impostor syndrome and Rocky Horror
Feb. 4th, 2012 04:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
at_signBlogging isn't happening much for me these days. Too beat, too convinced my life isn't important. I don't feel like I'm depressed most of the time, but then again, I act like it. Maybe I just need a change.
Impostor syndrome's hitting me pretty hard, right now. I've been planning to write up a resume and start looking for jobs for months; it hasn't happened. When it comes down to it, I can write myself up however, but I never feel like it'll be good enough, really good enough. Like, how do I sell this weird kid to normal people? It's not a new feeling, but every time someone slips on pronouns, or I get a grade that's lower than I had expected, or another friend falls out of touch, it gets a little stronger. I'm not sure whether I'm more afraid people will find out about me, or that I'll find out that they already know, or worse still, that they know better than I do. That they know I rehearse everything I say and still get half of it wrong, because my social skills are fake. That they'll realize I'm not really a good student, not that bright after all, not worthy of my scholarship money or of being at the university at all. That when they're thinking oh, it's that weird girl who wants to use a boy's name they've got the right picture, and I the wrong one, after all.
Today, on impulse, I put on the Rocky Horror soundtrack. I'd been thinking about Richard O'Brien, a little bit, recently; thinking how few famous trans* people I know, and only the one non-binary one. Maybe that's why I suddenly thought that record would make things better. Regardless, I was thinking about O'Brien more listening to the music he wrote, and trying to figure out why Rocky Horror feels so safe to me. Or its wider appeal to my generation, really. It doesn't totally add up.
My history with Rocky Horror is a little weird, like everyone's. I grew up hearing parts of the soundtrack on mix tapes my parents had made, and hearing them quote selected lines ("come up to the lab and see what's on the slab" was a favorite) without knowing the context. Then, when I was eleven or twelve, we went through our record collection and they played everything for me, a musical education, and I fixated on the soundtrack. We'd sing the songs together, and Mum tried to teach me to dance the Time Warp. I was cast as Riffraff, by my choice; for whatever reason, I immediately wanted to be him. The part of me that wants my life story to be one smooth, interconnected narrative suggests that this was foreshadowing, that it was Richard O'Brien being "someone like me" that I could sense, but I'm a little skeptical of this.
When I was 13, we got the DVD and I watched it, at home and alone. It was too much for me, on some levels, and I didn't really love it; between not getting the references and being freaked out by the gory bits (I know, I know) I wasn't ready to handle it. Even so, it kept a hold on me. I watched it again, with my dad; another time, a couple of years later, with more of the family; again, after seeing Manos: The Hands of Fate, which must have influenced Rocky Horror because the alternative is too horrible to contemplate; went to the stageplay a couple of years ago with my dad. The stageplay was disappointing, like a photo of a bad photocopy; people weren't playing the characters but the movie actors playing the characters. I felt like the myth had swallowed up the original show, turned it into something less interesting.
It's important to me. I began to define why when I tried to explain why the stageplay didn't do it for me; unlike the people who'd seen the movie in theaters time and again, I had connected not to the experience but to something in Richard O'Brien's twisted brain. I'm not saying I understood Rocky Horror better than other people; I understood it differently. I mean, I'd never seen the stuff the movie parodied, never lived anywhere where unnatural hair colors or piercings or, heck, spike heels and fishnets on men were taboo. I definitely didn't get what O'Brien was inspired by, culturally. What I got was -- well, sense of belonging, when I could pretend I shared other people's connection to the Rocky Horror experience, but apart from that -- this subconscious shift.
Rocky Horror is built around a simple premise: take away taboos, consequences as we understand them. Brad and Janet are thrown into a world where sex is public, and with whomever you want: the kinky and queer are out and proud, fidelity is unimportant (except for Rocky, because being under Frank's control is important), incest is unremarkable. Frank can do whatever he wants in non-sexual situations as well. This is actually a horror film thing, a lot of the time; change the rules, make the monster able to break them. Rocky Horror has "shock" potential, and a lot of people like that. The powerful thing, for me, is that O'Brien -- according to an interview I read, and I believe it because it feels true -- didn't write it to shock. Frank's not a monster because he's queer, or kinky, or promiscuous, or even because he pressures and manipulates people into satisfying his sexual desires; whether he's a monster at all is an open question, really. The Transylvanians aren't monsters in general; they're different, freer than humans, weird and unconcerned with it. I think that's really the pull. Rocky Horror's strength is that it redefines the norm such that, for just a little while, everyone who usually feels like an outsider can believe that they are normal.
Of course, if Transylvania existed, I wouldn't be queer enough or kinky enough for it. Most of us wouldn't. Fortunately, it's fictional, so we can project onto it without worrying about that.
