Someone just sent me a clip (“Hey, you like musicals, right?”) of what appears to be the Glee cast putting on Rocky Horror.
But…apparently they don’t know what many of the words mean.
There’s a black lady with a really killer voice who’s playing Frank. And she’s in Frank’s costume. Which…is a woman’s outfit, hence, when’s a guy does it, he’s a “sweet transvestite”*. When she does it, it’s about as “transvestite-y” as Debbie Reynolds putting on a dress. If…a woman is wearing a woman’s outfit, she’s not a transvestite…right? I mean, that’s the point of the word “transvestite”, isn’t it?
And as an aside, she sings that she’s “making a MAN with blonde hair and a tan”? Shouldn’t it be “makin’ a gal, who’ll put out, be a pal” or something?
I have no problem with Frank being black. Or a woman. But…the whole point of the song is he or she is a transvestite. She should enjoy dressing like a man, not a slutty Victoria’s Secret model like Tim Curry, say. (Actually it’d have been cool if she’d done a Marlene Dietrich thing)
In any case, I don’t care enough to watch the whole episode, but is this addressed in the episode? Do the characters (who are clearly students putting on a show) comment that the changes make no sense whatsoever?
*For some reason they replaced the word “transsexual” with “sensational” which, if you have to replace it (why?) is a pretty good substitute.
Yes they addressed it during the show. They did have to edit the show so much that many of the songs were nearly unrecognizable but it is worth noting that in the overall Glee storyline the whole Rocky Horror show was a complete disaster that ended up not actually being staged.
It’s sort of a Victor/Victoria thing. She’s playing a man playing a woman. And why would you change the “making a man” line when Rocky is still male?
At any rate, it being a play/musical, not sure why you wouldn’t just go with the character being as written. With Rocky Horror’s history of gender-bending, pretty much all the characters have been played by men and women. The character is still as written whether the actor playing him/her has a dick or boobs. Or both. Or neither. It doesn’t matter unless they fail at sexy.
Because I got “transsexual” mixed up with “homosexual” in my eggnog cocooned brain when I wrote that. Of course trans people can be straight. But somehow that didn’t penetrate. :smack:
Plenty of things on Glee didn’t make much sense, but while this episode wasn’t great all this was addressed in the story. The role of Frank was originally going to be played by a boy, a character named Mike. However, his parents object and he has to back out. For a while it looks like a RHPS fan from the community (a character played by John Stamos) will step in, but while he’s willing to be in the show he doesn’t want to play Frank either. The black girl, Mercedes, volunteers largely because she wants a lead role and is tired of being overshadowed by the glee club’s star soloist Rachel, who’s already been cast as Janet.
As noted upthread, for other plot reasons the show winds up never being performed before an audience, although the glee club does do a performance just for themselves. To the best of my recollection, at no point do they say that the role of Frank is being rewritten for Mercedes, so she is apparently playing the role as a transvestite man – just one who looks more convincingly like a woman than Tim Curry did.
Oh, FWIW both Barry Bostwick and Meatloaf made cameos in this episode.
