Grrr, hands off my World Of Darkness! (even though I haven't played in about 10 years at least.)
I think about the whole "Don't Dream It, Be It," thing from Rocky Horror Picture Show, and how it's kind of been flipped on its head by the guys trying to live the Reactionary Camp fantasy. At first, it seemed to be a call for folks to let their inner "freak flag" fly: for all of the repressed, closeted offspring of Cold War-era suburbia to accept themselves and Embrace Queerness. And that seems to be how a lot of the young Queer folks trapped in suburbia (like me) who latched onto that movie interpreted it. But then, Frank ends up getting shot by Riff Raff. Brad, Janet, and Dr. Scott are left to crawl around in the wreckage singing "Superheroes." And then, decades later, Riff's Real World Alter Ego ended up speaking out in support of gender essentialism, even as he admitted to his own gender struggles.
(Seriously, I have a whole essay about Dark City that I am working on, which is stalled out because I don't know how to reconcile Richard O'Brien's very real and beneficial influence on my life with the opinions he's voiced recently.)
And of course, one needs look no further than the number from Rocky Horror's sequel Shock Treatment, "Thank God I'm A Man" for an example of what Reactionary Camp looks like. That whole thing is really "Reactionary Camp, The Movie" and it was ahead of its time. And seems to have predicted Trumpism.
It feels relevant that one of the major reasons I Went Goth as a teen is because things like face makeup, lipstick, hair dye, and nail polish are part of the accepted Uniform for both men, women, and everyone in between. But it is a uniform. It does feel like a bunch of teenage nonconformists in the late 1990s went about trying to conform to a very specific look the moment that we got it into our heads that this was what nonconformity looked like.
And there are probably some people for whom "Reactionary Camp" is "the real them." But the way to find this out would be to ask: is it making them happier? Or more miserable?
Re: The Narrative
I think about the whole "Don't Dream It, Be It," thing from Rocky Horror Picture Show, and how it's kind of been flipped on its head by the guys trying to live the Reactionary Camp fantasy. At first, it seemed to be a call for folks to let their inner "freak flag" fly: for all of the repressed, closeted offspring of Cold War-era suburbia to accept themselves and Embrace Queerness. And that seems to be how a lot of the young Queer folks trapped in suburbia (like me) who latched onto that movie interpreted it. But then, Frank ends up getting shot by Riff Raff. Brad, Janet, and Dr. Scott are left to crawl around in the wreckage singing "Superheroes." And then, decades later, Riff's Real World Alter Ego ended up speaking out in support of gender essentialism, even as he admitted to his own gender struggles.
(Seriously, I have a whole essay about Dark City that I am working on, which is stalled out because I don't know how to reconcile Richard O'Brien's very real and beneficial influence on my life with the opinions he's voiced recently.)
And of course, one needs look no further than the number from Rocky Horror's sequel Shock Treatment, "Thank God I'm A Man" for an example of what Reactionary Camp looks like. That whole thing is really "Reactionary Camp, The Movie" and it was ahead of its time. And seems to have predicted Trumpism.
It feels relevant that one of the major reasons I Went Goth as a teen is because things like face makeup, lipstick, hair dye, and nail polish are part of the accepted Uniform for both men, women, and everyone in between. But it is a uniform. It does feel like a bunch of teenage nonconformists in the late 1990s went about trying to conform to a very specific look the moment that we got it into our heads that this was what nonconformity looked like.
And there are probably some people for whom "Reactionary Camp" is "the real them." But the way to find this out would be to ask: is it making them happier? Or more miserable?