A Different Set of Jaws: The Astrology of 1975

My daughter is all excited this evening as she’s off to the cinema with her Dad to soak in the last of Leo season with a showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, celebrating its 50th anniversary. It got me thinking about what on earth happened in 1975 to create such an unusual giant of cinema. That, in turn, got me thinking about the above posters and about how, when Rocky Horror was released in the USA, it did so with a Jaws-inspired marketing strategy, following a blockbuster summer for everybody’s favourite great white. So what was it in the sky that set this rather strange cocktail of the big screen in motion?

The summer of 1975 was defined by a T-Square between Jupiter in Aries and Uranus in Libra facing off in opposition with both forming a square to Saturn in Cancer. The Vietnam war had ended on a sombre note with the fall of Saigon months before and attempts to smooth over the tensions of the Cold War were ongoing. Most of the world was still in recession and disillusionment with authority was at an all time high. This heady mix resulted in social shifts and cultural revolution, especially obvious through evolving experiences of media. Androgyny and gender-bending was central to the work of David Bowie and Elton John amongst others and music of protest, especially the emergence of punk, was burgeoning. But there was also a huge conservative backlash to all of this and a lot of fear associated with moving so far from a past that had once seemed familiar and everlasting in its assured steadiness.

This was the world that two seemingly very different films were first projected into. Jaws was the first true blockbuster, redefining previous beliefs that Summer was a time in which nobody would be interested in watching films and uprooting the existing formula of rolling out films slowly from city to city, instead deciding to launch the film simultaneously across hundreds of cinemas all at once. Its ability to induce fear at a time in which worries about what lay beneath ready to attack were already prevalent in the atmosphere became so notorious that people queued around the block to see the film. It was genre-defining and awe-inspiring, so much so that when The Rocky Horror Picture Show had its American premiere shortly after, the iconic red lips of the film’s intro sequence were modified to more closely resemble the equally iconic Jaws poster (strangely, replacing the film’s “lip artist” Patricia Quinn with a model genuinely known as Lorelei Shark). The film was unprecedented in its blatant exploration of bisexuality, cross-dressing, and generally alternative lifestyle that seemed new and threatening to many at the time and still the cause of division and difference of interpretation today.

But what does all this have to do with the aforementioned T-Square - the council of gas giants that watched over the first airing of these pieces of art that were destined to still be played in cinemas 50 years after their release? Jupiter in Aries brings an amplification and bonification of martial matters, as well as themes of independence and identity. The resistance of authority and drive towards true and authentic individuality of the time can be seen through all the firsts that Jaws was responsible for and the violence and gore and true threat that was portrayed in the film, along with the need for heroism to face the threat down. Rocky Horror also has its fair share of villains, most clearly in the form of Frank-N-Furter, the charismatic gender-bending antagonist, who is about as Aries as you can get, with a score of songs that are truly original and genuinely hard to place the first time they are heard. It is no surprise that both Tim Curry, the body and soul of Frank, and Richard O’Brien, the creator and actor portraying Riff Raff, the Igor-like servant to Frank and the real brains of the organisation, are steeped in a lot of Aries energy in their own natal charts (a fascinating story for another day!)

With Uranus in Libra facing off with all of that, there were forward-thinking changes occurring in the realm of human relationship, especially in connection with gay rights which were construed by some as a threat to traditional heterosexuality. Nowhere is this played out more obviously than in the tale of Brad and Janet, “two young, ordinary, healthy kids”, who, shortly after getting engaged, find themselves in the frightening lair of the seductive Frank, who ends up wooing both of them one after the other. At the end of the film, Brad and Janet are left for dead, dressed in the most provocative of garments, shredded and sopping wet after a dream-like underwater orgy, questioning what they have become and what is left after everything they once believed to be true and “normal” has been torn apart. Jaws also speaks to a stark disruption of social order. The peace is destroyed on the idyllic island of Amity (a beautifully Libran word meaning friendship that Father Proserpine and I, as two Libra rising’s, named our glorious first daughter; I’m only just realising now that I’m writing about these two films that our youngest daughter is named Magenta - do with that information what you will). The usual order is turned on its head and it becomes crucial that the heroes of Mars in the realm of Aries face off against these Uranian-Libran threats.

And as if all of that were not enough, Saturn in his fall in Cancer was squaring off against both, casting his gloomy rays at hard angles against the two competitors as they duelled over the themes of self vs. other and identity vs unity. Saturn needs structure and boundary that is laid down permanently but Cancer lays down the law based on mood and oft-changing whims. It also tends to set its course based on feelings of nostalgia and through a tendency to cling to the past, which is obviously something that is put under great stress when it is forced to face the revolutionary, destabilising energies of Jupiter in Aries and Uranus in Libra in opposition. More than anything, Saturn in Cancer highlighted deep underlying fears that penetrated society at this time - of threats to the safety and security of home and country, of the traditional family structure, and all that felt familiar and comforting. The great white shark, teeth gleaming, slinking his way towards the relaxed, unaware people of Amity Island and the wide grin of Frank-N-Furter both represented this deep fear and unsettled many, especially bringing up concerns from conservatives who certainly did not want to move with the unavoidable and irrevocable winds of change that Uranus and Jupiter brought. In literal manifestation, Saturn in Cancer can be death by water as in Jaws and also the archetypal haunted house in which the vast majority of Rocky takes place.

The earth-shattering, era-defining summer of 1975 is one of many periods that initiated change that is still felt decades later and one of the many ways that this has played out is through the birth of people who carry this energy through their lives. Were you born in the summer of 1975 or do you know somebody who was? Do you have a particular connection to events of this period (as I inexplicably do with the specificity of the names of my two daughters) and if so, what part does this connection have in your life? Remember that, to reflect on the past does not mean we have to be held in its grasp. In fact, we can use the past as inspiration to help us rediscover unique ways of moving forward into the future. And may the art of yesteryear thrive for another 50 years.