It may seem strange to discuss a film such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show in a family- friendly Website such as UK, but mentioning such a film does open up a discussion of why some films are labeled “adults only” in the first place. The main alternate reason is because some themes require a mature mind to see the nuance in them – “mature” in a lot of cases translating into “over thirty.”

The reason why the classification of films with mature themes draws the line at eighteen is to match the dividing line between legal minor and fully self-responsible adult. This implies that the reason for the “X” rating in the first place was to stop impulsive teenagers from committing crimes “under the influence” of an adult movie – which in practical terms means using the movie as an excuse. This makes the rating system a pragmatic sanction, whose logical defense is: “Opportunistic blamers those copycat kids may be, but keeping them away from films likely to set them off will staunch a source of community disturbance.”

The above being noted, I can dig into why The Rocky Horror Picture Show has lasted as long as it did. Its durability is due to its theme - how the Episcopal Church was corrupted – and a sub-theme, a lampoon of Ayn Rand. The nuance revealed to the “matoor” mind shows more significance than a movie such as Star Trek: The Motion Picture, which was basically a date film whose sub-theme was V’Ger the husband- hunter.

As a way of introduction, I should break up corruption into two kinds: simple and complex. Simple corruption is the spiritual equivalent of kicking someone in the testicles; an example of this would be the ripping of the unction function from the ministers and putting it in the hands of a drug dealer. Most blasphemies of this sort would count as simple corruption.

But the Rocky Horror Picture Show deals with complex corruption. Instead of a simple whap to the nuts, complex corruption involves breaching a restraint which seems at a certain point in time to be a useless “fifth wheel” but is actually there to replace one of the four in the time of your need. To use a symbol from the film itself, it means puncturing the spare tire.

The film begins with a couple at a wedding, Brad Majors and Janet Weiss, played by Barry Botswick and Susan Sarandon, who are decent Episcopal types. A criminologist-expert, who serves as the narrator, describes them as “normal, healthy kids”, even though they are in fact young adults.

The tragic flaw which gets these “kids” destroyed is indicated by Brad’s confusion of “mediocre” with “average,” which shows that their seemingly classless world-view in fact middle class, which they are unaware of. Brad and Janet are destroyed by the upper class, presented as people from the galaxy Transylvania.

This class blindness is shown by the couple before they arrive at the house of the protagonist, Dr Frank’n’Furter, played by Tim Curry. While driving down a back road, they see what appears to be a lower-class-type motorcycle gang driving on the other side of the road. Brad dismisses them as the “kind” for whom “life is cheap,” but this size-up is inaccurate. These specific bike-riders are actually members of the upper class.

Brad and Janet find this out only when a burst tire, and that broken spare which Brad had forgotten to fix, forces them to walk to Frank’n’furter’s castle, where they see those motorcycles parked. So the ruffians are now pegged as “rich weirdos.”

But that shift in contempt is not enough to save them. These two Americans, classless in their thinking but middle-class in their hearts, are torn apart by Frank’n’furter awakening their hidden class deference, which is precisely what he uses to destroy them.

The most famous song in this musical, “The Time Warp,” symbolizes a throwback to the 1920s – the intellectuals’ 1920s. The Transylvanians’ convention party is interlaced with witty references to Pitrim Sorokin (“you’re spaced-out on sensation” from “The Time Warp”) and Nietzsche (“that’s not too...abyss-mal” from the next song). This suggest that The Rocky Horror Picture Show had an influence on Kubrick’s The Shining.

Frank’n’furter himself is a combination of Rand and Kenneth Tynan. This is made plain by the next sequence, where the party-goers go up to the second-floor laboratory where Frank’n’furter is making an artificial man. This man, “Rocky Horror” (played by Peter Hinwood) is a parody of John Galt.

After creating him through a process which involves X-Rays, symbolizing Rand and Tynan’s ultra-accurate people sense, Rocky is dragged out of his fish tank in mummy’s bandages, is unwrapped, and sings of his confusion – one significant point being that he is unable to tell the distinction between High and Low. Rocky Horror is a true classless man.

Who, despite his muscular build, turns into an ineffectual fop, a poser. This process is a lampoon of the Rand world: Rocky’s “birthday present” is a weight set and gym horse along with a seven-day plan modeled on Charles Atlas. (This symbolizes Rand’s “Philosophy Lite” element.) In the middle of the song which described this, “In Just Seven Days,” a new character bursts in, Eddie the Juvenile Delinquent, played by Meat Loaf. His song, based upon old rock-and-roll, suggest that he’s kind of low Episcopal who’s only interested in whatever intellectual currents are floating around for the purpose of putting his boot on someone’s face: the repeated last couplet of his song is “Ah, my du-ty!/I really love that rock’n roll!”, sung while driving his motorcycle through the spectators, who have to dodge out of his way. This display attracts Rocky’s interest, which Frank’n’furter responds to by killing Eddie with a pick-axe. This drives his fan, Columbia (a singer of one of the verses of the “Time Warp” song, and is played by Little Nell) into hysterics, as she was Eddie’s girlfriend.

Then, the Charles Atlas song, sung by Frank’n’furter himself, continues, and includes a dig at Rand hinting that she and her followers just aspire to the station of workers. No wonder Rocky is confused.

The rest of the lampoon, broken up into intermittent scenes, sees Rocky being physically baited by Frank’n’furter’s servant, Riff Raff (played by the original play’s creator, Richard O’Brien) with a candlestand with twelve visible candles lit on it, symbolizing the world of scholarship. Rocky, left chained in his beside- the-lab room by Frank’n’furter, breaks the chain and escapes down to the main floor of the house to the sound of a church bell. He then runs outside the house; is attacked by guard dogs; and runs back to the fish-tank of his birth and cowers. This is obviously a poke at the scholarship efforts of the typical would-be Galt.

As far as Brad and Janet are concerned, they are corrupted into libertinism through Frank’n’furter’s mastery of clothes-borrowing, and his habit of taking the blame for “his” actions with equanimity. Janet turns from good girl to loose woman, and her corruption is complete when an interaction with the cowering Rocky let her play the husband. At that point, she is lost.

Soon after, an old teacher of Brad and Janet’s, Dr. Everett Scott (symbolic of the émigré German intellectuals that arrived on America’s shores during and after World War 2 and played by Jonathon Adams) is also drawn into the libertine world through the “Zen Room.” The dinner scene immediately following his personal confrontation with Frank’n’furter makes it clear that entry through the “Zen Room” leads to “minimalist hospitality” with the exception of fully retained verbal courtesies. Later, there’s a suggestion that if a hippie is a snake, his or her natural mongoose is the abusive narcissist.

Near the end of the movie, Frank’n’furter’s design to corrupt Americans is revealed to be a failure: instead of turning them into amoral wretches, he just turns his crowd into 1910-era college rowdies. Riff Raff the servant has to take over and take the Transylvanians back where they came from – but not after using a laser gun to kill Columbia the fan; Frank’n’furter himself, who dies as an apostle of surrender; and Rocky Horror, who dies in a manner reminiscent of King Kong, falling from a mock Eiffel Tower into a pool with a Michalangelo scene panted at the bottom. It is also revealed during the first song in the glee club medley, “Whatever Happened To Fay Wray,” that one of Rand’s weak points was that she was too “Hollywood.” The medley itself cements in the point that Ayn Rand was a closet libertine herself.

This film is a comic opera at heart, and contains many adult scenes that I have glossed over, but the satirical element is clearly of the higher sort that deals with great thinkers at a level close to peer-to-peer. That’s why it’s been played continually ever since its 1976 release date: everyone, if only unconsciously, knows this.