Social Identity of Rocky Horror Audiences

My dad and I bond over films, and our shared love of horror, sci-fi, and camp enthused our father-daughter (soon after) father-son relationship. So when he questioned me “Have you seen the Rocky Horror Picture Show?”, my honest response was “no.” I thought in routine he would recommend me to go see it. This time was different, deservingly so, as I was soon to learn, this film WAS DIFFERENT. I was instructed to band together with a group of friends and watch the film at our local cinema’s upcoming Rocky Horror Night.

I did just that, I messaged a handful of friends who I thought would be interested in seeing something unusual, thus unearthing a queer disposition to our usual movie nights. My friends and I were in awe of the spectacle, the cinema space was alive. The crowd was an observable audience of like-minded individuals. It didn’t matter how we identified, or where we came from, we were together in one place, in the same moment, having the same viewing experience(Turnbull, S.E. 2010).

It was the first time as an audience member I could witness and quantify the landscape of cinema attendance: How people watch media and the satisfaction they get from it; something I could only hypothesise previously through qualitative research and introspection. Jeremiah Castle’s ‘Social identity and selective exposure in popular film viewing’ (2018) articulates my intention for why I was looking into the crowd, “Humans show a natural affinity for those who belong to the same social groups.” There were heads to count, numbers that my brain rationalised as safety.

Emotional involvement in viewing, which is characterized by a shift of focus from the real world to the depicted one, has been demonstrated to increase the effectiveness of media influence. Movies can have a significant impact on gender stereotypes – as outlined within the framework of transportation theory (Kubrak, T. 2020), altering attitudes toward particular groups of people and eliciting new perspectives on a variety of topics, thereby enhancing the audience’s self-concept.

In the parable to genesis, Brad and Janet get stripped of their wet clothes (Tyson, C. and Knowlton, J.F. 1980 pp. 60). I wanted that to happen to me – I wanted someone to come along and pull away every piece of my heterosexual disguise. I switch my eyes from the screen to the audience members. The seats are teeming with attendees in black lingerie, fishnets, wigs, and corsets; some are dressed up as the film’s characters and others in drag. It was at that moment I decided I wanted to come back – the film had not ended and I was already planning my next appearance. 

According to Levine M.P. (2012), ‘cultivation theory’ explains how people overestimate the potency of prominent themes in the symbolic worlds of mass media upon repeated exposure (Levine M.P. 2012 pp. 540). Even so, The Rocky Horror Picture Show celebrates active audiences who have been passive members of heteronormative institutions through repeated exposure within midnight showings. It offers an alternative reading to cultivation theory, which is often used within research to criticise the audience’s emotional involvement in viewing as a means to cause violence. My identity, both social and intrinsical, has been amended and made clear by The Rocky Horror Picture Show’s POSITIVE CULTIVATION.

Castle, J., Stepp K. (2018) Silver screen sorting: Social identity and selective exposure in popular film viewing, The Social Science Journal. No longer published by Elsevier. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S036233191830051X

Kubrak, T. (2020) Impact of films: Changes in young people's attitudes after watching a movie, Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland). U.S. National Library of Medicine. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7288198/ 

Levine, M.P. (2012) “Media influences on female body image,” Encyclopedia of Body Image and Human Appearance, pp. 540–546. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-12-384925-0.00085-7

Turnbull, S. E. (2010), 'Imagining the audience', in S. Cunningham & G. Turner (eds), The Media & Communications in Australia, 3 edn, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, Australia. pp. 65. Available at: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003118084

Tyson, C. and Knowlton, J.F. (1980) What is the significance of the Rocky Horror Picture Show? Why do kids keep going to it?, JSTOR. National Council of Teachers of English. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/817417