"Frank N. Furter, it's all over!": the weirdo ending
by Elizabeth A. Allen
It seems like, in every single fantasy that I have read or seen, the protagonists are invariably tempted to forget their quests and spend the rest of their days in oblivious, yet sinister, diversions. RHPS isn't the only example of this.
It never works, though. The protagonists always recollect themselves and resist the evil. The good guys forge ahead in their quests and win, much to the disappointment to those who think the villains are cooler. :(
The Rocky Horror Picture Show functions differently, though. Brad
and Janet enter the Annual Transylvanian Convention nervous and revolted;
Janet remarks that "it seems so unhealthy" at the Frankenstein
Place. At first they want to escape, but, as the sexual bizarreries of the
evening increase, they are drawn in...with pleasure. Frank predicts in "Planet
Schmanet Janet," "The Transducer will seduce you!" And it
does. It turns Brad and Janet into slinky 
sex fiends who've
completely forgotten the dweebs that they used to be. Like the reprise of
"Science Fiction Double Feature" says, "Darkness has conquered
Brad and Janet." They end up succumbing to the seduction instead of
resisting it...in a way utterly against the norms of the fantastical genre.
Why does The Rocky Horror Picture Show end this way? I think that the reason goes back to the way in which a fantasy can respond to the traditions of fantasy. Fantasy has a tendency to fly off into highfalutin nonsense or to become drearily moralistic. The Rocky Horror Picture Show ends the way it does because it's trying to go against such bombast. We think that the film might strike a philosophical note at the end when the narrator intones, "And crawling on the planet's face...some insects called the human race...lost in time, lost in space...and meaning..." Heavy stuff here -- people are just "insects," lost in the purposeless void of life.
Are we supposed to believe that ending, though? After the narrator says, "Lost in time, lost in space," the audience screams out, "What does this movie lack?" To this the narrator seems to say, "Meaning." The audience participation question upsets any intellectual pretensions that the narrator's lines construct. The film says that people are "lost in time, lost in space and meaning;" there's nothing left; it's all silliness. The film mocks, counteracts and deflates any moral closure. If its anti-moralistic tone has any moral, it's "don't dream it; be it." Translation: we would do better to live life rather than analyze it, like I'm doing in this essay. :)