Golden Age Draft: About Alchemical Gaming

I wrote a bit more of the draft for the Golden Age RPG just now. Please feel free to critique it. This section will likely be right after the About This Book section from the last post.

Alchemical Gaming is the term we like to use for the practice of using a game character to produce changes in yourself (or, potentially, the rest of the real world if you're ambitious). We call it "alchemical" after the Jungian understanding of medieval alchemy, which uses the metaphor of turning lead into gold to refer to the perfection of the self. The influential occult philosopher Eliphas Levi referred to this goal as the Great Work. The even more influential psychologist Abraham Maslow called it self-actualization.

Most recently, Jane McGonigal's principles of game design in her book Reality is Broken outline why most people are more likely to make life changes for the sake of a game than because it will improve their real life. In her words, games are meaningful work that we choose, which is exactly what gives them their power to help us. Her game SuperBetter is only the most obvious of many projects built around helping people to use games to change both themselves and the world. She prefers to call this type of game an "alternate reality game", but it seems to us that not all alternate reality games really qualify. Many are only about immersively experiencing a different world for its own sake. Hence, we suggest "alchemical game" as a more accurate term for games that try to help the player to evolve.

Usually alchemical gaming means learning a new skill or new information, expressing feelings or confronting fears you don't feel comfortable facing in your everyday life, or trying out a new way of acting in a safe environment where failure doesn't mean as much as it usually does. When you get really good at alchemical gaming, it can let you do all three of these at once, but take it slow at first by basing your character on only one real-world goal. A game character is always a vehicle for your fun, and always based on your interests and preferences. Using it to work on a real-world goal is only a very small leap from there.

One of the authors of this book, Jason, has been working on a draft for a book all about alchemical gaming for a few years now. When he got the idea for this game, he realized that the best way to finish that old project would be to design a game system to be alchemical from the ground up. That's one of the main reasons this game includes so much real-world history, mythology and religion - learning about those things is the first alchemical fringe benefit of playing the game in the first place. From time to time, you'll see sidebars in this book labeled "Alchemical Tips". These are optional strategies you can use if you're choosing to use your character alchemically. For more detailed information on how it works, refer to pages XX-YY in the Character Creation section of this book.

One final caveat: Although it shares some ideas in common with psychodrama, alchemical gaming is neither therapy nor a replacement for therapy. This game is designed for responsible, mature adults, and that goes triple for the alchemical techniques. Nothing can be quite as disturbing as confronting a fear you aren't yet ready to deal with. Know your limits.

About Golden Age (My RPG in Progress)

This post is eventually going to be the "About This Book" page for the RPG I'm currently working on with Michael Strauss. Both of us have some prior freelance game-writing experience with White Wolf, but this is our first time designing a whole game on our own. He's handling the most of the rules and systems, and I'm taking care of the setting and flavor. Even though I should be packing for Pennsic right now, I got very inspired tonight and thought I should indulge that while it lasts. I also think I'm going to have an easier time writing the book once I've laid out exactly what my goals are. I really like the new open development model that White Wolf and Onyx Path have been using, so in the spirit of that, I'm sharing this with the world at large. I hope you enjoy.

Golden Age is a role-playing game about angels, demons, magic, myth, politics, and peace in the Middle East. Please be aware that this is a game for mature, responsible people. While we make every effort to be tasteful, this book does not pull punches when dealing with sensitive issues such as slavery, cannibalism, prostitution, ritual sacrifice, or religious zealotry. This is because the real, historical Middle Ages contained plenty of each, and because this game is designed to work well as a horror game if you so choose. If reading this book makes you want to do anything violent or dangerous, put it down and seek psychiatric help immediately.

Golden Age is also a role-playing game with an important message. We have chosen the Golden Age of Spain as our historical setting because scarcely anyone alive today can remember a time when Jews, Christians and Muslims could peacefully coexist in the Middle East. Few seem to be aware that southern Spain in the Middle Ages was host to kingdoms in which rabbis and imams studied each other's scriptures while philosophy, science, and the arts flourished. It would be a gross oversimplification to say it was an entirely peaceful time, and the idea of religious tolerance was foreign to the medieval mind . . . but for the most part, the people of that time and place still seem to have done a better job of tolerance than we often do today.

