Rocky Horror Picture Show: Film Analysis

Communication is a part of pretty much everything and in almost every aspect of our lives. One of those aspects where we see communication often is in films. There are multiple different aspects of communication found in movies. This is because movies imitate life and typical human interactions. I am going to break down several aspects of communication within two films and compare elements of culture, gender, and relationships between the movies. The first films I chose to analyze is the cult classic, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. This film is about a young man and woman, Brad and Janet, trying to use a stranger’s phone and instead getting pulled into a crazy evening of events by some very unusual individuals. Their perceptions of themselves …show more content…
In Rocky Horror, both Brad and Janet are greatly changed by the events that took place. Brad was always a traditional man but Frank-N-Furter challenged this with his androgyny. Brad stops conforming to the gender role that men must be straight and ends up being intimate with Frank-N-Furter. He has an androgynous experience of his own which challenges the gender roles he is used to and ultimately changes his communication with Frank-N-Furter. He is not so scared or upset by the way Frank-N-Furter is anymore and embraces it by dressing in a corset and heels himself at the end of the movie. He is clearly much more comfortable with what is happening around him and even tries to defend Frank-N-Furter before he is killed when asking, “You mean, you 're going to kill him? What 's his crime?”. Janet’s communication is also changed. She eventually challenges the gender role of a woman to be modest and not sexual. She gives over to absolute pleasure and embraces her sexuality as well. However, White Chicks goes about this transition of viewpoints differently. The main affect that literally “walking in someone else’s shoes” has on the two men is that they respect and appreciate woman more. They do not permanently change their participation in average gender roles as men but doing it for at least a little while changed their communication with women. Marcus specifically lets his change in perspective of genders be known to his wife. He apologizes to her and tells her that he realizes that being a female is a hard task and that he feels bad about being unappreciative of her and ignoring her so often for his job. Gender communication is greatly influenced by gender roles but a change in the perception one has of these roles and how other people experience them can also affect