Once, John Waters was a director who existed on the fringes of culture. Now, he has a hit show on Broadway. From the underbelly of artistic legitimacy to the pinnacle of commercial acceptance, John Waters’ current status provokes only mouth-gaping confusion when one is confronted with what is considered his debut film, Pink Flamingos.
A John Waters musical on the Great White Way is life affirming. Pink Flamingos is sick. It stars Divine, a large transvestite, who is generally regarded as “The Filthiest Person Alive.” She earns this appellation by walking around and engaging in murder, mutilation, incest, coprophilia (an excessive interest in excrement), and a host of other perversions. Divine resides with her mother, who sleeps in a crib, and her son, who uses chickens as sex toys before killing and eating them. Her notoriety is contested by a toe-sucking couple who kidnaps women, impregnates them, then sells their babies to lesbian couples in order to finance a high-school heroin ring.
To reiterate, Pink Flamingos is sick. Highlights of this depravity include the star literally eating shit, a contortionist’s talking anus and a flasher with a foot-long hot dog tied to his penis. To mention that the film is sick for a third time doesn’t even to begin to approach the level of disgust that confronted me upon watching this movie. My limbs cringed in ways previously thought impossible during several scenes I really can’t go into here.
But, to be fair, that’s what John Waters wanted. Advertised as “an exercise in poor taste,” Pink Flamingos heralded the beginning of the “midnight movie” phenomena. As the first film to have repeated showings at the turn of day, it began a tradition that continues most notably to the present with the Rocky Horror Picture Show; vanguarding the concept of the late-night shared camp cinematic event.
The midnight movie is usually a comedy or a horror movie, with the best midnight flicks combining the two. It is a communal experience, for more often than not, the film fails if seen alone, drawing its power from the combined forces of tens of bleary-eyed people sitting in the dark waiting to laugh and be grossed out. Why stay at home and veg when the alternative is watching a lipstick-wielding man dressed in a garter belt draw a “V” on someone’s forehead?
Similarly, when watching Flamingos alone, as an obese and elderly woman was pelted with egg yolks, the absent humor appeared upon the entrance of my friend into the room. So, while the eggy bombardment of the elderly may seem shocking in one’s solitude, the addition of other horrified viewers to the immediate physical environment forces laughter?the laughter of discomfort, which in time becomes the laughter of unbridled low humor. And that, in the end, is the point and purpose of the film. You watch; you gag; you laugh. It makes it possible to joyfully revel in debauchery and wallow in the baser nature of man.
Sucks to those who deny the value of communing with our morbid, sexually perverse instincts. Great art illuminates the extremes of human behavior in order to explain and assist the process of self-comprehension. Trash, of which John Waters is one of few cinematic monarchs, can be an art of its own, saturating the mind with nonsense, crass behavior and bodily humor which, in the best of cases, allows for a transcendence of the death-plagued nature of existence. The jocosity of the body is therapeutic. If we can laugh at our disgusting, decaying bodies with all its embarrassing quirks, life doesn’t have to be taken so seriously.
Hidden in all this somber talk of bodies and death is a recommendation. One with great reservations, for this film is not for everyone. The acting is horrid, there is way too much doo-wop on the soundtrack and many scenes rapidly approach pornography. The ideal audience would be quite open-minded, quite strong-bellied, and quite drunk. If you happen to find yourself in any of these categories this weekend, well, I really can’t find any reason why you shouldn’t go see Pink Flamingos.
Pink Flamingos is playing at midnight, Sept. 6, 7, 13 and 14 at Visions Cinema, 1927 Florida Ave., N.W.