Golden Age is an alchemical game. Alchemy in the Middle Ages concerned itself not with literally turning lead into gold, but rather used that idea as a metaphor for the Great Work of perfecting the self. An alchemical game is a game designed to make the player a better person, not by some arbitrary external standard, but in whatever way or ways that player finds most compelling. Most often, this involves learning something new, changing your own outlook or personality, or using the game as a way to let go of something that's been bothering you. Experienced gamers will already know what we mean here, because they've likely had alchemical experiences in games before.

Golden Age is a game about the occult. In his groundbreaking study of role-playing games Shared Fantasy, Gary Alan Fine found that up to thirty percent of gamers have an interest in the occult. That's a cause of RPGs including so much magic and mythology, not an effect of it, so we make no apology for being interested real-world magical practices ourselves. Part of the alchemical intent of the game is to allow players to learn occult basics such as tarot, the Tree of Life, the four elements, and the signs of the zodiac simply by playing the game over time. If that doesn't interest you, don't worry, because you'll forget the parts that bore you anyway. Just in case it needs to be said, this book will not enable you to accomplish cartoony feats like floating in the air or throwing fireballs, so if that's what you're after, please do us all a favor and go talk to a shrink instead.

Ultimately, this game is whatever you make it. It can easily work as a geopolitical game, a mystery / horror game, or a high fantasy game, and probably also in other styles we haven't thought of. It also can work just as easily as a tabletop or a live-action (LARP) game, though for live-action we obviously recommend using the tarot system rather than dice. Part of our motivation in designing it was to steep it in a mythology that gets very little screen time in fantasy gaming or literature. To our knowledge, no pen-and-paper RPG based on Middle Eastern mythology has ever been widely published until now. There have been several games about angels or demons, but none of them have included playable races like djinn, ifrit, ghuls, golems, dybbuks, Apkallu (fish-people), or Bouda (were-hyenas). Most of the fantasy out there has traditionally stayed reasonably close to Tolkien and Dungeons & Dragons, with elves, dwarves, halflings and the like. Quite a lot of it is excellent, but we wanted to break new ground. We've always found the mythology and magical lore of the Middle East to be fascinating. It's certainly every bit as rich as the myths underlying more standard fantasy settings, as you will see below.

I See What You Did There... (Or: Why Dystopia Rising Rules)

Dystopia Rising, where have you been all my life?

I've been LARPing (live-action role-playing) since I was 17 years old. Most of that's been in LARPs based on the Storyteller System games by White Wolf - Vampire and a little Changeling, usually with the Camarilla (now known as the Mind's Eye Society). Along the way I've been to regional and national events, met some fine actors without a single second of formal training, and come to think of LARP as an immensely powerful tool for personal transformation. I've been picking away for the last few years at a book on what my friends and I like to call "alchemical gaming" - the practice of creating a character around issues you'd like to work on and/or things you'd like to learn more about.

Many gamers do this already, whether on purpose or by accident, but I think better results would be possible with a formalized system. I've personally spoken to a lot of gamers who've told me that working on their social anxiety is much easier when they're in character, since playing someone else makes it feel safer if you (metaphorically) fall on your face. If you intrude on a conversation or say something inappropriate, there's far less at stake if others badly of your character than if they think badly of you. If you're trying to learn to be more confident or outgoing, it's easier to "fake it till you make it" as someone else than as yourself. In psychology, this is known as successive approximation.

I'd only just completed a very rough draft of the alchemical gaming book when I made it to a Dystopia Rising game for the first time. What I discovered is a game that left me feeling more fulfilled than any LARP I'd preveiously been to, largely because it's build from the ground up for alchemical gaming. I have to admit, coming from the nonprofit LARP background I did, the idea of a for-profit LARP company gave me pause at first. But from what I understand, Dystopia Rising was in many ways built to address some of the longtime shortcomings of the Camarilla. And they deliver a truly kickass product. I've personally never seen so much attention to detail regarding props, costuming, and makeup, not even at most regional and national events I'd attended in the past. (The Grand Masquerade being the notable exception, but that was heavily subsidized since it was a promotion for the World of Darkness MMO.) And staying in character for a whole weekend straight allows for an unprecedented level of immersion.

What amazed me most was how many talented people I've run across at DR. At first I thought it might be a coincidence that every other person I meet seems to be a game designer or a singer or a poet, but as I said above, the game system is built to encourage creativity (and to appeal to those who already like to create). If you play an Entertainer and perform in-character, you can get the mechanical benefit of restoring someone else's Mind points even if your performance wasn't that great. And in order to teach someone a skill, you have to be able to talk somewhat authoritatively about how that skill works for 15 to 30 minutes. That usually requires real-world research into whatever your character is supposed to be good at, which is information you're probably going to remember later.

