"I heard that you have a collection of fake food?"/"I do. I have it all over my house. I like the worst kind..."

"... like an old, dirty piece of carrot. Or I have a bowl of cereal next to my bed with a spoon. It looks like I just forgot to take it downstairs. I kind of live in a joke shop. I always loved joke shops when I was young. So I have a lot of spilled food or things that look like something bad happened just sitting around to delight me when I walk up the steps."

From "John Waters Is Ready for His Hollywood Closeup/The director reflects on getting a star on the Walk of Fame and a museum retrospective about his career as a cinematic provocateur" (The New Yorker).

There's lots of interesting stuff in that interview. I'll just highlight this:

What do you think of this idea that Gen Z is turned off by sex scenes in movies, especially gratuitous ones? There basically isn’t a scene in any of your movies that isn’t gratuitous.

"The trigger-warning crowd does not make fun. I’m actually for going further: We should have fecal mobs go out and perform turd terrorism to prove that we’re serious about policing pronouns."

Said John Waters, adding that "The Jan. 6 people, they [expletive] in Nancy Pelosi’s office. So maybe we should go even crazier politically correct the other way and have fecal flash mobs going out there." 

The quote is in the NYT — "John Waters Is Ready to Defend the Worst People in the World" —  so that's why "shit" is written "[expletive]."

The NYT adds a footnote: "One of the men charged in conjunction with the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol was accused of defecating on Speaker Pelosi’s office desk." 

I did not know that. Did I know and forget or was that just not fit to print until it was needed to explain what the hell John Waters is talking about.

He continues: "I’m just saying humor is how you fight. It’s how you make people change their mind. Everything I’ve ever done is about using humor as a weapon. I don’t think I’m mean, but everything’s touchy now. When things are touchy, isn’t that when comedy gets more exciting? Always, I was trying to satirize the rules of the world I lived in. At the same time I was trying to make you laugh and to see, What are the limits?"

"These are exploitation films to a degree (exploiting the audience’s willingness to view 'surviving' a film as tantamount to a badge of honor as much as exploiting the actors’ willingness to play at debasing themselves)..."

"... but they are also, and more importantly, meditations on the nature of the freak. If there can be said to be some kind of philosophical import to ['Female Trouble'], it is this: [John] Waters executes a dialectical examination of the freak through an immanent analysis of the outsider, following its internal movements toward a negative critique of society (that is, an exposition of the intrinsic contradictions upon which society operates), but ultimately demonstrating that the liminality of the freak is an integral part of the social whole. By marking the perimeters of the acceptable, by opening a threshold onto the chaos of madness and the entropy of unchecked deviance, the freak in Waters’ works performs a social service, thus qualifying its vaunted difference and reflecting society itself in the funhouse-mirror of its own self-obsessions....  [T]he aberration is the engine behind the Darwinian understanding of evolution... Evolution... requires an anomaly that slips the traces of conformity.... The sudden veer that marks the evolutionary leap is the byproduct of the one impacting the many. The 'freak,' when successful, charts the path of the future of the normative."

Writes Chadwick Jenkins, in "THE DIALECTIC OF THE FREAK: ON JOHN WATERS’ ‘FEMALE TROUBLE’/In John Waters' work, poor taste is a manner of refinement that attains a strange air of considered sophistication and knowing advertency" by Chadwick Jenkins (Pop Matters, November 2018). 

I'm reading that because I'm watching "Female Trouble" because I've just recently subscribed to the Criterion Channel, and I'm catching up on various old films. 

Also watched recently: "The Color of Pomegranates"...

 

... and "It's Such a Beautiful Day"....

"The other drag queens hated Divine, because they thought he was making fun of them. And he was!"

"He was making fun of that whole scene of being so serious about it and trying to imitate the worst of women — the most unliberated ones — where Divine was beyond. Divine was not trans. Divine never walked around dressed as a woman. He didn't want to be a woman.... It wasn't like Divine was trapped in the wrong body or anything. Divine was a feminine gay man. But he was proud to say he was a drag queen. He was an actor. And he played a man, woman, he would've played the dog in 'Pink Flamingos' if I'd let him."

