The Rocky Horror scene (below, starting at 2:03, though ER fans might want to marvel in Paul McCrane’s AMAZING hair first) was my introduction to the Rocky Horror show (I knew “Time Warp,” sorta, but I didn’t know what it was from) and I was mesmerized by the makeup and costumes and weirdness of it all.

I might have picked up on the fact that Doris was high and that this was what allowed her to finally shed her insecurity and shyness and jump up on stage with the rest of the Rocky Horror people. It felt triumphant, as I think it was intended, but moreso because at the time I was also shy and insecure and Doris’s victory was my victory. Removing her shirt was an obvious metaphor for skin-shedding, but she was still wearing a demure-looking camisole — she’s still Doris. On rewatch, it’s not as vicarious a thrill as it had once been.

But more than that scene, I remembered Coco’s “screen test.” She’d been approached in a diner by a man claiming to be a director, who flatters her and asks her to audition for his new movie. And when she gets to his place everything is a little weird, but she rolls with it because she so desperately wants to be famous. But then he tells her to take off her shirt, and she freaks, and he calls her a silly little schoolgirl, and then she takes her shirt off because she thinks this is what it’s going to take, but she’s crying the whole time, and this scene TRAUMATIZED me. Still does. The fact that she’s crying doesn’t bother the guy at all; in fact, he’s probably getting off on it. There’s no metaphorical skin-shedding here; Coco’s left vulnerable and raw, and we don’t know what happens next.

There are so many dark moments in the movie, many of which I had blissfully skipped over when watching it as a kid. In addition to Coco’s “screen test,” Ralph’s five-year-old sister gets brutally attacked, Montgomery lives completely isolated from his family and, once Ralph and Doris get together, his friends; one dancer almost kills herself, another has an abortion, Leroy is homeless in 1970s New York. And while by the end of the movie Leroy’s gotten himself an invite to join Alvin Ailey’s dance troupe, we don’t actually see his “poor kid makes good” moment of triumph, which is interesting. Should we have? The movie doesn’t really spend that much time on him, other than to highlight his refusal to turn in English homework and the way he gets used by whatshername to get back at her parents. We don’t see him dance, really, after his audition scene.

He’s not the only character left out in the cold, either. Bruno starts as a musical genius, snobbishly refusing to play “old” instruments, and ends up as a musical genius who may have learned his lesson about classical music, or not. He gets that one iconic scene with the movie’s theme song blaring out of his dad’s taxi while the students all dance in the street, but it’s not really HIS scene. He doesn’t really have a story, he’s just there. (The TV show gives him — and Leroy — more to do.)

Mostly what I was struck by, in both the movie and the TV series (available on Netflix Instant Watch — you’re welcome), is how normal everyone looks. Would any of these actors get roles in a high school musical movie or series today? Has it really been since the early 80s that we’ve had a TV show about high school kids so diversified in terms of socio-economic background? Not to mention race and sexuality — Montgomery’s homosexuality may not have been treated with significant depth and it is completely erased in the series, but he’s at least given not one, but two coming out scenes (one to Doris, one to his entire acting class). The only one I can think of is My So-Called Life, but Rayanne and Rickie were set as contrast to Angela’s comfortable middle-class heterosexual normative world — she’s the central character, and she reacts to them. In Fame everyone is pretty much given equal footing, and the norm is no one really has a comfortable life.

Oh, and there’s Glee, of course, which is as cheesy and campy as Fame was, with kids from a variety of backgrounds (in Ohio, no less!), though the show tends to focus primarily on the Jocks vs. Arts dichotomy rather than on the kids using art to raise themselves up. Do kids think that way anymore, anyway? What with arts funding slowing to a trickle if it comes at all and shows that promise insta-fame and celebrity without requiring either dues-paying or talent, are the ideas in Fame so outdated now?

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