Retro Review by Ash Baker
Early in Pink Flamingos, perverted psychos send Cookie, a young reporter, to spy on Divine — the notorious Filthiest Person Alive. Before embarking on the journey to Divine’s pepto-bismol-pink mobile home, Cookie says to her employers, “I may have to degrade myself.” This is the mindset I believe everyone should take into watching Pink Flamingos, a movie that asks its audience to laugh at such horrors as incest, kidnapping, murder, cannibalism, and many other acts of unapologetic filth.
The first and easiest reading of Pink Flamingos is that it’s punk rock. The antagonists of the movie, Raymond and Connie Marble, are trendsetting psychopaths with magic-marker dyed hair and pre-hipster style—Raymond with his handlebar mustache and Connie with her cat-eye glasses. They suck each other’s toes. They kidnap pretty young girls, hold them in a dungeon-like basement, artificially inseminate them, and sell their babies to lesbian couples to fund their inner-city heroin ring.
Just when you think the film is as crazy as it’s going to get, it outdoes itself. Pink Flamingos is outrageous, and punk has always been an expression of outrage—a fat middle finger to convention. John Waters is a punk rock kid at heart, and it’s no secret that he has always worked to shock and provoke American audiences, to counteract the politeness and niceties of the 1950s-era Baltimore suburb where he was raised. The tagline for Pink Flamingos is “an exercise in poor taste;” however, I think it’s short-sighted for a viewer to assert that this movie is nothing more than a freakshow—a spectacle of perverts being perverted.
Pink Flamingos was released the same year as the infamous porno Deep Throat, only a couple years into what would later become known as the Golden Age of Porn. To be clear, Pink Flamingos is not a porno. However, the film serves as a debased mirror of sorts, utilizing similar tactics of pornography to exploit and expose the viewer to their lurking fascinations.
We’re naturally aroused by our fantasies. The strategy of pornography, as I conceive it, is to hijack these fantasies and exaggerate them, creating a feedback loop, which causes them to morph and expand. Our fantasies start to look more like the exaggeration than the original desire. Waters relishes in this feedback loop. A perfect example is the disturbing yet comically-played scene in which Divine gives her own son a blowjob.
The two are perusing through the Marble house, disgusted at the feeling of occupying the home of their arch nemeses. They comb through the halls, touching everything, spitting insults about their rivals. When they reach the bedroom, Divine says, “This is where they mate,” with a look of repulsion on her face. The more and more repulsed by the house and all the objects in it the two grow, the hornier they seem to get. The feeling of disgust turns them on, and leads them to engage in incest.
Everything in Pink Flamingos is similarly blown out of proportion, and the fantasies Waters portrays are not only sexual—they’re also violent. When the police raid Divine’s birthday party, she and her party guests attack them, killing them and ripping them limb from limb. They eat them raw, their performances suggesting the gain of sexual pleasure. Divine is later asked if blood turns her on, and she responds, “It does more than turn me on... It makes me cum. And more than the sight of it, I love the taste of it. The taste of hot, freshly killed blood.”
Towards the end of the film, the audience views perhaps the least shocking act throughout the entire film. Two people are shot dead, which is not surprising in 2020, and would not have been in 1972, with the war in Vietnam still raging. Divine condones first-degree murder and commits it. Waters has said this trial scene was inspired in part by Charles Manson, who had had his trial just years before. However, there are no consequences for Divine, and while this penultimate scene may leave a strange taste in some viewers’ mouths, Waters has a remedy for that:
“I hate message movies and pride myself on the fact that my work has no socially redeeming value.” - John Waters, Shock Value
I can imagine that it would be easy for some viewers, without context, to watch Pink Flamingos and hate it. Waters does not hold his viewers’ hand. He throws them into the ring and says, “Good fucking luck.” I can imagine that it would be easy for some viewers to feel slighted, even angry at this unapologetic portrayal of senseless debauchery.
It’s also true that, as Waters clearly states, Pink Flamingos does not have any socially redeeming message. It has a message of complete and utter social disregard, but it’s hard for me to believe that even social disregard is meaningless. An anonymous viewer of Pink Flamingos once said, “I think [John Waters] has his thumb securely up America’s ass.”
Throughout Waters’s filmography, there exists a strong sense of family values—however depraved they may be. Pink Flamingos takes the familiar concept of “keeping up with the Jonses” and flips it on its head. Instead of depicting two picture perfect families competing to be the most perfect or the most liked, we have two filthy families competing to be the most perverted. I imagine these families are the unadulterated id of America—exploiting others for capitalistic gain, fucking whom and whatever, killing when it pleases.
In many of the classic literary works of modernist and notorious pervert James Joyce, he asks his audience to admit to and own their fantasies. Joyce is non-judgemental, and if you’ve read his love letters, you know why. Waters takes this idea one wild step forward. Waters asks his audience not only to own their fantasy, but to eat it. Sit in a playpen and get fat off of it. Fuck it. Marry it. Kill for it. Take whatever you like.