, its basketball team fails to medal at the World Cup, its president can’t go a day without humiliating himself and his nation, MLB’s best player is a Japanese and, this has to be the worst blow, American drag queens suck the biggest one ever! I mean, how far have we fallen from the glorious days of Divine and Dr. Frank N. Furter?

The more they’re embraced and promoted, the more vanilla they become. Those who are outraged by drag queens corrupting toddlers forget that these cross-dressing freaks are also seriously, if not fatally, compromised by contact with so much sweetness and innocence. None, for example, dares to eat dogshit like the fabulous Divine.

To rectify this, Biden must decree all drag shows include lots of shit eating, with choice of shit up to the performer. America is still free.

A huge embodiment of family values, Divine took care of her good-for-nothing son and infantile, crib-dwelling mother. Together, they lived harmoniously inside her trailer. Regarding religion, Divine was more than devout. As God, she worshiped herself.

Divine’s sense of justice was unimpeachable. Unlike today’s Soros funded attorney generals, Divine didn’t fuck around. After arranging a film crew to document two executions, Divine pronounced, “Connie Marble, you stand convicted of asshole-ism.” She then finished the tree-bound woman with one sure shot.

Only Divine could be raped with a giant lobster, have the rosary jammed into her asshole or still be vain and photogenic just seconds after being splashed with acid. Recalling such transcending moments, I shudder with emotions. America was once great.

A lifelong glutton, Divine died of a heart attack at age 42. If alive, she would be 77, still younger than the sprightly, forever-dancing-up-the-stairs Joe Biden. I wish some scientist could bring her back to life, so she can be America’s next president.

Divine’s political thinking was stiletto sharp, “Kill everyone now. Condone first degree murder. Advocate cannibalism. Eat shit. Filth are my politics. Filth is my life.”

With Jewjabs, methodical economic destruction, an impending world war, mass chaos unleashed and the sacrifice of future generations, America’s filthy leaders are already implementing all of Divine’s agenda, but not quite so boldly as only she could. Beyond hopeless, America needs Divine’s intervention.

Debuting at the same time, Dr. Frank N. Furter was even more godlike, for this trannie could create a human from scratch, a skimpy briefs wearing hunk he/she christened Rocky Horror. Immediately, they get married, thus blazing progressive trail.

Years before Madonna could have pseudo sex in a church, they went at it. Instead of Jesus on a cross, Frank N. Furter had Atlas behind the altar. His was a flesh worshiping religion.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show was a parable, if not roadmap, of America’s progressive transformation. Like Idiocracy, it announced her future.

The musical begins with a cisgender wedding. The old couple from Grant Wood’s “American Gothic” guard the church door. After his girlfriend, Janet, has caught the bride’s bouquet, Brad Majors proposes to her. To accentuate their whitebreadness, Janet’s last name is Weiss, German for “white.” Ominously, a coffin is wheeled into the church.

That very night, their car breaks down in the rain on a desolate road, so they have to walk miles to the nearest house, to borrow a phone. This turns out to be the Victorian Gothic Oakley Court in Berkshire. One admitted inside, they’re trapped among a vast cast of out-of-this-world weirdos. Lord of the house is a charismatic, petulant, imperious and homicidal transvestite from Transsexual, Transylvania, Dr. Frank N. Furter. Tim Curry is beyond superb in this role. Before entering, Janet sings, There’s a light, a light / In the darkness of everybody’s / life.” You bet!

Greeting them, Frank N. Furter snarls and growls, “By the light of the night / It’ll all seem all right / I’ll get you a satanic mechanic!” He himself is the satanic mechanic, of course, along with Klaus Schwab, Bill Gates, Albert Bourla and Larry Fink, etc. This world has been hijacked by satanic mechanics.

Prevented from leaving, Brad and Janet are placed in separate bedrooms, where they’re raped, mostly through deception, by Frank N. Furter. Halfway through, each enjoys his novel adventure, so all is well. Deflowered by an alien, Janet would seduce the superhuman Rocky, for new frontiers must be reached. Though not quite a cyborg, Rocky teases us with transhumanist possibilities.

“Touch-a, touch-a, touch-a, touch me! I wanna be dirty!” Having crossed that line, Janet decides to go for it all. How many lines have you crossed?

Mesmerized by Tim Curry, Princess Diana arranged to meet him. With “a wicked smile,” it is said, she told Curry The Rocky Horror Picture Show “completed [her] education.”

Introducing Janet to Frank N. Furter, Brad calls her “Vice,” which is the correct German pronunciation, yet she interjects, “Weiss!” Facing the embodiment of so many vices, Janet instinctively flinches at her white identity as “Vice.”

About to unveil Rocky, an unmasked Frank N. Furter is flanked by two masked women. Like most of mankind 45 years later, they cover their faces for no reason.

Tellingly, Rocky is described as a biochemical breakthrough, with his birth heralding man’s possession of the secret to life.

There’s also “a laser capable of emitting a beam of pure anti-matter.” Though wielded by aliens, it’s deployed on earth, by those who look and sound just like us.

Appearing as a raucous rebel biker, the appropriately named Meatloaf is murdered with a pickaxe, then fed to unsuspecting guests. His butchered corpse lies under glass beneath the table cloth. This scene foreshadows the exploits of Marina Abramovic, our elite’s favorite artist.

In the mansion’s main room are two replicas each of DaVinci’s “Mona Lisa” and Michelangelo’s “David.” Repetition is mockery, parody or spoof. Pascal, “Two faces that are alike, although neither of them excites laughter by itself, make us laugh when together, on account of their likeness.” With everything deprived of its uniqueness, we inhabit a joke universe.

Unable to protect his fiance, Brad would say in his most manly voice, “It’s all right, Janet.”

Like so many after them, they exist in a world without privacy or free will, but unlike most of us, they will escape humiliation and terror. With their psyche and soul toxic, they’ll return to Denton, “The Home of Happiness!”

Near the end, Frank N. Furter is seen floating on a lifebuoy stenciled “S.S. TITANIC.” Hypnotically, he/she repeatedly drones, “Don’t dream it. Be it.”

At the pool’s bottom and barely visible is Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam.” In Revelation 12:7-12, Michael the Archangel fights then tosses Satan from heaven. Now, God, Michael and Michelangelo are beneath a leering, crossdressing devil in a peekaboo corset, panties and garter belts.

Though a nightmare movie, it’s staged as a grand party, with cheerful singing, artful dancing and everyone in a sexy or bright, childish outfit, when they’re dressed, that is. Mourning the ghastly death then rather tasty cannibalism of Meatloaf, whom she “nearly loved,” Columbia wears a Mickey Mouse hat.

Pressed against a huge portrait of Meatloaf, Columbia cries, “I said, ‘Hey, listen to me. / Stay sane inside insanity.’” We must all heed that!

John Waters’ “trash trilogy” and The Rocky Horror Picture Show appeared just after America had endured political assassinations, racial riots, crotch inflaming decadence and military defeat, with only jivey moon landings to lift its drug besotted spirit. For a while, it seemed nadir had been reached. Oh, such innocence!

Already there, we need not dream. We’re already it! The most dimwitted, though, will go on denying our rockiest horrors are playing nonstop on nearly all our screens.

[Vientiane, Laos on 8/1/23]

[Bangkok, 1/27/23]

[Luang Prabang, Laos on 9/24/23, as photographed by a friend]

[Vientiane, 7/23/23]