Says John Waters, on the new episode of Marc Maron's podcast. Waters is a fantastic guest, one of the best conversationalists I've ever heard on a podcast, so listen to the whole thing. I chose this one piece to transcribe because it says so much... with direct detail and plenty of open-ended implication. Waters is so pro liberated women and pro feminine gay men that there's some hostility to drag and transgenderism. That takes nerve. And vivacity.

(To comment, email me here.)

"Did he have a sense of humor about himself? Kind of. But you couldn’t quite tell..."

"... because he would start saying things like, 'I am the most beautiful. I am the king,' all that kind of stuff. It’s like [Flamboyant 1940s and Fifties wrestler] Gorgeous George. A lot of boxers and wrestlers do that. Trump does that [laughs]. But that was like stuff he said on stage. Maybe he got confused, as many of us do, about whether you’re on the stage or in real life.... When he was the biggest singer in the country and his songs were huge hits, people didn’t talk about him being gay or anything. I don’t know if he was beyond that because he was so scary. They didn’t even know what he was. He was a Martian more than being gay. It was like he was from another planet.... [H]e died completely homophobic and saying horrible things about gay people and transgender people. I would always say in my [spoken word] show that we should kidnap him and deprogram him, like what that guy Ted Patrick used to do with Moonies. Remember when parents would hire him to get their kids, and he would take you to a hotel room for a week and get you unprogrammed?...  I guess he flipped over to radical Christianity. He could have been a Christian and not a hate-Christian. He could have just quietly gone to church. A lot of people do, but they don’t say terrible things about gay people. Especially when you look like that [laughs]. Especially when you were Princess Lavonne in the carnival; he was a drag queen in the carnival and wrote about it in his book."

From an interview in Rolling Stone with the film director John Waters. Waters interviewed Little Richard for Playboy in 1987, and Little Richard tried to take the interview back after he'd given it.

Waters has long worn a mustache that he says was modeled on Little Richard:



And Waters used Little Richard's song "The Girl Can't Help It" in his movie "Pink Flamingos":



That's a parody of this sequence in the 1956 movie "The Girl Can't Help It":

It's the Era of That's Not Funny.

I've been saying it with my tag since November 17, 2017, but here's Drudge, noticing that John Waters has noticed it:



The Waters link goes to a June 28th piece in Vulture, which I blogged on June 28th, here. I've already quoted the relevant stuff. Asked if Trump makes him laugh, Waters said:

Never. But neither do most of the Democrat character candidates running now either. And you could argue it’s not a funny time, which is true.... There are 40 [Democrats] that are going to divide it all up. You know, the gay one I like. I’d vote for any of them, even though it would be really hard for me to vote for Elizabeth Warren who has never once said a funny thing in her entire life....

But what's this other story?! "MAD Magazine to Cease Publication." I click through to the article at comicbook.com and it begins with an update: "Details have emerged regarding the future of MAD magazine following the end of original content later this year." There's a link, and I click through to another comicbook.com piece:

MAD magazine will not be completely closing down, as previously reported -- although most of its new content will cease, and availability for the iconic humor magazine will be reduced... Rather than closing up shop, the plan at present is to continue publishing issues that will feature reprinted classic MAD pieces, wrapped with new covers art....

The venerable humor magazine, which launched in 1952 at EC Comics, relaunched in 2018.... The 2017 reorganization and subsequent 2018 reboot both struggled with finding an identity for MAD in an increasingly satire-saturated world.

So maybe it's not the Era of That's Not Funny. Maybe it's the Era of Too Much Funny.  We're told "MAD struggled to find an elusive niche," and it "doubled down on lampooning the Trump administration." But that didn't work! Too much competition, and you lose all the pro-Trump readers. But you can't do pro-Trump humor. You alienate the anti-Trump readers, and Trump himself does the pro-Trump humor so well that you have to compete with him. By the way, are conservative humor publications ever good? For example, The Babylon Bee? Always bad.

