Matt and Ashley Faus

cre·a·tiv·i·ty - the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.; originality, progressiveness, or imagination.

Let’s focus on “the ability to transcend traditional patterns”.  The fact that you’ve never gone to a movie where there were live actors performing the same show in real-time doesn’t make it uncreative.  On the contrary, it makes it fit the dictionary definition of creativity perfectly.  I agree, it was weird, but that weirdness, whether you enjoyed or agreed with it or not, was creative.

Furthermore, it could be argued that the Rocky Horror show is an artistic exercise in synchronicity.  There are many other examples of art exploring synchronicity.  One is the Dark Side of the Rainbow, which is listening to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album while watching the Wizard of Oz to notice coincidences where the two seem to relate to one another.   Another is The Flaming Lips album, Zaireeka.  This album consists of 4 separate CDs that are to be played simultaneously to create a unique harmony.  This album is a culmination of the Parking Lot Experiments conducted by Wayne Coyne in the late 90s.  These experiments consisted of Wayne composing 40-50 different cassette tapes, gathering 40-50 volunteers in a parking lot, distributing the cassette tapes to all of those assembled, and then playing them all at the same time.  Pretty cool, I’d say.

So, this just proves the point that this movie/acting phenomenon was a creative expression.  Whether or not I agree with the dialog and ideas presented in the movie (and, likewise by the actors) is a whole ‘nother story.  Personally, the content of the movie lent no revelations or inspirations.  Besides being completely distracted by the audience and actors to be able to follow the story very closely, I don’t think it had much of a hard and fast point.  From what I picked up, the movie was trying to express that it’s OK to be completely without morals, and in fact, a truly freeing experience.  Put in words, the point of the movie would be to say “Don’t be shackled by your heterosexual marriage – you should feel free to indulge in all of life’s wonderful pleasures, including homosexuality and transsexual transformation.”  These words are just another argument to say that expression of sexuality is socially defined.  Personally, I think this is utterly wrong.  God created us as distinctly and uniquely male and female.  Yes, gender expression through hair and clothing styles is somewhat socially defined.  In the U.S., society states that dresses and skirts are for women, while in old Ireland men wore kilts (hehe ).  However, gender expression through marriage and sexual contact has never been, nor never will be subject to the whims of society.  God defined this long ago, and human exploration through science (evolution theory and biology) has done nothing but back it up.

I think the reason this has become such a “cult phenomenon” is just because it’s so weird.  I had a roommate in college that really enjoyed watching horribly low-budget films and critiquing them.  It’s just an off-the-wall kind of thing to do, and some people really enjoy that kind of stuff.  I can’t see myself learning all the songs in Rocky Horror, but I know some people that would get into it.  There’s nothing wrong with it, but I wouldn’t do it.

So, there it is.  My analysis of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.  I must say, this movie and the subsequent debate touches on several very sensitive subjects.  I want to say right now that if you disagree with the opinions I stated above, I genuinely respect that.  I’m not trying to step on anyone’s toes; I’m just putting it out there like I see it.  Peace!

PS – This post is in response to Ashley’s post about the same subject.  Note that her post is first. In other words, “She started it!”

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