Current Events > Rewatched Shock Treatment (Rocky Horror follow-up) last night

(+) Yeah! (+)

I've always liked the music, even if the movie isn't quite as ubiquitous and beloved as Rocky Horror. The fuckin ska song at the start of the song, while corny, sounds awesome. Outside of like two songs, I really enjoy the more synthetic 80's vibe of this soundtrack.

But as I was watching last night, it became clear how much it was trying to spoof fascism? Like of course it's taking on the rampant commercialisation of the eighties and trash TV, it's all a bit on the nose, but the main bad guy in this movie, Farley Flavors, is a fascist. It's the story of how a corrupt corporate head cultivates the fantasy of the ideal American life, calling back to the "golden age" of the 60's, to whip people up into a nationalistic fervour and take advantage of them for his own greed.

Basically, the story of Shock Treatment is that Denton's local TV affiliate, DTV, is purchased - or at least sponsored to the point of becoming a corporate mouthpiece - by a McDonald's spoof called Farley Flavors' Fabulous Fast Food. This is to enact a convoluted plan involving Brad and Janet Majors from the Rocky Horror Picture Show, but the broader goals of this corporate sponsorship are far more wide-reaching and sinister.

The most obvious, on the nose sign of this is that the Farley Flavors company logo is five F's arranged in a circle, which is clearly meant to evoke Nazi imagery - think of that Always Sunny episode, I think the second Chardee MacDennis episode, where Frank hoists a flag with four Fs on it.

Another giveaway is the heavy focus on deep-seated, ingrained symbols of Americana like the idyllic "house with a white picket fence", worshipping the American flag and using its colour scheme to sell products through evoking nationalistic fervour, and the stereotypical 60's ideal of the nuclear family while also explicitly validating bigotry and xenophobia as cornerstones of the American identity. Janet's father is a pawn to peddle Farley's fascist values to the masses, using his hatred of Mexicans and queer people to pander to Denton's TV-viewing public.

There's a focus on pure white and blinding red in DTV's set design, with very little blue in the sets of DTV's programming. The only time that blue comes to the forefront are when everyone goes to sleep - there is very little reprieve from very stark, very draining colour schemes in the sets. When Farley enacts his plan to sell his fascism as "mental health for the state", he appears at a podium with a towering, monochromatic picture of himself behind him. His plan of selling Janet's image as the wholesome girl next door is riddled with hypocrisy, selling her instead as sex appeal while never once letting go of that "girl next door" messaging - the hypocrisy is the point, but the lie also speaks to the state of America's perceived idyllic values that his campaign is promoting.

And Farley is the head of a massive corporation. He's not a politician. He uses the financial force of his business to brute-force his intended messaging through the media, and at the end of the movie he's a fascist figurehead who has all of Denton in straitjackets while he and his collaborators sit at the heart of it all, with no regard for anyone else's prosperity but their own.

There's a greater plot there involving Brad and Janet - mostly Janet - but the broader story of the movie is about these political machinations, leading to the Farley Flavors corporation instilling all of Denton with pride in the company and a great backlash directed at who Farley deems as "the other", leading to "the other" being imprisoned and all of Denton losing their freedom at Farley's behest while he parties.

This theming isn't perfect, and at points it's on the nose to the point of detriment. But I found that my first rewatch of Shock Treatment in years was a lot more prescient than I was expecting, because the whole thing had echoes of Trump and the growing fanaticism of the far-right.

Shock Treatment isn't just a surface-level critique of the excess of the eighties, of the era's growing consumerism and lowbrow, disposable entertainment. It definitely has shades of that, but as shaky as it all was, I found a pretty solid through-line that I didn't fully get when I watched it years ago. Shock Treatment has always been a satirization of fascism, and it's pretty interesting that it came from the machinations of an evil corporation who's sided with someone who's strongly implied to be an actual, card-carrying Nazi from back in the day, and his team of fixers who help to make Farley's fascist goals a reality through their manipulation of Janet and their supposed "mental health" regime consisting of drugs, false imprisonment and pure, petty greed on their part.

yeah ngl this shit is for the nichest of niche folks. Will bump again once I wake up bc I worked hard on it.

I've never seen Shock Treatment since I'd always heard it was worse than Rocky Horror, but this thread is convincing me to check it out. Might watch it sometime this week.

TheOnionKnight posted...

I've never seen Shock Treatment since I'd always heard it was worse than Rocky Horror, but this thread is convincing me to check it out. Might watch it sometime this week.

Cool, hope you like it. I like most of the songs in this movie, there's a really synthetic 80's sound to them. I would say that the movie isn't as good as Rocky Horror, so bear with it, but if you can get over the recasting of Brad and Janet and enjoy the music for the most part it's an okay watch. Also, frankly, Patricia Quinn is smoking hot in it.

One more bump

I actually have it on DVD. I should get around to watching it

i never seen it and ive listened to rhps about 300 times. love that music.