The Function of the Fetish in The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

Abstract

Lou Adler's The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) and Stephan Elliott's Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) share an obsession with the fetish, and both locate the fetish on the desiring body of the male. This essay uses psychoanalytic film theory to explore these renderings of the fetish and argues that the films deploy radically different economies of desire; the fetish in Rocky Horror is grounded in a sadistic masculinity, while in Priscilla, the fetish serves as a referent for a masochistic, even utopian principle of 'being'. However, while the political values that the two films give to the fetish as spectacle are quite different, as are the grounding aesthetics and the space allowed to women, ultimately, both films remain unable to enact a sustained, strategic, and comprehensive resistance to traditional, fixed cinematic renderings of gender for women.