The Rocky Horror Picture Show

This picture shares the value of community as me alongside my friends are able to go to a place where most people from Irvine would consider ghetto or trashy. This place is not only the opposite of this, but also is a place that makes this big group of people feel welcome to express themselves freely, especially for the event! The Rocky Horror Picture show brings about people from all different communities to the Frida Cinema, which is a nonprofit organization and LGBTQ+ friendly. 

Community is expressed here as this photo is demonstrating people coming together to go support a nonprofit organization and overall just have fun watching a fun movie. This place is so important to me and other people because it gives everyone who goes there a place to be themselves outside of Irvine. Irvine can sometimes seem suffocating because of how perfect everything is. Rather, in places like this artsy area on 4th street, not everything is uniform, making people who aren’t necessarily uniform or “normal” feel comfortable being in this place. 

In Irvine, there is often a false reality that puts people growing up here in the so-called “Irvine bubble.” This often creates the false perception that everything outside of Irvine should be similarly “perfect.” If this is not in fact the case, people, like teens and adults in Irvine, will resort to name calling and often perceive places with different personalities and intertwined cultures as ghetto and unfit for living and exploring at night. This has overall shaped me and my identity in many ways. As a person who has grown up in places other than Irvine, I have been able to see the beautiful communities that people have built up in places that are not made up of grass cut perfectly everyday and strategically placed identical shopping centers. Overall, this has been a very big learning experience for me as I have been privileged enough to live in Irvine while also being able to understand other communities and cultures. With this, I am deeply hurt when people attempt to put others down due to their living situation, which they only are able to judge on the surface; most of the time, you have to go deeper to understand the true meaning and importance of these places. 

This false perception that teens growing up in Irvine build-up promote negativity in places that are not exactly prim and proper. This can often group places, like Santa Ana, home to ethnically and socially diverse people (including POC and LGBTQIA+), into a negative bubble and reduce people to exposure to these truly beautiful and accepting places with racially and ethnically diverse backgrounds. 

The story that this picture is trying to tell is that there are places outside of Irvine that create a safe environment through the people that go there and the way that it has been established. This safe environment promotes one to be themself and dress and express themselves however they want, as seen through the way the people in the picture are dressing and freely wearing makeup (even though I am a man). 

By creating friendly and welcoming environments, beauty and creativity is promoted and freely able to be expressed by people like myself. I think if everyone were to be a little bit more self aware and encourage people to be themselves inside and outside of Irvine, we could spread positivity and create these artsy districts in places including Irvine

But, this does not undermine the fact that these communities need to strive as well! I think that if people would also work to reduce the negative stigma around places outside of Irvine and stop calling them ghetto or trashy due to their imperfect appearance, people would stop trashing these truly beautiful and ethnically and racially diverse areas. If people stop trashing on these areas, a tremendous result could be more racial and ethnic diversity throughout Orange County, and a more widely accepting society.