Before I had been to a boffer LARP, I had concerns about being forced to play a character that's physically similar to myself. After all, when you simulate combat with rock-paper-scissors instead of foam weapons, you can play a character who's strong and fast even if you're a scrawny weakling. But if you want to be strong and fast at a boffer LARP, you need to get that way for real. And that's not a bug, it's a feature... just like how if you want to have some awesome item, you have to actually take the time to make it yourself (or get someone to make it for you). I can't begin to tell you how sick I was of seeing item cards pinned to someone's lapel saying "I look this way" or "I'm carrying this item", in lieu of actually having the right costume, prop, or makeup to make the card unnecessary.

In her book Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change The World, which has rapidly become my bible for revising the alchemical gaming book, Jane McGonigal explains that most people are far more inclined to improve themselves for the sake of being better at a game than just because it's a good idea. And it's true - when I think about exercise, the idea of being able to be better at running away from zombies excites me  a whole lot more than "being in shape" or even "having an easier time getting a date". This is because, as McGonigal says, games are defined by being something we choose to do, unlike the everyday realities of life that we didn't choose. And this is why I have to applaud the folks at Eschaton Media for creating a game system that naturally tends to herd its players toward testing their limits and learning new things, without it really even being that noticeable unless it's already what you're looking for.

I'm currently working on my own game system built around teaching people about peace in the Middle East and also some basics of occultism such as the four elements and the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, set in medieval Spain and featuring angels, demons, flesh-eating ghuls, djinn, werehyenas and other Middle Eastern mythological creatures as playable races. I can only hope the educational parts come out as subtle and effective as the ones in DR. It's also my hope that I might find some Dystopia Rising players who are interested in testing Alchemical Gaming once I have the system complete enough for playtesting. I could also really use anecdotes about how a character has helped you to become a better person or to work on a long-standing issue, and maybe a collaborator for the book who has background in both LARP and either counseling or psychology. If you're interested in helping, please contact me either here or privately.

An open letter to Duquesne University

I am writing this letter because a few months ago, I read an article in the Post-Gazette about how Duquesne managed to avoid allowing a union to form among its adjunct faculty. Apparently, enough adjuncts signed union interest cards that a state labor board came in. Duquesne agreed to abide by the board's decision, and the board eventually ruled that there should indeed be a union. Duquesne then resorted to legal trickery and basically said, "We don't have to abide by this decision because we're a religious institution, and the federal government legally can't compel us as a result."

Well done, Duquesne. You have successfully undermined your Catholic principles and shown the whole world that you serve Mammon rather than God. Bravo. The simple fact that something is legal doesn't make it moral or even a good idea. I would have thought that was common sense, but apparently not.

As a person of faith - Jewish, not Catholic, but still a believer in what you would call the Old Testament - I find it appalling that you have no interest in paying your workers a living wage. The Jewish bible (my term for the same book) has a great deal to say about how we should all have concern for the poor. We're supposed to leave fallen fruit from our orchards on the ground so that poor people have something to eat. The corners of our fields are to be left unreaped for the same reason. And the New Testament has even more to say about the poor - just look at Luke 3:11 and 12:33. Concern for the welfare of the poor is interwoven throughout our shared scripture, and also figures very prominently in the ministries of John the Baptist and Jesus. I realize times have changed and most of us aren't farmers anymore, but these principles still apply. Especially to employers whose employees are already poor.

So why in the world should I, a Jew, have to remind you of this? Why are you deliberately keeping your adjunct faculty in poverty, especially when they bring in so much money for the school? And most importantly, how can you have the gall to call yourselves a Catholic institution when you ignore what the Bible has to say about employment practices?

