Compared to our current politics, John Waters is kinda respectable. I saw him at a university auditorium a couple years ago. Entertaining.
Plus he was great on the Simpsons.<p>Time seems to take the shock out of things. Maybe its the non-stop access to interesting things on the internet and photos and videos of everything taking the rumor and imagination out of things.<p>GWAR's shows were mythic but now we have a nice wikipedia entry explaining it all. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwar" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwar</a>.
> Somehow I became respectable. I don’t know how—the last film I directed got some terrible reviews and was rated NC-17. Six people in my personal phone book have been sentenced to life in prison.<p>This is one of the most interesting and intriguing "opening" I've read in a long while.
If you really want to shock everybody, and become a highly respected artist known for redefining the modern gallery in ten to thirty years, you should probably paint some nice landscapes or portraits.
I also don't understand how John Waters came to be seen as respectable, but I suppose it might help some people to hear that a lack of respectability, or even acceptance, is not always permanent.<p>Sometimes it is, but not always.
Ah he's a classic! The bold moves, the rebellion! He's a symbol of LGBT "revolution". The acceptance of what was previously considered unacceptable.<p>There was only one, unique place in history for his genre and he took it.
Didn't this man direct the movie with the child rape mattress and the unfeigned consumption of dog feces?<p>He didn't become respectable. His mental illness became mainstream.<p>I wish I knew how this happened. Maybe the mechanism was a combination of internet porn and the destruction of real life social spaces. Maybe it's something else. But people should perhaps spend some small fraction of the time that they spend freaking out about the weather, and use it to freak out just a little about how we are going to survive the next 50 years as a civilization with a functioning social and political system.
"First the establishment will ignore you; then they laugh at you; then they crack down on you and then you become part of the establishment."
Someone<p>I'm glad everything he represents is now accepted. I remember watching Pink Flamingos in the early 2000s when I was discovering cinematography and understanding the industry and it's evolution. It has shock value, but it was deeper than that. When I saw his film, it reminded me a little of Warhol in a way.<p>I'm actually glad the acceptance is so quick, just 13 years ago the United States federal government arrested someone for 'obscenity-related charges' in film production, though admittedly it was considerably more disturbing footage than what John Walters ever produced. *<p>I truly wonder what's the next set of values to go through this process. By definition we can't know what they are and speculation has a terrible history of accuracy, especially if it is what we know as the truth (as defined by the majority, i.e. the establishment)<p>Also wonder if as technology accelerates the rate of social change, so will the typically generational cycle speeds of acceptance of new ideas.<p>* Danilo Croce <a href="https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2007/June/07_crm_410.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2007/June/07_crm_410....</a>
I knew John Waters as like a camp figure, I saw Hairspray, heard stuff from his books and speaking engagements, all of which is cool but not particularly challenging to the dominant culture. So I understand the respectability.<p>Then I watched Female Trouble which is a completely insane movie and thought, this person is out of his mind, I can’t believe they’re letting him go on the Today Show and that he’s assimilated into square culture, does anyone know what he’s all about? The question of whether his films would “shock” seems besides the point, they feel totally electric whether or not the culture has supposedly acclimated itself to certain things.
Acceptance is a function of how deep you're reading from the Big Book Of Things Too Radical To Say In Public.<p>The problem is that too far outside the average conception of normality it becomes difficult to judge if your Radical Thing is net-positive or net-negative for society. Gay rights? Yes. Legal incest? No.<p>Some people can tell the difference. Most can't. And that's why "you can't shock anyone anymore" is exactly as true as it's always been. It's just that radical art 40 years ago and radical art in 2019 look different. Too different for John Waters to tell.
Hipsters, that's what happened. John Waters has become something of a hipster schlock icon, a way for millennials weaned on easily available hardcore porn and rotten.com to connect with a time when things like what John Waters does were actually shocking and transgressive.
Honestly, inside me it makes me wonder if we're seeing the cultural movement toward more progressive ideals, or if we're just seeing the cumulative generational shift away from what their parents stood for.<p>Meaning - WWII's "the greatest generation" was a relatively conservative generation, and it's gone more liberal in terms of social movements ever since. Are we going to keep seeing this movement toward liberalism, or are we going to see children rebel against their parents and move toward more traditional and conservative values?
If it helps, based on the first paragraph I don't think the guy is remotely respectable.<p>Maybe he just started hanging out around people with lower standards?
Honestly, John, you were responsible for a massive hit Broadway musical, one that's entirely acceptable to the out-of-towners after their visit to Times Square. You didn't "become respectable". You sold out.<p>Getting gross stuff shown in a modern art museum is hardly an accomplishment. Manzoni did his "canned poop" thing in 1961. You're gonna have to try a lot harder than clips from porn movies. Pink Flamingos is still gross. You could do that again, if you wanted.<p>Though these days you're competing for attention from everybody on YouTube. You were an attention whore when it took some real effort to get it distributed. Now everybody can do it. They'll censor Pink Flamingos to put it on TV, but I'd be shocked if there weren't a dozen imitators on YouTube. (No, I'm not going to look.)<p>Congrats, you lowered the bar on bad taste, and I guess that's enough of an accomplishment to make you a commencement speaker. But once people figured out your formula, the bar lowered pretty far pretty fast, and rather than get ahead of it you let 'em make Hairspray.