Fieldwork: Community and Communitas

I talked with Sal Piro, the president of the International Rocky Horror Picture Show Fan Club, on the phone from his home in New York City on March 29, 1991.

Liz: What's really interesting to me... I never dressed up, but I attended seven or eight shows in Boulder and... you know what happens in the theater... actually is like... well, it's the development of a community... for the time that the film is showing... and for some people it happens for... like, the whole week...

Sal: Right.

Liz: So really... I mean, you're the head of a community...

Sal: Mmm hmm.

Liz: Do they identify for other reasons beyond the characterizations? I mean, do you find that people make friendships?

Sal: Well sure! One of the things I love the most... the thing that turns me on is the whole community in the theater. When I was 26 and I first started this... we would go out afterwards and hang out... you know in coffee shops, not in bars or anything, you know... and just talk about everything until 4, 4:30 in the morning... we'd go to the movies together during the week...

Liz: You went to the movies together?

Sal: Yeah, yeah... and just spent... worked on the fan club together and did all kinds of things together. And that's what's happening to my cast and my people today...

Liz: Uh huh.

Sal: Now they're all 19 and I'm 40 so I find myself not hanging out with then so much... But... I mean, I'm expecting two of them right now to come over and help me with the fan club... It's not the seven-day-a-week thing 'cause I just have a different lifestyle now, but... They go out after the movie and see each other all week long... I mean, it's still there... definitely... I mean, there are the jealousies and the in-fighting that happens in any community...

What Turner calls "normative communitas" doesn't only occur at the end of RHPS with the death of Frank, the reimposition of order, the departure of the aliens, and the freeing of Brad, Janet, and Dr. Scott to resume their lives in Denton, "The Home of Happiness." It also happens in RHPS communities. The cast members see themselves as more devoted than regular audience members. Their community is held together by fellow thespian aspiration as well as by love of the film. The costume contest I witnessed was a very serious affair for the two "Franks," the out-of-town "Eddie," the "Magenta," and the "Columbia" who vied for audience approval. The jealousies and in-fighting were not trivial; these people knew each other, as friends or by reputation, and their animosities worked to reveal the depths of their community loyalties. Sal Piro insisted that the losers be given a round of applause: "They all worked really hard on their costumes and we don't do this to make anyone feel bad!" But there is a RHPS hierarchy. It was obvious from the way in which everyone deferred to him that Sal is at the top. I asked him why people play in floor-show casts.

Sal: ...some people just have a desire to perform... like any kind of struggling actor. So it becomes a role for them... But this role has a lot more emotional investment because it's such a cult film and it's something that they really love to do. Some do it for the attention; some to make out...

Liz: Uh huh.

Sal: I mean it's really funny the romances that have occurred over the years. But I think it's the character identification that seems to...

Liz: Yeah, so do I... But in the video... you know, the ten-year anniversary thing? It's a woman playing Frank...

Sal: Yeah, Barbara. I had five Franks on the stage that night and three of them were women. Dori Hartley, she was the first... She so loved Frank and all that... she wanted to be part of it...

We talked about the eight-minute prologue to the video edition of the film. Sal agreed that "[It] educates the uninitiated on Rocky Horror ritual" (Flynn 1990:10).

Liz: So what do you think the effect of the video will be on performances? Do you think it's going to increase it? Or do you think that in some weird way people are going to settle for this video...

Sal: No no no... Most people... because of the book and the prelude to the video... all the... We have a book coming out in a month or so called The Official Audience Participation Guide... and because of all that... I get millions of calls from people who are dying to see it in a theater... And actually, theater attendance has picked up.

Liz: Has it really?

Sal: Oh yeah. Oh definitely. I mean... we've had theaters with it opening... some closing. There are some cities that are strong for a while... I'm going to Chicago tomorrow 'cause one of the suburban theaters is closing Rocky and I'm going to host a show there tomorrow night...

Liz: Tomorrow...

Sal: Yeah, I think it's called the Prospect...

When I got to the theater, I walked around with a memo pad and a camera talking to people. I never had to ask twice if I could take a picture or conduct a taped interview. Teenagers and middle-aged people alike loved talking about their experiences with RHPS.

Joe Gillan of Milwaukee's Celluloid Jam is an aspiring actor and has been an RHPS choreographer and "Frank" for five years. He started attending shows when he was 14, whenever his mother would let him, "just attending the film like everyone else." Once he had friends with cars, he went more often. He played Riff Raff for a while until the cast needed a "Frank," but until then he'd just worn "Frank make-up" in the crowd. When he moved to Chicago from a small town in Indiana, he became the cast choreographer for the Music Box Theater there. When it closed in 1986, he started driving to Milwaukee every weekend. He didn't have to audition for the part of Frank because the Celluloid Jam already knew him by reputation. Joe won the Prospect costume contest in spite of a leg cast: he'd slipped in his five-inch heels.

