Rest assured: Seeing this play won’t make you gay … no matter what The Column says.
OK, I was gonna post my review this morning of Dallas Theater Center’s production of The Rocky Horror Show, but I decided to interrupt that plan to do something I never, ever do: Publicly call out another “review.” (Here’s my review.)
In the theater blog called The Column, Mary L. Clark reviewed the show … at least, that’s what they call it. The first quarter of the nearly 3,000 word piece is culled from Wikipedia, and after that, it delves into press releases and Playbill notes before, somewhere around paragraph 6, finally mentioning the current production.
All of this — and even such cringe-worthy malapropisms are referring to the “free sex generation” (she means, I assume, “free love” — everyone knows, sex is never free) — are tolerable. But as someone who directed my attention to this story pointed out, she refers to out director Joel Ferrell’s “lifestyle choice” being affected by the show.
Ummm…. what?
I really, really thought we had progressed past the point one’s innate sexual orientation was labeled — insultingly, ignorantly, regressively — as a “choice” and a “lifestyle.” She even concludes with this caveat: “I never thought about gender equality when seeing Rocky Horror. … Don’t be worried you are going to be pro-gay rallied or asked to make any choices other than to have a really good time.” OK, poor writing aside, this comes dangerously close to saying, “Rest assured: You can’t ‘catch gay’ watching this show.” It made me throw up a bit in my mouth.
(By the way: I loved the show. And it won’t make you gay anymore than watching Love, American Style as a kid made me straight.)
This weekend, a writer for the New York Times got vilified after referring to TV showrunner Shonda Rhimes (Scandal, Grey’s Anatomy) as an “angry black woman.” At least she didn’t say being a black woman was a “choice” or a “lifestyle.” I guess we still have a long way to go.
