The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Virgin Sacrifice

The following informant is a 21 year-old student from California, currently residing in Los Angeles and studying at the University of Southern California. They have been a part of the weekly cast of Los Angeles’ “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” tradition for at least a year. Here, they are describing a weekly tradition they subject the audience to; they will be identified as I.

I: At “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” the one in Santa Monica at the Nuart, we’re called Sins of the Flesh, and we do this thing, there’s a pre-show, an MC introducing the whole thing, and what the MC will do is ask if there’s anyone who has never seen “The Rocky Horror” show live, with the shadow-cast and everything, before. And of all the people that are left, who have never seen the show before, they get 6 people up there, and ask them to perform some kind of weird antics.

And there’s a couple different games that they’ll play, a popular one is “Who’s Your Daddy?” They ask someone the actual name of their actual father, and they have to do an impersonation of their mother screaming their father’s name in bed, you know? Things like that that are lude, and inappropriate, and just fun to see.

There’s another game that they play, called “Scavenger Hunt,” where they basically ask for ridiculous things from the audience, like a pair of panties, or like, a Universal Studios annual pass, or like a condom, just some ridiculous topical things. Once the game is finished, they pick two winners, usually one boy and one girl, but sometimes it’s not that — and what they used to do is a very inappropriate thing where they’d get them into a, kind of, lude position, and then lift them up and down in that position, and it was a lot, and I think it was a liability.

So now, what they do, is they make it so the winners are part of the show, they have small roles at the beginning. There are some callouts where, if you’re going to lie, don’t say you’ve seen it 50 or 100 times, because we would have recognized you by now.

Context

The informant is my roommate, and I am friends with this individual. This bit was told to me in our room. They have been a part of the cast of the Santa Monica weekly performance of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” for at least a year, but have attended the performance for a longer period of time.

My Thoughts

I attended the show once last year — it was fascinating. The seemingly countless callouts, memorized musical numbers, and objects thrown around were a spectacle. It was interesting hearing someone behind such a performance describe the tradition of inducting new members of the community.

It is truly a matter of identity and initiating those who are not yet members of the “in crowd” with harmless yet deprecating jokes that they are not fully aware of, so that they may subject their friends who might eventually attend the performance with the same jokes.