Bob is a cast member at Lakehurst, Illinois and has also been playing Frank every Saturday night for five years. Like Joe, he was "just a regular audience member" until he'd seen the movie "maybe 40 times or so..." He played Rocky in San Diego for two months, but has been "Frank" ever since. When I asked him if he hangs out with other RHPS people, he said, "Well... one of the strange things about me... see... well, I've been in the Navy for six years... so... a lot of my friends don't know..." I asked what his commanding officer's reaction might be if he found out about it. His friend beside him starting laughing uproariously. The first time he got "cheers and applause and all that stuff" was when he threw his cape open to reveal his corsetted body: "It was a rush, an absolute rush. And I still get that rush every time I perform."

"Eddie" and "Rocky" were 17-year-old Mount Prospect men. We talked about performing in front of crowds, how it got started, why they kept coming, and what it meant to them.

Eddie: People can come here and express themselves any way they want to... dressed as their favorite character... they can come not dressed. Be vocal, not vocal; it doesn't matter. Everybody likes everybody else for whatever they're doing. No matter who or what you are. You're going to be accepted... and the cast... we take care of each other...

Rocky: Yeah. It's like a family kinda...

Eddie: Yeah, we hang out together... and if I've got a problem, the first people I'll call will be cast members.

Liz: And you're tolerant of other people's eccentricities? Does that generalize to other people?

Rocky: Yeah... 'cause I usta think... gay people were... really weird. But ya know, some of the people in this cast are gay... and it's like... they're normal people... all really cool. They don't go around hitting on me or anybody else...

Eddie: You really learn to accept people for who they are... I was 12 when I started coming to Rocky Horror. I was in junior high school... your typical kid. It was like... wow, weird. I saw all these weird people. But you stick around and you notice that... no one else seems to notice... that anyone else is weird... No matter what they wore in...

Liz: Did you feel like a weirdo when you were 12?

Eddie: Yeah, I did as a matter of fact... I did things that... not other kids did... I got into things that not other kids did...

Liz: Like what?

Eddie: Like reading. I like to read! I'd read Shakespeare. I'd read Moliere... everything... and no one else...

Liz: So you were a nerd?

Eddie: Well... yeah, basically.

Liz: So what's the attraction to Eddie, say, rather than Brad?

Eddie: Well...

Liz: Does it make sense that I'd ask...

Eddie: Yeah, absolutely. I've changed since then. Basically... well, I do own a Harley... I mean, I'm not a Hell's Angel. I work. I pay my bills. And "Eddie"... he's just like the opposite of all that... Totally free... I feel like for the two or three hours that I'm in here, I'm just like that...You can see it in my attitude when I'm in here... I'm "Eddie" totally. All the frustrations from the week... I'm somebody else... They all just go out the door...

Liz: And what does being Rocky do for you?

Rocky: Well, I usually don't run around my house in women's underwear... And that's good... I mean, I don't usually have a lot of... It gives me confidence. A lot of confidence. Because I figure... if I can do this, there's not much else you could do in a theater or in life that could make you... I mean... that could make you feel really bad. If you can run through the audience in gold lamé underwear with gold gym shoes on... (laughing)... there's not much else that you really have to do... I mean, the only other thing that could be possibly worse, or more difficult, is performing naked. And I'm not really gonna go out and do that...

Conclusion

The way Victor Turner tells it,

In complex industrialized societies, we still find traces in the liturgies of churches and other religious organizations of institutionalized attempts to prepare for the coming of spontaneous communitas. This modality of relationship, however, appears to flourish best in spontaneously liminal situations - phases betwixt and between states where social-structural role-playing is dominant, and especially between status equals. [Turner 1969:138]

The way Sal Piro tells it, Louis Farese, a kindergarten teacher from Staten Island, was the first person to talk back to the screen at Manhattan's Waverly Theater on Labor Day weekend in 1976. The costuming started on Halloween that year. The floor shows started when Bill O'Brien and a few regulars lip synched the record as it played before showtime (Piro 1990:1-2 http://www.rockyhorror.com). The audience loved it. They picked it up. Twenty-four years later, there's a new generation of people talking back to the screen. The pre-shows have become elaborate and regular ceremonies. "Virgins" are initiated, as were about 30 the night I was in Mount Prospect, by coming voluntarily in front of the crowd to be called "Assholes!" and "Sluts!", the terms of endearment reserved for Brad and Janet. One young man was told that he had to be singled out especially for group abuse because Sal had been told it was the virgin's birthday. Besides, Sal told him, he'd also been told that he really was an asshole. In front of 300 people, this easy-going teenager pulled down his pants and shot us the moon. If he wants them, he has friends for life.

With luck and desire we find one another. The non-athletes, the readers, the musicians, the goths, the skate rats, the gamers, the geeks, the metal-heads, the ravers, the stoners, the net-heads, the writers, the outcasts, the refugees, we find a way to create communities, and sometimes they last. Performative expression, even--perhaps especially--for embattled teenagers in 1999, is not limited to planting bombs and wielding a loaded TEC-9. Sure, talk with your kids. Find out if they're happy. Find out how they've decided to take their own "revenge" against the inanities and humiliations of their daily lives. And then tell them again why and how and for how long and under what circumstances you will continue to love them. Maybe they'll take you out to a show.

Works Cited

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