A Dirty Shame
(2004) dir. John Waters
viewed: 05/04/08
Part two of my little crass comedy double feature was John Waters’ most recent film, his 2004 A Dirty Shame. I recalled that when it came out it looked terrible, and I’d not put it on my list despite my plans to view his entire catalog of films this year. But I was in the mood for stupidity, and this film had the right stuff.
Waters was a genius in his day, with early films like Pink Flamingos (1972) and Female Trouble (1974) and I even have enjoyed some of his transitional films, particularly Pecker (1998), but largely his films have been on the decline and he doesn’t seem to be that bothered with producing work anymore. Which is fine. The man has plenty of laurels upon which to rest in my opinion. He is a true cult icon and his work clearly stretches the gamut between high and low art. Well, the high art part is probably at a more intellectual level.
A Dirty Shame is about a middle class neighborhood in Baltimore and a spate of head injury induced nymphomania and sexual variations (deviances to some). Waters revels in spelling out for the audiences of middle class and middle America about frottage, mysophilia, and other “perversions”. Waters loves them because both their pure “outre-ness” and their subversiveness. Calling them “perversions” only makes them that more fun.
The shock value has potential, but the story and execution wind up as effective as one of those badly put together comedies that we might have seen on HBO or other cable networks late night in the 1980’s. Maybe it’s a combination of production values and film stars that make this feel far less edgy than his early work. Waters early work was completely outside the mainstream, and some of his success and effect has been that his films found distribution and an audience and exist on the cultural periphery, though importantly a part of current popular culture. As Waters moved into the mainstream, which has its subversion itself, something was gained and some things were lost. Waters is an icon and a tremendously charming figure, but his movies no longer seem as relevent or effective.
Though not completely without laughs, A Dirty Shame mostly tries too hard for its laughs and doesn’t distinguish itself much from the other lowbrow mainstream comedies. For instance, Selma Blair’s prosthetic breasts are ridiculously large, a point of frequent humor. But they are so large, it’s sort of like the joke is on the movie poster and the rest of the time, they are just there. I don’t think that metaphor worked out on my part.
However, it must be pointed out that this film does feature David Hasselhoff, taking a dump in an airplane lavatory, which in itself is funny. But the outcome of his effort gets dumped from the sky, hardening in the cold, and landing on Chris Isaak’s head, turning him into a nymphomaniac, too. With Hasselhoff being the cultish anti-cool celebrity that he is, this moment has great humor in it. At least Waters can get people to do and say strange, incongruous things to what you would expect.
Though maybe he’ll never make another important film. His early work is the perversion and beauty critique that he now just makes cracks about. I still love him.
