The Dirty Women of Pink Flamingos (1972)
“DREGS OF HUMAN PERVERSITY DRAWS WEIRDO ELEMENT. MONSTROUS.” — Variety
Upon her first introduction in Pink Flamingos (1972), Connie Marbles is described by John Waters’ biting voiceover as a “jealous pervert” and is pictured with her shocking bright red hair and blue jacket, flanked by a backdrop of flowers and appearing like an acidic 1950’s secretary. Her look is constructed to compliment her character’s personality, particularly in this first scene in which she drawls on at length to a woman being unsuited to for the position of assisting her and her husband with ruining Divine’s fame. Despite having a far more ‘put-together’ veneer, one that Divine does not have, her costuming and posture all illustrate unpleasantness of her character. The colours of her hair, lips, and painted on eyebrows, along with the sheen of her jacket at the garishness of her glasses all come together to create an image of a cartoon villain, a cacophony of primary colours and vocal fry. Marbles’ femininity is of an oozing sort and that is where her visual trashiness lies: the failing attempt at creating an image of class. “You’re a real cunt, you know that!? A real fucking cunt! How can you be so shitty to people!? How can you stand yourself!?” The woman opposite her in the scene screams, and this is the summary of how the audience is supposed to feel towards her character, so repulsive and cruel that we wonder how she can stand herself.
The central conceit of Pink Flamingos, a film that on the surface seems rather devoid of plot, is two groups of people drying to outdo one another for the title of filthiest people alive, and John Waters as a director seems to be attempting to do the same with this film: to outdo anyone else attempting to make a more filthy, unpleasant movie than this one. In any comparison between trashy movies, directorial intent is key, and it is clear that the intention of Paul Verhoeven with Showgirls is far different that Waters’ intention with Pink Flamingos. There is an earnest sense of attempting to make a better film with Showgirls, but Pink Flamingos is entirely without that earnestness, it and its director are absolutely committed and transparent to being cheaply made, ugly looking and difficult to watch. Waters has consistently eschewed the idea that there is any social or political meaning to his work: ‘I’m not trying to say anything. I’m just trying to give people a good time. Give ’em a little shock value for their money’s worth.’” (Breckon 2013). While this insistence against meaning has not stopped critics and academics from drawing examining his films anyway, they as pieces of art of course do not live separately from the world in which they exist, it does make viewing his films in terms of its pure aesthetics rather less problematic. In the case of this film, Waters is inviting the movie to view the film for nothing more than what is shown, to see and accept what they see and enjoy it in any way they like.
Waters is a director that revels in ugliness, and this is true of his women, both the ones played by female actresses and drag queen Divine, played by Harris Milstead. Divine’s image in and of itself is iconic, her look being a parody of a female face, large arched brows that the hairline must be shaved back to accommodate and large, oddly coloured wigs. This highly tacky and rough-edged image of the woman is not one that is limited to Divine in this film, however. Hollywood has a long tradition of conventionally attractive, beautiful women being the default casting choice for films of any genre: drama, comedy, action, it is difficult to find women in major films that are less than perfect. Waters completely abandons this mode of casting, choosing actors instead precisely because of their lack of training and conventional beauty.
Despite the incredibly low budget of the film (IMDb 2018) and blatant, intentional lack of directorial style, Pink Flamingos is successful in creating a relationship between its images and script that makes sense: the film is filthy, and it and everyone in it looks filthy. Nothing is smooth, everyone is in some way abrasive to look at, be it their strange hair colours or ill-fitting clothes, and there is arguably something rather liberating in the fact that women in this film are permitted to be this way. In their active participation in thorough unpleasantness, the women of this film, though worlds away from any real woman audiences would recognise or sympathise with, are given a strange kind of agency that is often not afforded to them in film. Horrible things are not just being done to them, they are doing the horrible things, revelling in their own unpleasantness.
John Waters’ women are not performing for anyone but themselves, this is true of not only Pink Flamingos but his entire filmography. Despite being a male director, his work seems to be entirely devoid of an objectifying gaze. Like the films themselves, there is an ambivalent attitude of the female characters that says they are what they are, they look how they look, and how the audience responds to that is their business.
Though Waters insists on a lack of intention or meaning of his work, there is certainly an aesthetic style that is established in this film and continues on throughout his career, even as his budgets grew and scripts became tighter and more ambitious. Pink Flamingos is very much an aesthetic product of the 1970’s (Adamson & Pavitt 2011), with the bright hair colours and garish costuming being his own added embellishments. On its surface, (the surface being very much what the director would like us to pay attention to), Pink Flamingos is a dirty and often difficult to watch exercise in what can be done with a strange band of actors and very little budget. However, its lasting reputation and status as part of the Criterion collection point to the fact that there is significance to be found in this work beyond aesthetics. The film almost serves as a logical conclusion or rather a parodic reaction to the changes in American society and art at the time; it was released in 1972, the same year that pornographic film Deep Throat was one of the highest grossing box office hits, alongside Last Tango in Paris and Blacula. The 1970’s were perhaps the prime decade for trash, the sexual liberation of the 1960’s needing to be topped by a loud, unapologetic and explicit reaction. On its own, it is easy to have a much harsher view on Pink Flamingos and several of its more viscerally off-putting scenes (shit-eating, incestuous fellatio, cannibalism and rape), it is a self-described exercise in poor-taste, and a successful one, but, despite it’s reliance on aesthetics, it is a film best viewed in the context in which it exists, as the rallying call for 1970’s trash, daring anyone to try and top it.
As for its women, Divine, Connie and Edie, there is a delight in being ugly, camp trash that is difficult to find in films outside of this niche genre of cheaply made shocking movies; they take misbehaving to its ultimate degree, caring not for being objects of desire or sympathetic Madonna’s, but rather committing wholeheartedly and authentically to their ability to be worlds away from perfect.
