Absolute Pleasure
Description
A Literary Hub Notable Small Press Book of 2025
Queer writers reflect on the complicated legacy of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Since its earliest midnight showings at the Waverly Theater in New York City, The Rocky Horror Picture Show has been an underground sensation. For five decades, people around the world have dressed up and gathered in dark theaters to dance, yell, mime obscene acts, and forge connections with other queer people and weirdos.
The film shattered expectations and social norms at the time of its release. But how does its presentation of queerness?not to mention its portrayals of murder, manipulation, consent violation, and cannibalism?hold up today? The essays in Absolute Pleasure?by queer writers including Sarah Gailey, Grace Lavery, and Magdalene Visaggio?explore the film's complicated legacy, along with queer and trans joy, sexuality, family, generational understandings of queerness, and what we do with our problematic faves.
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Margot Atwell (she/her/hers) is a writer, editor, publisher, speaker, and community funding expert. She is the former executive director and publisher of Feminist Press. Previously, she was head of publishing and director of community outreach at Kickstarter, PBC, and publisher of Beaufort Books. In 2019, she was selected as a Publishers Weekly Star Watch Honoree and received the Digital Book World Outstanding Achievement Award. She's the coauthor of The Insider's Guide to Book Publishing Success and author of Derby Life. You can find her on Twitter or Instagram at @MargotAtwell, and read her writing in her On the Books newsletter.
Content
- Foreword by Carmen Maria Machado (Iowa City, IA)
- ?Introduction? by Margot Atwell (Brooklyn, NY)
- ?There's a Light: The Queer Chaos and Magic of The Rocky Horror Picture Show? by Jane Claire Bradley (Manchester, UK)
- ?Going Home: Found Family and The Rocky Horror Picture Show? by Margot Atwell (Brooklyn, NY)
- ?Tinted? by Rosie Long Decter (Montreal, Canada)
- ?Asexuality in Transylvania? by Genevieve Hammang (San Diego, CA)
- ?Time Slip: Rewinding Rocky Horror? by Mel King (Brooklyn, NY)
- ?Midnight Picture Show? by Heather O. Petrocelli (Astoria, OR)
- ?A Rather Tender Subject? by Trey Burnette (Palm Springs, CA)
- ?Brief Encounters with Dr. Frank-N-Furter? by A. Ng Pavel (吳慧靈) (Chicago, IL)
- ?On the Queer Morality of Rocky Horror: Or How a Teenager Found Out Her Mom Was in the Original Shadow Cast? by Holly Joy Wertman (Brooklyn, NY)
- ?Calling All Aliens? by Lindsay Katt (New York, NY)
- ?Outgrowing a Cinnamon Role? by Victoria Provost (New York, NY)
- ?Meeting My Mom at the Frankenstein Place? by Birch Rosen (Seattle, WA)
- ?A Wild and Untamed Thing: How Performing in a RHPS Shadow Cast Helped Me Discover My Bodily Autonomy? by Aliya Bree Hall (Portland, OR)
- ?Becoming a Regular Frankie Fan? by Roxy Ruedas (New York, NY)
- ?Rocky Horror and the Performance Cults of Flloyd? by Flloyd (New York, NY)
- ?Who Lives in the Old Dark House? ? by Benjamin Larned (Pasadena, CA)
- ?To Find the Truth I've Even Lied: Self-Deception and Liberation in The Rocky Horror Picture Show? by Magdalene Visaggio (New York, NY)
- ?The Sound of Home in Daydream? by Rocky Halpern (Ridgewood, NY)
- ?My Words to Dr. Frank-N-Furter? by Grace Lavery (Brooklyn, NY)
- ?Double Feature? by Tanya Marquardt (Brooklyn, NY)
- ?Three Ways? by Dave Madden (San Francisco, CA)
- ?To Absent Friends: AIDS and the Rocky Horror Community? by Akira Albar-Kluck (Dublin, Ireland)
- ?A Light in the Darkness: Coming Home? by Juniper Fitzgerald (Omaha, NE)
- ?Sweet Transgression? by Sarah Gailey (California)
- ?This Town Is Neutered: Queer Longing in the Far North? by M. K. Thekkumkattil (Anchorage, AK)
- ?One from the Vaults? by Nino McQuown (Baltimore, MD)
