Annual Shakespeare Festival Spreads Culture, Horror

The Bard

If the days of yore entice you, and kings and star-crossed lovers excite you, then take heed: The Pineville Shakespeare Festival is returning for its 87th season with productions of Macbeth and the Goblet of Fire and Twelfth Night II: Thirteenth Night through the end of the summer.

“We’re not simply continuing to do what we’ve done – however successfully – in the past, but that we’re embracing the future,” said the festival’s Founding Artistic Director, Brian O’Terrence. “It’s time for us to have what we’ve never had before: An inspiring home of our own.”

The home O’Terrence speaks of will be a massive pink tent located near the center of an ancient Native American burial ground in upstate New York. The tent will be made entirely of titanium and will feature rotating flame throwers at the top and rear of the structure, several sit-in machine gun cockpits, and a variety of exotic, dangerous animals from all over the globe, including crocodiles, sharks and a live T-Rex.

“This is going to be awesome,” said eight-year-old Billy, of Pineville Elementary School. “Especially the dinosaur.”

The T-Rex was unavailable for comment, but was quoted in a recent press release saying the reason he did not seize Billy was because he [the T-Rex] has “a big head, and little arms.”

To purchase tickets, call the festival’s box office at 555-7475. For more information, including exact show dates and times, visit the Pineville Shakespeare Festival’s webpage at http://www.pineville_shakespeare_t_rex_horror.org/.

Lost in Time, Lost in Space, but Rich in Meaning: The Artistic and Cultural Significance of The Rocky Horror Picture Show

At first glance, Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) might seem like a unique-yet-pointless musical with an affinity for the strange and the deviant. What could be at all relevant in a movie about singing transvestites from another planet? But peel away the film’s sexual exterior, and beneath all the make-up and lingerie lies a bevy of social and artistic significance.

“I would like, if I may,” says Rocky Horror’s narrator near he beginning of the film, “to take you on a strange journey.” And what a strange journey it is. After getting engaged, straight-laced lovers Brad Majors and Janet Weiss decide to visit their friend and mentor, Dr. Schott. During the trip, their car breaks down in the middle of a pouring rain. Thankfully, there’s a light over in the castle up ahead; help, it seems, is just up the road. But the young couple gets more than they bargained for when they’re drawn into the world of a mad scientist from outer space about to unveil his newest creation – a Frankenstein-like creature with the recycled brain of a man!

A dark castle on a rainy night, a mad scientist and a body created and brought to life through science – these are hardly new themes for the horror genre. Yet that’s the point. The Rocky Horror Picture Show pays homage to the classic horror films of the past by patterning its story after the horror conventions of a bygone era. As horror scholar David Skal says, The Rocky Horror Picture Show “is a campy recap of horror characters and clichés” (323). For example, the opening song of the film, “Science Fiction Double Feature,” is about old horror and sci-fi films. “Flash Gordon was there, in silver underwear,” begins the song, and it continues to mention many other old horror and sci-fi films, like It Came from Outer Space and King Kong.

Though Rocky Horror owes much of its existence to a plethora of sci-fi schlock, the film pays its greatest homage to Frankenstein, based on Mary Shelley’s seminal novel, which came to the silver screen in 1931. The main villain’s name, Dr. Frank-N-Furter, is a variation of Dr. Frankenstien. And, unsurprisingly, Dr. Frank-N-Furter performs similar experiments. Frank-N-Furter is “making a man, with blonde hair and a tan” in his castle’s laboratory. Rocky, a well-built man clad only in a golden thong, emerges from mummy-like wrappings that echo shrouds worn in another classic horror film, The Mummy (Skal 168). King Kong and Fay Wray are noted several times in the film as well, both through song and through action. In the climatic final scenes, Rocky watches in horror as his creator perishes. Overcome with grief, he hoists his “father” over his shoulder and climbs a nearby radio tower. Just like the giant ape, Rocky is shot down – only this time, with a sort of laser gun – and plummets into the nearby pool, dead. Through allusions like this, The Rocky Horror Picture Show has the rather post-modern distinction of art commenting on art thought imitation.

But it’s not all about paying homage to the classics though imitation: There’s another, more sinister side to this picture show.

Part II: Morbid Eroticism and the Madness of Overindulgence

Peppered amongst the b-movie themes of the film are the overt sexual overtones to which The Rocky Horror Picture Show owes much of its success. Frank-N-Furter is no ordinary doctor; he’s a “sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania,” and he gallops about his crumbling castle in increasingly odd, gender-bending outfits. “The relationship between the (usually) female patient and the (usually) male [surgeon] is often morbidly eroticized along horror-movie lines,” says Skal, and that is exactly the case in Rocky Horror (321). Sexual liberation is just as important as the classic horror elements in the film, and not surprisingly, the original play on which the The Rocky Horror Picture Show is based was written in the early ‘70s, right in the midst of the “Sexual Revolution” that reached its peak with that muddy, three-day long expression of free love, Woodstock.