Let's look at some hard facts about how much money Duquesne makes per class vs. how much it pays its adjuncts. These numbers really speak for themselves, and most of them come from Duquesne's own web site. Duquesne's 2012 undergraduate tuition is $27,668 a year, which comes to $13,834 a semester. Health and music students pay more, but I'm trying to be as fair as I can here, so I'll use the smaller number that applies to the most students. Students at universities that aren't on the quarter system (I went to the U of Chicago) normally take five courses per semester, so that's about $2767 a class. And the average class taught by an adjunct has around 27 people. So, based on these numbers, Duquesne makes just under $75,000 a class, and they only just recently raised their adjunct pay to $3000 a class. Maybe not even for all departments - some adjuncts may still be making $2500 a class. Even though the larger number is only just over the amount that *one* of their students pays to take the class, this wouldn't be so bad if they could teach more than two classes a semester - but that isn't allowed. So the upshot of this is that Duquesne actively prevents its adjuncts from making more than $12,000 a year.

Now I ask you, my reader, whoever you are: Could *you* reasonably live on $12,000 a year? Bear in mind that this amount is only just above the federal poverty line of $11,170. I suspect the answer is probably, "No way! Are you crazy?" Also bear in mind that adjuncts do not even get the option of health insurance, and that the amount of free time required for lecture prep, test design, and grading papers and tests literally ensures they will never make anything close to minimum wage. That kind of time investment is understandable for salaried workers with benefits, but certainly not for the low rate of pay Duquesne gives its adjuncts. Yet the adjuncts do it anyway, because most of them probably love to teach, and of course because they need to eat. It is shameful that Duquesne takes advantage of that fact by exploiting them as much as it can.

This means that Duquesne is not only refusing to pay its adjuncts a living wage, but actually keeping them from making enough money to reasonably live on. They're also paying just enough that it will be impossible or very difficult to get public assistance of any kind. This would be immoral for any institution, and in fact it's the exact same thing Wal-Mart does, but for a religious institution of higher learning it is also myopic and hypocritical. Duquesne has a history department like any university, and yet it seems fundamentally unable to grasp the lessons of Gandhi and King. When speaking of passive resistance, Gandhi said, "First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win." Make no mistake, Duquesne: your adjuncts are the ones who control the means of production in this situation, and there's no way you'll ever be able to replace even a small fraction of them on short notice when they realize it. The inevitable adjuncts' strike at your university will bring your classes grinding to a halt, and even better, most of your students will be glad to go home and play video games for as long as they have to until the issue is resolved. Especially because it's not often that a person gets to play video games while feeling like they're helping one of their teachers.

So this is my message to you, Duquesne: Do the right thing before your adjuncts wise up and force you to. They are very intelligent people who understand the lessons of history, apparently better than you do. It is only a matter of time before you have a very sticky situation on your hands - walkouts, strikes, and sit-ins always make the employer look very bad. Doubly so if you make the mistake of getting Campus Security involved. Just do the right thing now and save yourself a lot of grief. It might even earn you some bonus points with the diocese.

Sincerely,

Jason Louis Feldstein

concerned citizen, boyfriend of an adjunct faculty member, and magister of the Pillar of Smoke

Enough already. This madness has to end. (Please help.)

Truth, Justice, and the American Way

A Political Ritual for Our Time

Brought to you by the Pillar of Smoke (http://www.jewishmagic.net)

With special thanks to Sara, Jason, Troy, and Vlad, our collaborators in the Facebook brainstorming session that led to this ritual.


"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
-George Bernard Shaw

It’s long past time liberal magicians took it upon ourselves to create some real and lasting change in this country - and let's face it, most magicians are probably liberal. This ritual is designed to affect not just the election, but the political climate of the country for at least the next several years, nudging things in the direction of listening to new voices such as third parties, removing the influence of money from politics, and creating true economic equality. If the idea of using magic in this way bothers you, probably best to move on; no harm done. But if the idea of getting specific, measurable political results with your magic excites you the way it excites my friends and me, then please read on, and share this ritual with your friends before election day.

Try to put aside any long-standing assumptions about what is or isn't possible to accomplish through magical means. Also realize that even if we only manage to change the national consciousness around  voting just a little, that will still be a victory. And even such a small victory would likely be enough to clinch the election. Rest assured, though, that our results will be anything but small.

We have attempted similar magic once before on a similar scale, before the 2006 election. Because of the popularity of the V for Vendetta movie and my own fondness for the graphic novel, I (Jason) made the decision to use the character V as the thoughtform the ritual evoked. Evoking fictional characters is a reasonably normal practice in chaos magic, but many practitioners from other traditions had issues with it, and in retrospect I should have realized that might be a problem. (That ritual can be found here.) This time, I hope I’ve made wiser evocation choices.

