In these first weeks of class, it's feeling stuffy. The study of culture sees to really have begun as a condescending look down at "mass culture" from elites, worried that their gifts for "taste" are being threatened. Critics like Adorno and Leavis prophesied that one day culture would decline into a state where the Library of Congress would house one day house this:
(scene from Pink Flamingos)
The author of that scene and the man who first ignited my love for shit is Mr. John Waters. Who better represents the new, post-modern take on "kitsch" than the director of Hag in a Black Leather Jacket? This week's readings, by Dwight Macdonald and Raymond Williams, focused on the theory of "mass culture" and (in Macdonald's words) its "parasitic, cancerous growth on High Culture". From his "Theory on Mass Culture" (1957)....
"Kitsch 'mines' High Culture the way frontiersmen mine the soil, extracting its riches and putting nothing back. Also, as kitsch develops, it begins to draw on its own past, and some of it evolves so far away from High Culture as to appear quite disconnected from it."
That's probably the kindest quote. Most of the essay is devoted to bemoaning the death of High Culture as the lazy, crappy art of the masses (presumably only meant to make money) "blurs the distinction" between High and Low art.
(from Multiple Maniacs)
I call bullshit. Just a few years after this essay was written, Susan Sontag's "Notes on Camp" presented art criticism with the notion that kitsch could be studied as a new, emerging aesthetic that's "essence is the love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration." Furthermore, she wrote "The ultimate camp statement: It's good because it's awful."
Susan Sonntag
Soon, the pop-art movement and postmodernism were incorporating an appreciation of camp/kitsch/mass culture into fine art, experimental films, and literary criticism (or at least recognizing their ironic relevance). No longer will Dorothy L. Sayers be left to be derided by the likes of Macdonald while he simultaneously praises Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Why is reading Doyle any loftier a pursuit than Sayers? (I have read neither, but that's not the point) The blurring of the lines and acceptance of subjectivity in art is the whole point. The pursuit of a set of criteria, distinct for different cultures and communities, with which to separate the crap from the "trash" forms the basis for most modern entertainment criticism as well as this blog.
Enter: John Waters.
Waters was inspired by the low-budget "art" films of Andy Warhol as well as b-movies, porn, gay culture, William Castle gimmick-horror films, the Manson family, true crime, drugs, and early-60s (pre-Beatles) rock-and-roll. He got into filmmaking with his friends in Baltimore, The Dreamlanders. They spent their twenties getting fucked up and making cheap, crude, disgusting little movies. They were a deliberate reaction against the "hippie" era of peace and love that was rapidly becoming a joke. They were proto-punk. The films look like home videos. The dialogue is long-winded and indulgent, as if there is no one editing or telling Waters "no". The characters are grotesque and usually engage in criminal behavior. There are fat ladies dressed like babies, women chained in a basement and used as surrogates for lesbian couples, chicken sex, whistling assholes, incestual fellatio, murder, child abuse, kidnapping, torture, and shit-eating. Just watch Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble (my personal favorite), Desperate Living, and Polyester and you'll see the aesthetic in all it's shocking glory.
I love these movies. When I first discovered them I became obsessed with Mr. Waters. I own all his films, have seen all his specials, read his books and essays, and have also purchased his books on modern art (turns out he's a respected and knowledgable modern artist and critic!) I went to Baltimore and made my own tour of his filming locations. I've got autographed copies of many of his books. Yeah, I'm a huge fan. His once-derided, cult films (made purely out of love and artistic impulse), no longer shown between pornos on sticky-floored theaters, are now exhibited in art museums and listed among the most influential American films ever made. His later, less insane films are being turned into Broadway musicals and now John Waters is someone your mother is not scared of. What the hell happened? It just goes to show how time turns even the most fringe, subversive elements of mass culture into High Art. It just takes time and perspective to see how things have been influenced. Can anyone imagine the "gross-out" comedies of today without Waters?
Where then, does this fit in to an art criticism that feels threatened by kitsch? Beneath the shock value, there is something about Waters' early, stilted and cheap films that distinguished itself...something that kept Pink Flamingos playing in arthouses for decades. It may be a passion and love for the subversive and fringe culture that shines through, turning the shit-eating into a twisted love letter to youth and recklessness. And moves art from the trash heap into MOMA.
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