The ironic pairing of horror clichés from the conservative 1950s and new ideas of sexual freedom gives the film a sarcastic edge. And yet, the movie dedicated to decadence delivers the unmistakable message that overindulgence destroys relationships, ruins lives, and could even lead to humanity’s undoing. “But at the same time,” says a Time Magazine article entitled “Life & Death Versus Death-in-Life,” “in [Rocky’s] story, it rejects the fascination with transgression as a form of madness.” Frank-N-Furter’s obsession with creating the perfect male winds up causing his death. (Says Riff-Raff, the man who replaces and kills him, “Frank-N-Furter, it’s all over. Your mission is a failure; your lifestyle’s too extreme.”) Both members of the young couple yield to their sexual desires, and they wind up writhing in the wreckage of the castle, their relationship and their lives together ruined. The narrator seemingly warns the audience afterwards, calling the human race “insects… lost in time, lost in space… and meaning.”

Part III: Brutally Beautiful, Beautifully Brutal

One of the more disturbing themes buried in the film is its twisted take on birth and motherhood. Rocky is not the first man Frank-N-Furter has tried to improve through surgery – he has also operated on Eddie, a former lover. One of the most prevalent reoccurring motifs in horror films is the male scientist, “obsessed with impossible, overreaching theories and/or aesthetic standards,” who toils endlessly over a female patient to create the perfect woman, his own “fantasy in the flesh” (Skal 321-3). While this concept in itself if unsettling (consider the real-life mistakes modern plastic surgeons have made on the female body – when liposuction was first being tested, nine French women had essential organs damaged or sucked out, resulting in their deaths), The Rocky Horror Picture Show takes it one step further. An essentially homosexual man “gives birth” to a slave, to be used for his own sexual pleasure. Frank-N-Furter is a kind of “he mother” (Skal 323), a perversion of nature, “Frankenstein restored to Earth” (Skal 323). Furthermore, if one considers Rocky Frank-N-Furter’s son, not only are the pair’s lesions homosexual, but incestual as well.

With Frank-N-Furter constantly experimenting to create the perfect man, what is he trying to say about body image? Few viewers, given the atmosphere of the movie, even think about it. Yet the message is clear: People aren’t worthy of existing unless they are physically perfect. Although the stereotype is “men playing God with women’s bodies,” like everything in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, it has been twisted (Skal 320). Frank-N-Furter’s “perfect” man has huge muscles but little intelligence. He says of Eddie, his former lover, that “he had a certain naive charm, but no muscle!” And being a transsexual, it seems Frank-N-Furter wasn’t happy with his own body to begin with. Perhaps the good doctor was his own first patient.

Traditionally, women – and in the current society, men as well – often feel that they are not good enough and need to be physically altered to be more perfect. Take this concept a few steps further, throw in some lingerie and you’ve got Frank-N-Furter’s hand-built specimen. Like the narrator’s disdainful epilogue, Frank-N-Furter’s folly is a warning to society: Attempting to achieve physical perfection is impossible, and may well dehumanize us all.

Part IV: Worshiping at the Church of Rocky

Although much of the film is built around references to pop culture of the past, The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a pop culture phenomenon in itself. When the film was released in 1975, it was a box office flop. But a few years later, Rocky Horror started sprouting up in independent theaters. It began drawing crowds that would come to watch the movie night after night. People started dressing as their favorite characters, male or female, regardless of the wearer’s gender. Midnight showings became the celebrated norm. A ritual was forming, but it would not be complete until the single most important aspect of this film’s cultural significance came to be: People started talking to the movie. Watching The Rocky Horror Picture Show has become a Mass-like ceremony where viewers “speak” to the characters on screen at specific points. For example, after Brad and Janet get a flat tire, Brad says, “I think I saw a castle back there. Maybe it has a phone we can use.” The audience chimes back in unison, “Castles don’t have phones, asshole!” These “call backs” are essentially the same everywhere, so one can participate in a screening at one theater on Friday, then attend another hundreds of miles away on Saturday and go virtually undetected.

After getting the box office boot, The Rocky Horror Picture Show has spawned its own underground culture with its own language and style of dress. Frank-N-Furter has become the Christological figure in the “church” of Rocky, and his followers can never get enough.

On a more general level, the film’s soundtrack has spawned plenty of albums, and one would be hard-pressed to find a person who doesn’t know of the movie’s most famous track, “The Time Warp.” Played on radio stations across the country just as any song might be, “The Time Warp” has quietly seeped into American consciousness, just as The Rocky Horror Picture Show itself has.

