Over at the Frankenstein Place: Shelley's Tomorrow in the Face of TERF-dom

-Claude Naudé

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As the curtains drew close on 2025 (a year I found to be deeply transphobic and Woman-hating) and start to reopen on a new year, the optimist in me is trying to scrape together signs that there is still some liberal justice, some divine purpose, and some hope for the Other. In a generally heteronormative, white society, where stories which align with an expected dogma get their laurels and we move swiftly on, there are those stories that rock the boat just enough to change how we see the world. For many of us, The Rocky Horror Picture Show is one of those stories.

As I page through my bookmarked memories of the past 365 days, I keep finding my way back to Halloween night of 2025, when I had the privilege of attending my first Rocky Horror audience-participation show. Rocky is off course the OG talented, brilliant, incredible, amazing, show stopping, spectacular, never the same, totally unique, completely not ever been done before, unafraid to reference or not reference, put it in a blender, shit on it, vomit on it, eat it, give birth to it, immortal, end-all-be-all, cult classic, comedy-horror musical that we all know and love.

The story follows two newly-weds that get stranded roadside and ask for help at a nearby mansion. In true Alice-in-Wonderland-style, they step into another world where the mad and delicious Dr Frank N Furter encourages the couple to leave behind their expected gender norms, cast aside their inhibitions, and explore their secret sexual desires. Directed by Jim Sharman and released in 1975, it celebrated its 50^th anniversary last year. Now, by no means do I claim to be a great fan of the show (evidence would suggest that I’m not even a good fan, as I only recently discovered that the original musical was written by Trans icon Richard O'Brien, who also played the role of Riff Raff), but I am drawn and re-drawn to the thing. It is the sweetest cinematic drug that keeps saying, ‘Don’t take this shit so seriously’.

My little Queer heart beats faster just thinking of the audience members that evening. Some dressed up as their favourite characters, but most (me included) wore gender-bending, skimpy, and Bat-Out-of-Hell outfits or accessories. Chains, leather, straps, boots, black and red and pink all over. A wet, effeminate, cruising fever-dream. A pocket universe of dirty drag, flying toilet paper, and singing along at the top of your lungs, as each audience member tried to break the veil of the screen and be a part of the debauchery. The event was held at Cape Town’s the Labia Theatre, where a week later I saw the new Rocky documentary Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror.

The documentary was created by O’Brien’s son, Linus O'Brien, to celebrate 50 years of wickedly beautiful Trans freedom. Done in an interview style, the documentary creates space for the cast, crew, and fans of the film to talk about their experiences combined with vintage behind-the-scenes. O’Brian masterfully interweaves moments of Richard’s insights into being Transgender and third gender, and how that journey influenced the making of Rocky. Coming off the high of a Rocky-rewatch just the week before, I wasn’t expecting to feel the heavy emotions I did during the documentary. Where Rocky is unashamedly dirty, messy, uncareful, low-budget, and at times ugly (all things that I love about it), Strange Journey is wholesome and just the right amount of sentimental, focusing on the humans both on and off stage. (Think the immortal tear-jerker, I’m Going Home, at the end of Rocky). A cinematic, celebratory letter of gratitude as Linus elegantly centres Richard as the genius behind Frank N Furter and with it, its whole Frankenstein Queering.

Frankenstein (or The Modern Prometheus), of course being Mary Shelley’s 1818 publication and famously the first sci-fi novel. (Thank god for Women in STEM). Frankenstein is the story of a doctor that stitches together parts of dead people and uses science to animate this corpse into a living being. Instantly popular and with many adaptations, the story is as thought-provoking and in vogue as ever, as last year also saw its cinematic remake by Hollywood heavyweight Guillermo del Toro. Del Toro’s take feels fresh, as his version seems to try to disrupt the traditional English narrative by weaving in his aesthetics of Latin American Catholicism, yet it still acts as a true retelling of the classic tale. A visually beautiful movie. At first, I thought it was too much of a by-the-book remake of the original, but now I believe it to be an almost love letter to Shelley. Much the same as I believe director Robert Eggers’ version of Nosferatu was to the original 1922 by F W Murnau (or perhaps even its original inspiration, Bram Stoker himself), and Linus’s Strange Journey is to Rocky. Shelly's Frankenstein questions humanity’s fascination with playing god, when she shows how Dr Frankenstein starts to lose interest in the creature that he brought to life and instead begins to see it as a monster. A great thought experiment and quite applicable to our modern AI enterprises, but more importantly—more humanly—Frankenstein inherently questions the bodies we are born into:

What makes one monstrous? What is the correlation between the monster’s body and its consciousness? Is the monster’s consciousness a combination of the parts of the dead people used to make it, or only the one he used to get the brains from? Does it have a soul, and if so, is it a new soul or one from one of the dead people? Do souls even exist, and if so, what does it consist of? Will the creature be able to go to heaven one day, and is there even a heaven? What is life? What is death? 

Etc., etc., into theological and philosophical infinity. A brilliant, Pandora’s box of a tale. No wonder Frankenstein still has new remakes and adaptations today.

Poor Things —directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, based on the novel by Alasdair Gray— is my personal favourite Frankenstein reimagining, that I feel successfully broadens the borders of the classic Frankenstein tale. The story a scientist who transplants the brain of an unborn foetus into the body of its dead mother; that being grows up rapidly and questions the gender norms and expected behaviour that society has in place for its female body. This postfeminist retelling of Frankenstein therefore centres a Woman as the monster, brings to light ways in which the patriarchy manipulates and constructs society, and in true Barbie form, helps to question what it is to be Woman.

What is a Woman? That seems to have been the theme of the last few years, and certainly of 2025. As a male-passing AMAB, who the fuck am I to say, but as I question, re-question, and try on labels to better understand my own fluidity, I look to the stories that question what we are taught is “truth”. With the rise in trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs) and anti-trans rhetoric around the world, I think it is important to not only notice which stories we are telling and retelling, but also whose and how.

It is intentional that Frankenstein has space for gender-play and is therefore open to Trans interpretations. In her research paper The Nameless Monster, scholar Camryn Morgan uses the work of Judith Butler (and other gender studies and Transgender studies scholars) to elegantly show how Shelley is intentional in not giving an actual, human name or a specified gender to Frankenstein’s Monster—leaving it up to the interpretation of the reader to guess, project, or question its sex and gender. Morgan therefore highlights how creatures like Frankenstein’s Monster can expand the gap in the understanding we have between a person’s anatomical sex and their gender. We see ripples of this gender-play in many Frankenstein adaptations. Poor Things leaves room to question what the sex of the foetus would have been and therefore opens up a Trans interpretation, whereas in Del Toro’s Frankenstein, the good doctor uses only parts of fallen, male soldiers and leaves little room for gender-play. The Rocky Horror is of course rife with gender fluidity and has an explicitly Trans doctor, but I believe it is in the questioning of The Monstrous where lies the healing for our modern turmoil. Storytellers, filmmakers, and artists, please please please give us an overtly Trans Frankenstein’s Monster. Let’s make monstrous Dolls. Dolls that don’t fit, Dolls that break the mould, and Dolls that challenge us to expand who we think deserves love—who deserves to be. If they already exist, please show them to me and others. Let’s let The Rocky Horror be just the start of an ever-evolving reimaging of the monstrous Other and the monstrous Self. And above all, please please please keep taking care of yourself and our Sisters.

Here’s me preaching to the choir. Here’s to the Choir. And here’s to a more loving 2026.

Queerly yours,

Claude