And as long as Richard O'Brien can exist, can touch so many people, even the ones who seem normal to everyone else -- maybe I can too.
Impostor syndrome's hitting me pretty hard, right now. I've been planning to write up a resume and start looking for jobs for months; it hasn't happened. When it comes down to it, I can write myself up however, but I never feel like it'll be good enough, really good enough. Like, how do I sell this weird kid to normal people? It's not a new feeling, but every time someone slips on pronouns, or I get a grade that's lower than I had expected, or another friend falls out of touch, it gets a little stronger. I'm not sure whether I'm more afraid people will find out about me, or that I'll find out that they already know, or worse still, that they know better than I do. That they know I rehearse everything I say and still get half of it wrong, because my social skills are fake. That they'll realize I'm not really a good student, not that bright after all, not worthy of my scholarship money or of being at the university at all. That when they're thinking oh, it's that weird girl who wants to use a boy's name they've got the right picture, and I the wrong one, after all.
Today, on impulse, I put on the Rocky Horror soundtrack. I'd been thinking about Richard O'Brien, a little bit, recently; thinking how few famous trans* people I know, and only the one non-binary one. Maybe that's why I suddenly thought that record would make things better. Regardless, I was thinking about O'Brien more listening to the music he wrote, and trying to figure out why Rocky Horror feels so safe to me. Or its wider appeal to my generation, really. It doesn't totally add up.
My history with Rocky Horror is a little weird, like everyone's. I grew up hearing parts of the soundtrack on mix tapes my parents had made, and hearing them quote selected lines ("come up to the lab and see what's on the slab" was a favorite) without knowing the context. Then, when I was eleven or twelve, we went through our record collection and they played everything for me, a musical education, and I fixated on the soundtrack. We'd sing the songs together, and Mum tried to teach me to dance the Time Warp. I was cast as Riffraff, by my choice; for whatever reason, I immediately wanted to be him. The part of me that wants my life story to be one smooth, interconnected narrative suggests that this was foreshadowing, that it was Richard O'Brien being "someone like me" that I could sense, but I'm a little skeptical of this.
When I was 13, we got the DVD and I watched it, at home and alone. It was too much for me, on some levels, and I didn't really love it; between not getting the references and being freaked out by the gory bits (I know, I know) I wasn't ready to handle it. Even so, it kept a hold on me. I watched it again, with my dad; another time, a couple of years later, with more of the family; again, after seeing Manos: The Hands of Fate, which must have influenced Rocky Horror because the alternative is too horrible to contemplate; went to the stageplay a couple of years ago with my dad. The stageplay was disappointing, like a photo of a bad photocopy; people weren't playing the characters but the movie actors playing the characters. I felt like the myth had swallowed up the original show, turned it into something less interesting.
It's important to me. I began to define why when I tried to explain why the stageplay didn't do it for me; unlike the people who'd seen the movie in theaters time and again, I had connected not to the experience but to something in Richard O'Brien's twisted brain. I'm not saying I understood Rocky Horror better than other people; I understood it differently. I mean, I'd never seen the stuff the movie parodied, never lived anywhere where unnatural hair colors or piercings or, heck, spike heels and fishnets on men were taboo. I definitely didn't get what O'Brien was inspired by, culturally. What I got was -- well, sense of belonging, when I could pretend I shared other people's connection to the Rocky Horror experience, but apart from that -- this subconscious shift.
Rocky Horror is built around a simple premise: take away taboos, consequences as we understand them. Brad and Janet are thrown into a world where sex is public, and with whomever you want: the kinky and queer are out and proud, fidelity is unimportant (except for Rocky, because being under Frank's control is important), incest is unremarkable. Frank can do whatever he wants in non-sexual situations as well. This is actually a horror film thing, a lot of the time; change the rules, make the monster able to break them. Rocky Horror has "shock" potential, and a lot of people like that. The powerful thing, for me, is that O'Brien -- according to an interview I read, and I believe it because it feels true -- didn't write it to shock. Frank's not a monster because he's queer, or kinky, or promiscuous, or even because he pressures and manipulates people into satisfying his sexual desires; whether he's a monster at all is an open question, really. The Transylvanians aren't monsters in general; they're different, freer than humans, weird and unconcerned with it. I think that's really the pull. Rocky Horror's strength is that it redefines the norm such that, for just a little while, everyone who usually feels like an outsider can believe that they are normal.
Of course, if Transylvania existed, I wouldn't be queer enough or kinky enough for it. Most of us wouldn't. Fortunately, it's fictional, so we can project onto it without worrying about that.
And as long as Richard O'Brien can exist, can touch so many people, even the ones who seem normal to everyone else -- maybe I can too.