Part V: Listen Closely (Not for Very Much Longer)

Few films can boast such an eclectic mix of social and artistic significance and mindless fun. By standing on the shoulders of early horror and sci-fi films, The Rocky Horro Picture Show was born, and through song and dance, sex and decadence, it became an American cultural mainstay. But perhaps what keeps us coming back to it night after night isn’t so much the catchy music or the larger than life eroticism, but our subconscious attraction to the revolting and the deviant.

Whatever the case may be, The Rocky Horror Picture Show is here to stay.


WORKS CITED

O’Brien, Richard. The Rocky Horror Picture Show. 20th Century Fox, 1975.

Skal, David J. The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror. New York: Faber and Faber, 1993.

Terror in the Night: The Story of Tommy McPherson

The night is quiet and the sky is calm. It’s two in the morning and Tommy McPherson lies sleeping in his bed.

Suddenly, an intense light shines in through his window, bright enough to illuminate the entire room.

Tommy’s eyes shoot open. The bright lights disappear, once again bathing the room in darkness. Tommy’s bedroom door slowly creeks open. Lanky, sinister beings creep in and surround his bed, the moonlight reflecting off of their huge, black eyes. Hovering over him, they reach down and grab him.

“Darn it!” shouts Tommy, “I’m being abducted by aliens… again!”

According to Tommy, a 46 year-old student at Lakewood High School, this is often the scene at the McPherson home in Lakewood County, California. Tommy says has been the object of repeated alien abductions since the age of 14.

“It’s really starting to affect my school work. If it keeps up like this, I might not be able to graduate on time,” said Tommy, stroking his beard.

At first, Tommy ignored his bizarre encounters. Perhaps he was just having nightmares, or maybe his home had simply been built over an ancient burial ground. After all, the creatures left no trace of their visits behind. But as time passed, the aliens became more and more bold, says Tommy, until their presence was undeniable.

“I knew it was real when I woke up one night and aliens were crowded around my Xbox playing my Spider-Man game,” said Tommy. “They erased my save file.”

According to Tommy, the perpetual threat of abduction places a huge strain on the McPhersons. Tommy’s mother, Emily, wants desperately to protect her son, but can rarely stay awake past the latest episode of Lost.

“I wish I could help my poor boy when he tells me all the awful things they do to him. They’re always probing him for some reason,” said Emily. “You’d think those aliens would have seen enough of his anus by now.”

For years, Tommy and his family have searched for a way to prevent alien abductions. However, nothing they did stopped the extra-terrestrial intruders, they say.

“Free beer doesn’t stop them and they’re completely resistant to strategically-placed dirty magazines,” said Tommy’s father, Kurt. “We’re dealing with a truly evil force here.”

It wasn’t until Tommy stumbled upon a Web site called “Alien Abductions, How to Prevent,” that he successfully thwarted an abduction, he said. According to the Web site, located at http://www.abductions-alien.com*, there are several things one can do to prevent an alien abduction, including the following:
- Sleeping with iron bars nearby or an iron crucifix in your bed
- Surrounding your bed with salt
- Praying to God to stop the abduction
- Sleeping with “a big picture of Jesus”
- Leaving your attic fan on all night
- Yelling the following phrase as loudly as possible to the abductors: “In the name of God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit, I demand my physical body! Now!”

After following the instructions he found on the Web site, Tommy says the abductions have ceased. According to the McPhersons, it has now been two months since Tommy’s last abduction, and life at the McPherson home is finally returning to normal.

“I’m so glad the abductions have ended,” said Tommy. “Now, if only I could stop the werewolves and vampires from stealing small amounts of my blood every night, I’d really be happy.”

* Note: At the time of this article’s writing, the Web site http://www.abductions-alien.com existed. It has since disappeared from the Internet, a causality, says Tommy, of “the pro-alien lobbyists intent on destroying America’s youth …and probing their anuses.”

Also, the characters and events presented in this article are purely fictitious.

Inside Caligari’s Cabinet: The Influences of a Silent Classic

By Matt Frey

When Carl Mayor and Hans Janowitz wrote the script for the German silent film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, they probably had little idea of the major social impact it would have in both their country and ours. The film, with its thinly-veiled social commentary and odd, fairytale scenery, was released amidst a firestorm of both controversy and critical praise. When the dust of debate had finally settled, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari emerged as one of the most influential films of all time.

What had started as a simple silent movie had, quite literally, changed the course of horror films.

In 1921, a group of more than 2000 protesters descended on The Miller’s Theatre in Los Angeles. From noon to 8:30 p.m., the protesters demonstrated against The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the theater’s newest offering (Skal 37). They protested not because of the content of the film, but because of the film’s German origins. Many ex-soldiers were horrified that Americans would pay to see anything made in Germany, after the horrors of the first Great War that had ended just recently. (The parallels situation and the current conflict in Middle East are both obvious and beyond the aim of this work.)