"But camp was always something that was so bad it was good, and didn’t know it. Trump ruined that. Even camp he ruined."

"It isn’t really camp, but some people said he looks like a white James Brown impersonator. Which he does now. But that’s not camp. You have to like what’s camp. It has to be so bad, it’s good. He’s so bad, he’s bad.... When I was on Bill Maher with Andrew Breitbart, [Breitbart] said to me, 'I do the same thing you do; we’re just on different sides.' Which is true. So I get why Trump supporters like [Trump], because he is doing what he said he was going to do and we hate him so much he makes us crazy....  I think I love everything I make fun of, and certainly Trump does not love what he makes fun of. Although he used to be what he makes fun of. He was a liberal, wasn’t he?... [Does he make you laugh?] Never. But neither do most of the Democrat character candidates running now either. And you could argue it’s not a funny time, which is true.... There are 40 [Democrats] that are going to divide it all up. You know, the gay one I like. I’d vote for any of them, even though it would be really hard for me to vote for Elizabeth Warren who has never once said a funny thing in her entire life.... I think she will lose. Any of the ones that have already been out there will lose, big time. And any of the ones that try to be super left wing will really lose, too. And all the other ones just haven’t been around. I don’t know. I’m very much against Kamala because she is a prisoner’s enemy.... What’s the one, Mayor Pete? Is he the gay one?... It’s a civil war, and I believe that it could be decided by one vote.... It’s just exhausting to me. But I get why they like [Trump], because he infuriates us."

Said John Waters, interviewed in "In Conversation: John Waters The pope of trash on Anna Wintour, staying youthful, and why Trump ruined camp" (The Vulture).

"Saturday Night Live" is "incredibly brilliant activism, I think and I'm for that, it's using humor again as terrorism like the Yippies did..."

"... to make fun of the enemy until they squirm in embarrassment and that's fair, that's good terrorism to me. You have to make each other laugh. If you just go out there and are preaching, no one's going to listen. You know, I'm not a separatist, I'm friends with some people who voted for Trump, not many. Nobody has the nerve to tell me, but a few have."

Said John Waters, who seems to have a lot of friends.  I enjoyed his use of the term "separatist."

Oh, that reminds me of something I wanted to show you, this Heineken ad. It's anti-separationist:

"I’m struggling to think of something funny to say, as all comedians are. I hate liberals who say: 'I’m leaving the country.'"

"Oh, like it’s going to matter. You’re not that important, go ahead. But the only thing I can think that’s positive is that a new kind of anarchy is going to happen next."

Said John Waters.

He also talks about his famous old quote "If you go home with somebody and they don’t have books, don’t fuck them."

“It did catch on!” he laughs. He says he’s seen it everywhere. “At the Strand bookshop in New York, there’s an entire display of it! I don’t mind that they did it. Sort of I did. They censored it! They don’t say fuck!” The key letters are starred out. “That’s what infuriated me!” He mentions that a friend of his, the drag queen Lady Bunny, called him out on its veracity. “She said: ‘I thought he [Waters] liked criminals?’ I believe in my own words, but maybe I don’t always practise what I preach.” He laughs again, and offers up a sequel. “Basically, if they’re cute enough, who’s looking at the library?”

It's funny advice, but did anyone ever follow it? And just as the person with a rough exterior might have a kind heart, that person with no books on the shelf may very well have a Kindle.

The NYT wanted "Hairspray Live!" to "amaze and distress us with its continued relevance in 2016."

The Broadway musical was the latest show to get the live-TV treatment (previously seen in "The Sound of Music" and "Peter Pan" and — I'm losing track — "Grease"?).

The musical, which came out in 2002, was based on a film that came out in 1988, and it told a story of a fictional dance show that was on TV in 1962. So TV in 1962 became film in 1988 and musical theater in 2002 and got back to TV in 2016.

But the hope of the NYT was that it would be relevant in 2016.