We have used angels because they are both ancient and reasonably universal, and honestly because Jewish magic is what I know best these days. I say “universal” because at least in theory, any Jew, Christian, Muslim or Ceremonial Magician should have no problems dealing with them, and hopefully they’re acceptable to some pagans as well. Angels also make sense because they allow us to work within a similar paradigm to our political enemies, the Tea Partiers and the Christian Right, and the best way to disrupt a system is from within. Make no mistake: liberals are on the right side of history on (at the very least) every civil liberties issue, and more to the point, the bible is on our side too. For some very thought-provoking documentation on that, take a look here.

If you belong to a pagan tradition that forbids you from using angels, or if it just makes you uncomfortable, by all means substitute appropriate spirits or gods from your tradition. (I wouldn’t presume to tell you which ones, because I’m sure you know your own tradition far better than I do.) The same goes for the Hebrew names such as Adonai Elohim, which are in brackets to let you know that if you don’t want to use them, you can skip them. It may lessen the result somewhat, but then again, I may only think that because I’m Jewish.  Just use your common sense, accumulated wisdom and experience, and everything will be fine.

At the end of the ritual, we mention the servitor FOVWINC, which we empowered the evening of October 31. The name is assembled from the first letters of the seven major swing states (Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Wisconsin, Iowa, New Hampshire, and Colorado). FOVWINC’s purpose is to provide a vehicle into which we can all pour our shared energy during this working. After the ritual is concluded, it will draw its sustenance from the economic and social results it helps to create, for as long as we need it. This ritual will empower you to use FOVWINC in your own magic from now on. It will be glad to help you with any magic that pursues justice, equality or truth, on as small or large a scale as you wish, and every use will strengthen it a little more. If you like, you can drop the sigil on a piece of paper or write it in any place that could use an injection of equality, justice and/or truth, and FOVWINC will take care of it.

Instructions:

Start around 11:30 or 11:45 PM on November 5^th with whatever banishing or other practices you normally use to start ritual. If you don’t usually use a banishing ritual, we might suggest the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, which can be found at this site. If you like to use scented oils for your magic, Abramelin oil would be most appropriate for angelic work; if you like to burn incense, any combination of frankincense, myrrh, cinnamon, calamus and/or cassia would be fitting. (We find frankincense to be particularly useful because in addition to being a traditional offering, it is also mildly psychoactive, so it will help to get you in the proper mood to do magic.)

Begin the ritual below at midnight. To be clear, that’s the midnight between the 5^th and the 6^th, the very very beginning of election day. Among other things, we are magically setting the tone for that day. If you have multiple people taking part, we suggest marking who will read which parts ahead of time.

The Ritual:

O Raguel, Angel of Justice, spirit of harmony and freedom, wise and fair judge over all beings, we summon you. The servants of Mammon and Moloch have done great injustices in our name, causing ever increasing suffering to our people and our land. [In the name of  Adonai Elohim,] we adjure you: listen to our grievances, judge their merit, and dispense divine judgement upon the demons responsible, so that true justice will return to our country. Come, O Raguel, and hear us!

O Zadkiel, Angel of Freedom, spirit of mercy and forgiveness, comrade-in-arms of Michael, we summon you. The servants of Mammon and Moloch have plunged our country into depravity and despair with their violence, theft and lies. [In the name of tAdonai Elohim,] we adjure you: vanquish them, bind them, imprison them, so that true mercy will return to our country. Come, O Zadkiel, and hear us!

Attend us, O angels, and listen well to our accusations:

Mammon, demon of greed, has held sway over our land for too long.

Together he and Moloch, demon of corruption, have conspired to enslave us.

Their servants are insidious, infiltrating every part of our nation.

They have controlled our government, contorting its policies to favor their agenda.

They have destroyed our economy, expecting us to pay the bill.

They have started and prolonged an unjust war, sacrificing numerous innocents to their demon masters on the altar of profit.

They have contaminated our food, replacing honest farming with animal torture and natural crops with dangerous counterfeits, then deceiving the public to hide their sins.
They have acted illegally, then changed the law afterwards as if to absolve themselves.

They hoard wealth, while ignoring the poor and the sick.

They claim piety, but their every action is unrighteous.

And now, one of these dangerous hypocrites claims to be worthy of leadership.

This cannot be.

This must not be.

We the People say, “No more.”

In the name of our country’s ancestors, the Founding Fathers, we demand your intervention.