Ironically, the film carried a potent anti-war sentiment in its stylistic use of lighting, its twisted, surreal imagery and sets, and its strange, metaphorical characters (Skal 41). Mayor and Janowitz’s script villainized the German government and blamed it for pulling the German people headlong into World War I. In the film, Cesare, a zombie-like man with piercing eyes, responds only to Dr. Caligari’s heinous commands to creep into people’s homes and kill them in the middle of the night. Cesare represents the German people, forced by a corrupt government – personified by Dr. Calagari – to murder anyone who gets in their way.

Had the protesters actually seen the film, they might have reversed their position; however, xenophobic postwar sentiment made that a virtual impossibility. But while the veterans of the Great War demonstrated against the film, many critics proclaimed Caligari a cinematic masterpiece in one way or another. “The musical setting for the production is superb,” commented one critic (Skal 44). The same reviewer was pleased with the film’s use of tinting and color. Variety magazine was impressed, but feared the film’s subject matter would hinder it, saying “it may catch the popular fancy, but it is morbid” (Skal 44). But perhaps the greatest compliment came from the film magazine Shadowland when it said that Caligari “has the authentic thrills and shocks of art” (Skal 46).

Alas, despite modest critical acclaim and public interest, the protesters eventually got their way. The Miller Theatre purged The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari from their screen (Skal 46).

There is no doubt that Variety was correct in saying that Caligari is “morbid,” but it was certainly wrong in thinking that the film’s grim subject matter would repel audiences. As Tod Browning proved time and time again with his ghoulish circus acts, humanity is attracted to the macabre (Skal 25). Later, with films such as The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Phantom of the Opera and Freaks, as well as the aid of silent film star Lon Chaney, Browning helped to further the horror genre that Caligari effectively started (Skal 67). Indeed, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was the first true horror film as measured by today’s standards.

German promotional posters for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari declared “Du Musst Caligari Werden” – “You Will Become Caligari” (Skal 44). Little did anyone know how true that statement would become; Caligari’s influence extended far beyond films of the time. For example, comparisons between the shambling somnambulist Cesare and the 1931 film version of Frankenstein’s monster are both unavoidable and uncanny. The two monsters are tall and dark, and both move in strikingly similar ways. Universal’s 1931 Frankenstein film went on to invade many facets of American culture.

Although the idea of a single mass murderer sneaking into peoples’ bedrooms and slaughtering them in their sleep is nothing new, Caligari was an early example of this idea on celluloid – Cesare brought a face to the age old fear that has been recycled in countless films afterwards. The somnambulist, it seems, was a prototype for the horror cliché of the single, inhuman killing machine. John Carpenter’s Halloween gives us what is essentially the somnambulist in a white, almost featureless mask. Unspeaking and unfeeling, a killer named Michael Myers slays the teenage population of a small rural community one by one. Although Carpenter probably wasn’t thinking of the somnambulist when he created “The Shape” (as Myers is referred to in the film’s closing credits), the killer certainly matches Cesare’s archetype. Another example of this phenomenon is Jason Voorhees from the Friday the 13th series. In the masked murder’s 2003 film, Freddy vs. Jason, Voorhees appears in his victim’s bedroom and viciously stabs him to death, finally snapping him in half as a brutal exclamation mark for his murderous sentence. Despite the wanton gore found in the Freddy vs. Jason scene, the basic elements of the Cesare archetype were all present. Give a somnambulist a hockey mask and you’ve got Jason Voorhees. Take it away, and you’ve got Caligari.

The reoccurring elements of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari are not limited to film alone – the image of the lone madman his been consistently burned into society’s psyche through many different media outlets. In Capcom’s Resident Evil 3, a 1999 video game for Sony’s Playstation, Sega’s Dreamcast and later, Nintendo’s GameCube, the Ceasre-like creature Nemesis stalks the player throughout the game, consistantly bursting into whatever temporary haven he or she thinks they have found.

The greatest debt owed to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, however, is for catapulting horror films into the American mainstream. Without Caligari, horror films would likely exist today, yet not nearly in the same way. Perhaps Nosferatu, released in America a short time later, would have been able to do what Caligari did. Yet, would we still have Michael Myers? Would we still have Jason Voorhees or even Freddy Kruger of Nightmare on Elm Street fame? Possibly. But it’s an awfully long trip from Max Schreck’s wily vampire to John Carpenter’s elusive killing machine.

No one knew it at the time, but the German promotional poster for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari really did predict our future. As a society, we HAVE become Caligari. So much so, in fact, that we no longer realize what’s happened. It is said that art imitates life, but art also imitates other art. Movies, books, video games and more have borrowed parts of the Mayor and Janowitz’s film for so long, the original lines of ownership have blurred beyond recognition.

We have indeed become Caligari, but more importantly, Caligari has become us.


Work Cited

Skal, David J. The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror. New York: Faber and Faber, 1993.