Debbie Deese Linder is a former student of mine from my West Virginia days. She is in her 40s, is a lesbian in a committed relationship, and has been a hard core Rocky fan since the mid 1980s. Here’s her reaction to the Rocky Horror Glee Show:
From the early ’80s and into the mid 90’s, the Capri Theater in Charlotte (now demolished) midnight-screened Rocky Horror every weekend. While in high school, I was not only a regular attendee (250+ times between ’84-’86), but became a member of the group of amateur ‘actors’ who would dress up in home-made costumes and act out the action on the stage, as well as leading the crowd in doing the Time Warp, breaking in the ‘virgins’ [first time attendees] and other assorted duties of the ‘floor show.’ Many of the folks who were part of this group are still within the circle of my closest friends, and there is a Facebook group comprised of over 180 of our old gang. [Editor’s Note: Debbie reports dressing up as “Riff Raff mostly, though I did Eddie a time or two. Somewhere in my mom’s storage building is a sportcoat with a hump sewn in, as well as a ray gun that was made by a friend in shop class.”]
Anyhow.
Overall, I thought the handling of Rocky Horror was expectedly tamed for television — that stage/screen show is too sexually loaded (even now) to perform on network TV unedited. However, I’m disappointed as hell for the writers feeling comfortable using the term “tranny” in character Mike Chang’s refusal of the part of FrankNFurter, but not using the word ‘transsexual’ in the context of Frank’s opening number. Let’s just say that there had better be a good explanation. A very good one, lest they alienate a large segment of the show’s audience, who see ‘tranny’ as a soft-core slur against the transgendered.
The other thing I am disappointed with is the casting of a woman in the roll of Frank. It defeats the dynamic of the whole plot and would have called for more ‘rewrites’ than Sue Sylvester could have ever dreamed of. To her credit, Amber Riley gave an amazing performance of Frank’s introductory song, but that’s not the point. If one envisions the whole thing being played out, a female ‘Frank’ is vanilla, and cannot possibly push all of the boundaries that ‘Frank’ does in building himself a sexual plaything that Charles Atlas would be proud of.