"I'm a wild and untamed thing!":
why everyone likes Frank
by Elizabeth A. Allen
Brad and Janet are noted as "A Hero" and "A Heroine" in the opening credits, but for most people, it's Frank who thrills, chills and fulfills them. Why? I gave a possible explanation in "Really drives you insa-a-a-ane," part II: he's such an anti-hero that he makes bad look good. How does he do that? Through sheer force of personality.
If you were going to describe Frank as a character, what would you say? You could go along with the definition that he gives himself in "Sweet Transvestite:" "I'm just a sweet transvestite from Transsexual Transylvania!" He does indeed look like one, with his corset, high-heeled shoes and overload of make-up.
But the title of "transvestite" doesn't entirely capture his
personality. A transvestite is a person who derives sexual pleasure from
dressing in clothes conventionally associated with another gender. Usually
t
he clothes provide the transvestite's major source of
excitement. Frank, however, seems to get excited by just about anything:
musclemen (Rocky), assholes (Brad -- see left), sluts (Janet), groupies
(Columbia), delivery boys (Eddie), virgins (Brad and Janet), bondage (note
chains on Rocky's bed in the bridal chamber), food ("Don't get hot
and flustered; use a bit of mustard!"), leather (note his jacket and
whip), orgies ("Don't dream it...."), unusual locations (such
as swimming pools) and probably just about everything else. Would "polymorphically
perverse" work?
As vague as that phrase is, that doesn't describe all of Frank because it excludes one of his most important parts (no, not that one!): his style. He's a vamp; he's a tramp; he's camp. Take, for example, the floor show. Having sonically transduced Brad, Janet, Columbia and Dr. Scott, he could just unfreeze them in the same way that he froze them: in the privacy of his empty lab with a single accompanying song. However, he (literally) stages their coming-out party as a floor show with not one but three songs, of which he, of course, is the star. (See right.) He's one of those theatrical cross-dressing performers known as drag queens.
Frank is not just a drag queen, however. Though he does turn everything into a major production, he doesn't act all the time. He turns deadly :} jealous when Eddie bursts out of the freezer to sing "Hot Patootie" and steal the spotlight from him, and he lashes out at Riff and Magenta for letting Rocky break his chains. Whenever his whims are crossed, he tries to squash the offender as vigorously as possible. So should he be called a dominator?
No, because he does more than just dominate people, which is my point. Even though you could say, "Frank's a transvestite or a polymorphous pervert or a drag queen or a dominator," he does more than just those things that one associates with those descriptions. He can't be reduced to a single one, though. He performs everything in such a manner -- with his signature recklessly sensual, uninhibited and happy (even though he makes people around him ambivalent or miserable) sensuality -- that he ends up transcending labels to just be himself. That's why he's attractive, though his personality can be summed up as little better than bitchy and little worse than wacko. He just is who he is and he doesn't give a damn what anyone else thinks.