Based on the 1988 John Waters film, the musical’s story of social outcasts and racial barriers is set in 1962, and it should amaze and distress us with its continued relevance in 2016. The broadcast, though, didn’t generate as much power it could have because of all the shots of the cast members golf-carting from one set to another, of viewing parties in various cities and so on.

What are we talking about? Who watches of a bunch of singing actors on TV knocking themselves out to produce a big live show? Might these viewers get a kick out of the backstage stuff, golf carts and all? The NYT wants "us" to be amazed and distressed. Distressed?! By the continued relevance?

Yes, the show is about racial prejudice — overcoming it with song and dance and teenage enthusiasm. The elite-media hope is that we'll watch this theater-on-TV antic and think — not Wow, Maddie Baillio is a star and I love Jennifer Hudson — but: America still struggles to overcome its shameful history of racial oppression. Or even: How tragic, the innocent dreams of these teenagers, who could not have imagined that half a century later racist America would elect Donald J. Trump!

I must give the NYT credit for not mentioning Trump. I felt I was being nudged to think about Trump, and that caused me to Google and see all the news outlets that covered "Hairspray Live!" in terms of Donald Trump. (And "Hairspray" is not actually about hairspray, which does call Donald Trump to mind.)

I'll just cherry pick one Trump-focused review of last night's big show. This is from A.V. Club:

Hairspray ... arrives as America is still grappling with the notion of having Donald Trump as a president...

[A]s Trump was busy attacking private citizens on Twitter, Hairspray Live! was celebrating the idea that we’re stronger together than we are apart. That’s just the kind of jubilant, cathartic message a lot of people need to hear right now....

Favorite celebrity cameo: It’s a tossup between Sean Hayes as plus-sized clothing storeowner Mr. Pinky, and Rose O’Donnell as the high school gym teacher (a piece of casting that feels like an explicit ‘fuck you’ to Trump).

Somehow the show's message of love and happiness is supposed to feel like an expression of hatred toward the man who just got himself elected. There are a whole lot of Americans who voted for Donald Trump. A new poll has his favorability rating at 50%. Something tells me the TV audience for a live Broadway musical is even more Trump-friendly then the American electorate in general.

The idea of "Hairspray Live!" working as anti-Trumpiana feels as out of touch as the assurance that Hillary Clinton's campaign was a celebration of the idea that we’re stronger together than we are apart.

"'What do gay men have in common when they don’t have oppression?'"

"... asked Andrew Sullivan, one of the intellectual architects of the marriage movement. 'I don’t know the answer to that yet.' John Waters, the film director and patron saint of the American marginal, warned graduates to heed the shift in a recent commencement speech at the Rhode Island School of Design. 'Refuse to isolate yourself. Separatism is for losers,' he said, adding, 'Gay is not enough anymore.'... 'People are missing a sense of community, a sense of sharing,' said Eric Marcus, 56, the author of 'Making Gay History.' 'There is something wonderful about being part of an oppressed community,' Mr. Marcus said.... The most vocal gay rights activists may have celebrated being outsiders, but the vast majority of gay people just wanted 'what everyone else had,' he said — the ability to fall in love, have families, pursue their careers and 'just live their lives.'"

From a NYT article titled "Gay Culture’s Outsider Element Fades as Marriage Rights Arrive."

"Half of us thought that he wasn’t John Waters, because that would be impossible, and half of us thought that he was."

"So we argued about it for one exit, and the only way to resolve it was to just turn around and go back."

The things people do to generate material for a book.

"t was two people able to agree to disagree and still move on and have a great time. I think that’s what America’s all about."

Roger Ebert, quoting John Waters: "If you go home with someone and they don't have books, don't f**k them."

A stark tweet.

In the future, all the books will be ebooks, and it will be so much harder for Ebert and Waters to discern who deserves their sexual ministrations.

ADDED: One thing about books on the shelf is that you can check out the titles and form a rough opinion of the person. But that assumes the person really does read those books and that they don't have a hidden stash of books that — if you saw the titles — would send you running out the door.

What book, spotted on a prospective lover's shelf, would make you turn away and walk out the door?