What they built must not be corrupted any longer, or it will surely be destroyed.

We the People charge you with performing this sacred task.

We command you by the merit of John Adams, by his own words: “Banks have done more injury to the religion, morality, tranquility, prosperity, and even wealth of the nation than they can have done or ever will do good.”

We command you by the merit of Benjamin Franklin, by his own words: “Money has never made man happy, nor will it; there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more of it one has, the more one wants.”

We command you by the merit of Thomas Jefferson, by his own words: “I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”

We command you by the merit of George Washington, by his own words: “The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained.”

Judge now, O Angels. Let your justice be swift and severe.

Bind Mammon, that prosperity may come to all our citizens, not only the few.

Bind Moloch, that our government may serve all our people, not just the rich.

As these demons fall from prominence, reveal their worshippers for what they are: selfish, greedy creatures who deserve our pity, not our admiration.

Let your brethren of the Host join in your appointed task.

Together, aid those who work toward greater equality, prosperity, and accountability, both within and outside the government.

Bless those who dare to speak the truth, no matter who listens or what it costs them.

And heal our nation of the division that has caused our culture war, so we can all value each other for our diversity, not merely our similarities.

Most of all, on this election day, empower our servitor FOVWINC in its duty: to bring clear minds, wisdom and discernment to all who vote, so that those who truly serve all of the people will prevail.

(Face north. Draw FOVWINC’s sigil in the air, starting at the upper right where the dot is, while visualizing it superimposed over the country. Then do it again facing east, then south, and then finally west.)

The Sigil of FOVWINC

All these things we do command you in the name of We the People, [in the name of Adonai Elohim,] and by the merits of the Founding Fathers. You cannot refuse us, for our cause is just and our intentions noble. Now, go forth and do our will!

(Conclude the ritual by blowing out candles, turning on the lights, or however you normally end ritual.  The traditional Jewish magical way to end would be with either the words "Amen. Amen. Selah.", or if you're feeling a bit bolder, "Ken y'hi ratzon", which means "May this be God's will.")

Then go to sleep, and don’t forget to vote!)

If you'd like a downloadable PDF version of this ritual, you can find it here. Please be aware that I may not be able to update it with new edits as often as I update this page.

Jewish Magic Question & Answer Session

I'm getting close to the end of my first phase of research for the Jewish Magic book, so now might be a good time to field some questions. This will help me to figure out what I should read next, and how well I've absorbed what I've read already.

So ask your questions about Jewish magic, and I'll do my best to answer them.

Why "Shock Treatment" May Be One of the Most Brilliant Films Ever Made

I'm going to take this blog in a bit of a different direction... but I did say above that one of my topics is mindfuck cinema, and Shock Treatment is certainly that. It's also a film whose writer doesn't seem to understand its significance, or even the fact that it was good, and I find that sad. I'm sitting here with my good friend Mani, who agrees with me about how sad it is, and so we wanted to take a little bit of time to thank Richard O'Brien for his genius. And now, for his benefit and everyone else's, we're going to explain why the Rocky Horror sequel that most people seem to genuinely despise is, in fact, a work of utterly incomparable social commentary.

We do have to acknowledge that we agree with Mr. O'Brien when he says the movie has quite a few problems. We're going to get those out of the way for the sake of honesty and presenting a clear picture. The sets look cheap, some of the acting choices are strange, and the plot is indecipherable, at least on a first viewing. It took me personally at least five watchings to really understand what the hell was going on. But once I did understand it, it reminded me of Stephen Sondheim's often-misunderstood musical Anyone Can Whistle.

Both stories are about characters who struggle against a society that tries to impose conformity upon them using manufactured miracles, mental health claims, outright lies, defamation, and seduction.The moral of both stories could be simply stated this way: In a world full of mad people, the few sane ones get labeled mad and cast out. Both musicals were completely unsuccessful on release, because they were so ahead of their time that no one understood them. Anyone Can Whistle closed after only nine performances on Broadway, with terrible reviews, but so many people like it now that the joke goes, "If as many people saw Anyone Can Whistle on Broadway as say they did today, it would still be running."

We see a parallel here. And certainly within Rocky Horror shadow-casts, we've seen that many cast members now seem to really enjoy Shock Treatment. Ten or fifteen years ago, that was definitely not the case. So we think Shock Treatment's time is almost upon us. Now let us explain why.

