What would the reaction be if I wrote a musical play about a pair of white guys who go driving at night. They get lost, and find an old gothic mansion. They are welcomed in by a group of black people who revel in black culture, singing, rapping and everything. At first everything seems fine, but then the black people turn out to be murderous vampires, and then aliens. Things get darker and darker, with distinct overtones of Mary Shelly and other horror films. But then, at the end of the piece, everyone but the white characters gets shot, leading the audience to erupt into rapturous applause. Would my play not be considered abhorrently racist? But instead my play becomes a classic and grows a cult following, with many people viewing it as a celebration of black culture. What would you say?

That is the issue I have this morning. For the most part yesterday was an awesome day: John and I went up to Cambridge, largely just to have a look around, and as part of my ongoing aim to get out of London a bit more. Cambridge is a stunningly beautiful city. To be honest we spent most of the afternoon walking through the botanic gardens, parks, and along the pretty little river. There was a photography exhibition which we both wanted to see, which included some absolutely incredible natural history images.

At about eight though, after a bit of dinner, we made our way to the theatre to watch a live performance of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Of course I had heard a lot about the musical, but surprisingly I’d never actually seen a performance – it had never really crossed my path before yesterday evening. I may have stopped dressing up a while ago, but I’m still very interested in gender bending and trans culture; and of course, Lyn’s memory still means a lot to me. I was thus very much looking forward to what we were about to watch.

I’m afraid to say, however, that within about five minutes of the show starting, the semiotician and cultural critic in me kicked in. It quickly became clear that something very, very odd was going on. Gender norms were being bent, but in a way which still distanced it from the audience: transpeople were dancing and singing merrily on the stage before me, but they turned out to be vampiric aliens from another galaxy. The show seemed to have a nasty subtext which I’m afraid I could not ignore. Slightly more concerning, though, was the fact that the audience around me, many themselves dressed in all kinds of weird costumes, seemed to be revelling in it, taking the performance to be some kind of kinky celebration of trans culture. I’m afraid to say that, given where we were and their apparent age, I couldn’t help wondering whether many of them had actually met a transperson or had many transgender friends. Could such performances just be about accommodating them, allowing them to feel inclusive while maintaining a ‘safe’ distance to the topics at hand?

Perhaps I’m overreading things once again; perhaps I’m just being grumpy. It was a great show and a fun night. But as we rode the train back from Cambridge last night, I just couldn’t silence the troubled voices in the back of my mind. To me, the show seemed to alienate the very culture it claimed on the surface to celebrate; it was a celebration of transvestism and gender nonconformity, but kept it at a safe rhetorical distance. The cross dressers turned out to be cannibals from another galaxy. I’m afraid this gave what I watched a disquieting contradiction which I couldn’t really shut my eyes to.