Let’s Do the Time Warp Again

Student Illustrator: Zach Bukenya

Student Author: Christopher Bischoff

The “Rocky Horror Picture Show," a 1975 cult classic film, was critically panned upon its release, but soon became known as a midnight movie when audiences began participating with the film by talking back to the screen and dressing as the characters. The film is the longest-running theatrical release in film history, selected for preservation in the Library of Congress National Film Registry. For a participant observation assignment, for Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, author Christopher Bischoff attended a Washington, DC showing of the film in April 2019. Bischoff asserts that the midnight viewings of the film constitute a pseudo-religious ritual characterized by repetitive social practice composed of a sequence of performed activities that is set off from social routines of everyday life, adheres to ritual characteristics common to the group’s culture, and is connected to ideas encoded in myth. The film’s rejection and defiance of gender norms of dress and behavior are a reminder that gender is performed, something you do, not something you are.

This is part of the Annual Poster Session, a collaboration between the Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice Department and the Media Arts and Technologies Department, featuring work by social science and illustration students.