The Rocky Horror Picture Show Foreignness and the Other Quotes

How we cite our quotes: All quotations are from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Quote #1

NARRATOR: I would like, ah, if I may...to take you on a strange journey. It seemed a fairly ordinary night when Brad Majors and his fiancée Janet Weiss, two young, ordinary, healthy kids, left Denton that late November evening. […] It's true there were dark storm clouds, heavy, black, and pendulous, towards which they were driving.

The contrast between the sunny brightness of the movie's opening scene and the stormy darkness of the s second scene shows us that we are about to enter a world we are unfamiliar with, and one that may be dangerous, as the "other" is often perceived to be.

Quote #2

BRAD & JANET: There's a light...

CHORUS: Over at the Frankenstein place.

BRAD & JANET: There's a light...

CHORUS: Burning in the fireplace...

BRAD & JANET: There's a light, light in the darkness of everybody's life.

The big castle where Frank-N-Furter lives is dark and foreboding and definitely not what Brad and Janet are used to. Despite their fear of the unfamiliar, Brad and Janet hold out hope that the people inside will harbor some goodness.

Quote #3

JANET: Brad, let's go back, I'm cold and I'm frightened...

The other is always something that the protagonists of a story—here, two heterosexual white "squares"—find unusual and scary. Janet is the one who voices her apprehension about entering the castle.