She also feels that the theme of The Rocky Horror Picture Show is inappropriate for children. ‘The Time Warp’ mentions ‘the pelvic thrust,’ and Christy feels that this dance is inappropriate for children.
He said, “Christy brought some things to my attention regarding your song selection. With that incident in mind, I wasn’t surprised when Peter called me into his office during lunch break one day to tell me about Christy’s decision to censor me. After I said that, Christy got real quiet, and I could tell she was pissed she didn’t like being told what was and wasn’t appropriate. Christy was my superior-she was twice my age-and I let her know that onstage homosexual intimacy wasn’t the most appropriate topic for her to bring up around me, a then eighteen-year-old. She got drunk at a staff party and told me about her first lesbian stage kiss. The kids could tell the difference.Ĭhristy’s “Time Warp” censorship was her attempt to get back at me for an incident that occurred towards the beginning of camp. They already disliked Christy because she yelled at them so much-and her yelling wasn’t constructive it was a bitter, unrelenting powertrip. I told my campers exactly what happened, and they didn’t take it well. With all that praise coming my way, my ego grew to Mozartian proportions, so when Peter the Head Director told me that Christy the Junior Division Supervisor didn’t want me to perform the song of my choice, “The Time Warp,” in the following week’s Monday Night Parent Showcase, I was indignant. Many of them came up to me after the shows to give me hugs and business cards.
Before the performances, I made short speeches about how hard the kids worked and how proud of them I was. My groups sang, “Lean on Me,” the Ragtime “Prologue,” and “New York State of Mind.” I’ll put modesty aside for a moment and say that each number brought the house down. The kids performed these songs at the Monday Night Parent Showcases. The staff was essentially the real-life counterparts to the Waiting For Guffman characters, but it never occurred to us that in laughing at the movie, we were laughing at ourselves.Īs a Junior Division Music Instructor, it was my job to teach small groups of eight to thirteen-year-olds new songs every week. We watched Waiting For Guffman, quoting lines and laughing. The state’s Teacher of the Year spoke to us about handling problem children. Many of the attending students (campers) had a real interest in the arts, but some of them were only there because they didn’t want to go to sports camp, and their parents saw it as a relatively inexpensive babysitting service.Ī week before the camp began, the staff got together for an overnight retreat. I didn’t see the big deal with the song-I mean, it’s just a jump to the left.īefore college, I worked as a music teacher at essentially a day camp in Michigan that called itself a school and spelled “theater” with the ‘r’ before the ‘e’. Still, my wanting to perform “The Time Warp” almost cost me my job. I’ve never gone to a midnight screening of the film and I don’t understand how it became a cult classic. I don’t even like The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I wish my first fight against censorship was about something significant in the grand scheme of things, like my freedom to worship the unpopular deity of my choice, but it was about my right to sing “The Time Warp” from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
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