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Study Guide
The Rocky Horror Picture Show Sexuality and Sexual Identity
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Sexuality and Sexual Identity
CHORUS: But it's the pelvic thrust that really drives you insane.
This famous line from "The Time Warp" isn't just a fun dance move, it foreshadows later in the movie when everyone goes wild with lust after some late-night hookups in the castle.
FRANK: I could show you my favorite obsession. I've been making a man with blond hair and a tan and he's good for relieving my…tension.
Your typical Dr. Frankenstein type—a type you should watch out for when swiping through Tinder, btw—doesn't usually make monsters for, um, bedroom purposes. But Frank reveals himself as a different kind of mad doctor, who's making a "monster" to pleasure himself with.
BRAD: Brad Majors. This is my fiancée, Janet "Vice."
JANET: Weiss.
Brad's little Freudian slip here either means he is subconsciously aware of Janet's kinkiness, or he is not-so-secretly hoping for her to be less innocent than she appears to be.
FRANK: How forceful you are, Brad. Such a perfect specimen of manhood. So...dominant. You must be awfully proud of him, Janet.
Frank initially comes across as gay, because he's created Rocky for sexual purposes and he flirts with Brad with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. But he'll defy those initial impressions later on when he seduces Janet at night. Frank is best described as bisexual or pansexual.
JANET: Well, I don't like men with too many muscles.
FRANK: I didn't make him for you! He carries the Charles Atlas seal of approval.
Janet says this because she doesn't want Brad to be offended. However, within minutes, she declares, "I'm a muscle fan." So it's difficult to tell if she changed her mind, or she realizes something about herself that she never knew.
FRANK: Yes, yes I know, but it isn't all bad, is it? I think you really found it quite pleasurable.
Frank is Janet's first time in the sack, but he seduces her by pretending to be Brad. She figures out fairly quickly, but then decides she still wants it anyway. Either Janet is desperate for some lovin' or Frank is really good at what he does.
FRANK: Oh come on, Brad, admit it, you liked it, didn't you? There's no crime in giving yourself over to pleasure, Brad. Oh Brad, you've wasted so much time already. Janet needn't know, I won't tell.
BRAD: Well, promise you won't tell...
Brad also enjoys Frank's advances, and he appears to do so with no shame about engaging in same-sex acts. His only shame comes from the fact that he's cheating on Janet, not that he's sleeping with a man. (Go, Brad.)
NARRATOR: Emotion, agitation or disturbance of the mind. Vehement or excited mental state. It is also a powerful and irrational master and from what Magenta and Columbia eagerly viewed on their television monitor there seemed little doubt that Janet was, indeed, its slave.
The "emotion" the narrator is talking about is lust. Janet has discovered her sexuality, and now she's unable to keep it in her pants. For a "good girl" who appears to have walked off a sitcom, this is a shocking development. (Go, Janet.)
JANET: I'll put up no resistance. I want to stay the distance. I've got an itch to scratch. I need assistance. Toucha toucha toucha touch me. I want to be dirty. Thrill me, chill me, fulfill me. Creature of the night.
Janet becomes crazed with lust, in a song that seems to parody Reefer Madness, an early "instructional" film that tries to convince viewers that if you succumb to a vice, it will soon take you over.
FRANK: Give yourself over to absolute pleasure. Swim the warm waters of sins of the flesh. Erotic nightmares, beyond any measure. And sensual daydreams to treasure forever. […] Don't dream it, be it.
Frank convinces the others to join him in a swimming pool orgy of free love and running eyeshadow. He wants people to be free with their sexuality. At the bottom of the pool is an image of Michelangelo's "The Creation of Adam." Adam and Eve may have been created divinely, without sexual intercourse, but no one else is. The image at the bottom of the swimming pool calls out the hypocrisy of demeaning sexuality, when none of us would be here if no one was having sex.