First, Shock Treatment also shares with Anyone Can Whistle a fantastic soundtrack. If you listen to either of these albums alone, especially without seeing the show, I expect you'll be impressed. Both Richard O'Brien and Sal Piro, president of the international Rocky Horror Fan Club, say they like the music from Shock Treatment a lot more than the music from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. But don't take other people's word for it... here are some links to music from the movie on YouTube to listen for yourself.

Little Black Dress
Looking for Trade
Shock Treatment
Lullaby

Okay: pretty good, right? Especially if you aren't opposed to an 80's-synth-pop-type sound. But in his interview here, Mr. O'Brien also happens to casually mention that the movie predicted modern reality TV. In 1981. That is pretty amazing, and it's not an achievement that we should allow to be understated. In this movie, an evil TV sponsor and fast food tycoon, later revealed to be Brad's long-lost identical twin brother Farley, lures Brad and Janet into a reality TV show in order to completely control their lives and eventually seduce Janet. Okay, there - we explained the plot in one sentence. Now you can enjoy the movie without having to figure it all out yourself. (Because trust us, we didn't have easy time of it at first either.) The overbearing product placement (in between nearly every line of both "Bitchin' in the Kitchen" and the Happy Homes scenes) is also a nice subtle touch.

We also feel the movie succeeds as a rather scathing critique of American culture. Everything in this America looks plastic, cheap, and really about as fake as possible. Even the characters' smiles (particularly Janet's parents' smiles) look phony and plastered on. This is how America looks to a Brit. I imagine it's a bit like how Japan looks to us - in other words, for British people America is Bizarro Britain, and for Americans Japan is Bizarro America. But Mr. O'Brien's criticism is right on the nose: our culture in the States has shifted increasingly toward shallowness, materialism, consumerism and selfishness - and this in comparison with the 1980's, a notoriously self-indulgent and narcissistic period in our history. The phrase "Faggots are maggots" seems eerily similar to "God hates fags". That hatred lurks beneath the surface of America, and as an outsider, Mr. O'Brien is right to point it out to us, as he does repeatedly throughout the movie.

We think Mr. O'Brien may not understand why this film resonates with so many young people today. It's probably because this is a movie about the subtle forms of mind control that so many of us experience while growing up. And now they've followed us into adulthood - there's no longer any media that even pretends to be unbiased, only liberal propaganda and conservative propaganda. Drug companies advertise their antidepressants openly on television... as if a layperson knows enough about mental health to self-diagnose a disorder. "Sanity for Today" is upon us, and anyone who's paying attention should be terrified.

The movie shows a corporate figure using his influence to manipulate people for purely greedy and selfish reasons... and that's something any American should be able to understand in the age of Occupy Wall Street. Beyond that, both of us were weird kids, weirder teenagers, and remain pretty unusual adults, and we didn't have an easy time of it with school bullies as a result. So it's gratifying to see a movie in which the protagonists seem happy to escape from a town that's degenerated into a conformist cult. Blind obedience is willful self-enslavement... which is fine if you value comfort over knowledge, but that's not us, and probably not a lot of Rocky Horror fans.

When comparing Shock Treatment and Anyone Can Whistle above, we mentioned both stories revolve around manufactured miracles. Anyone Can Whistle has a rock with water coming out of it, while Shock Treatment has the incomparable Bert Schnick, a "blind" man who reveals that he suddenly can see. In both cases, the fake miracle convinces most of the town the villain is an angel, starting them on the road to blind, mindless adoration of that villain. The protagonists have no choice but to leave and seek their fortune, which they seem happy to do anyway. What I realized tonight is that I like both these musicals for the same reason I liked Brave New World: the nonconformists ultimately find happiness outside the society that rejected them, in the company of others who understand them. I think that's a message more unpopular kids and adults need to hear, whether they get it from a movie like the recent documentary Bully or from a Rocky-Shocky double feature on Halloween.

Mr. O'Brien, we salute you. While you're definitely correct that this movie has more than its share of problems, we believe the true measure of an artist is whether his work successfully reveals to society parts of itself that it would rather not see. On this level, Shock Treatment is a complete success. We wish you luck and speed in finding someone to adapt it for the stage, and hope to have an opportunity to see it when that happens. Please know that your work is deeply appreciated and influential - perhaps even in ways you might not have intended - and that, too, is the mark of a great artist.