There are few names in the history of queer cinema that provoke as much of a gleeful – or disgusted if you’re in polite society – reaction as John Waters. Over the decades, the man has gone from a midnight movie troublemaker to being a well-known celebrity of sorts, in no small part thanks to a brilliant guest spot on The Simpsons that queered many of the world’s children (including myself). His filthiest pictures (Pink Flamingos, Polyester) have been restored and celebrated, but those that came later are often considered lesser than his more provocative earlier works.
Serial Mom and A Dirty Shame are two such examples and, arguably, are two of his best films in spite of their critical and commercial failure and, most importantly, studios that loathed what he’d made. Though they came ten years apart – one celebrating its thirtieth anniversary this year, and the other its twentieth – the pair are pitch-perfect extensions of Waters’ brand of suburban satire. They are the kind of films that, to some extent, present as “mainstream” without actually being designed for that kind of audience, which is precisely why the mainstream rejected them.
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To truly appreciate each one requires diving into what makes them treasures individually and what makes them relevant even today, and Serial Mom is an ideal place to start. In his book, Mr. Know-It-All, Waters described the picture to studio execs as “not the usual John Waters movie about crazy people in a crazy world, but a movie about a normal person in a realistic world doing the craziest thing of all as the audience cheers her on!” This is exactly what Waters delivers with Beverly Sutphin, a play on the ideal sitcom mother that Leave It To Beaver’s June Cleaver once represented, but with the twist being that she’s also a serial killer.
Serial Mom is designed to subvert expectations of what “normalcy” really means and what that very idea can do to a person. Beverly, played by an exquisite Kathleen Turner, is, as a character describes her, “about as normal and nice a lady as we’re ever going to find”. She’s also a foul-mouthed murderer who will take out anyone who sets her off. These personalities aren’t a rigid dichotomy, Waters suggests, but rather two halves of a whole – the most abnormal people are those who present themselves as pillars of proper society.
Practically every one of the film’s scenes plays into this imbalance, with all of Beverly’s niceties being contrasted by her sheer relentless villainy. Sure, she’s happy to make breakfast for everyone in the household and recycles her garbage so well that the neighborhood trash collectors adore her for it, but she’s also willing to mentally torture someone via prank call for stealing a parking spot and murder someone for not rewinding their VHS tapes (which, in fairness, is a crime). And Beverly, ultimately, is someone to root for in her crimes – she may be doing bad things, like hitting someone with a phone for wearing white after Labor Day, but that ties into the twisted way we all sometimes wish we could get away with a little retribution for our pettiest grievances.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about Serial Mom isn’t Kathleen Turner’s portrait of a serial killer, but the way that this brand of violence infiltrates every single facet of “proper society” in Waters’ hometown and cinematic staple Baltimore. This is not limited to the teenagers who watch Blood Feast and masturbate to Deadly Weapons, but extends to everyone in her vicinity. Take an establishment that Waters has clear contempt for, the church itself, and how the pastor’s sermon amidst Berverly’s murder spree is about capital punishment. They cite Jesus Christ himself as someone who would (or should) have spoken out against it in the midst of being publicly murdered, and a foolish public nods in agreement at such an inane statement all the while clutching their pearls at murder happening in their hometown.
If anything, Serial Mom’s relevance has only increased tenfold in the thirty years since it came out. It isn’t just in its eerie prediction of the 90s media spectacle that was the OJ Simpson case, (the film came out just two months prior to his arrest and subsequent showstopping trial) but in the way that true crime has become embedded in American culture beyond any reasonable sense. The third act court case – as much a spectacle as Simpson’s – is not just a laugh riot, but a clear condemnation of the way that people perceive those in the spotlight. It is something of a timeless criticism, one made obvious by the presence of Patricia Hearst as a juror – herself someone who was perceived by the public as both victim and monster when she went through a public court case in the 1970s related to her kidnapping by the Symbionese Liberation Army. At her guilty verdict, she famously sighed, “I never had a chance” but Waters’ defendant blessedly did.
“Let’s make a gore movie about mom, or, better yet, a TV series” – a line uttered by Beverly’s own son, before he begins to sell the rights to their life story for a TV movie – is an even more scathing critique now than it was in 1994, as is Suzanne Somers’ cameo to play the “feminist heroine” that is our murderous mother. We now exist in an era when every other new streaming series is dedicated to exploring the tales of serial killers, from Ryan Murphy’s endless collection of true crime reenactments (his latest, Monster, first tackling Jeffrey Dahmer and, now, the Menendez brothers) to practically every single cold case (and sometimes even open ones) getting its own documentary miniseries.
Even in the face of such atrocities, people are drawn to criminal actions and behaviors that are deemed insane. It’s hard not to think about how Beverly Sutphin would be getting this kind of treatment herself, with even Waters’ film winking at the audience through the opening text crawl that specifically addresses it being “based on a true story” (even though it certainly was not). That people didn’t understand Serial Mom isn’t a total surprise, as Americans are not especially fond of witnessing their own shamelessness, and Savoy Pictures hating the fact that a murderer got away with it feels like a relic of a more censorious era than the 1990s. But it’s the definition of a cult classic that now gets screened regularly on Mother’s Day, and a brilliant picture that continues to age like fine wine.
Waters’ thesis on American normalcy is taken to even greater extremes in A Dirty Shame, his “final film” (pending a comeback with his adaptation of his own novel, Liarmouth), which is one of his most forgotten and underrated films that also happens to be one of his absolute best comedies. If Serial Mom was about playing up how even the most normal people could hold murderous intent within them, A Dirty Shame was about showing how natural it is to be abnormal.
From top to bottom (and vers), it’s a queer cinematic treasure about the way society tries to shut down anyone with an identity that is declared abnormal. It feels like Waters purposely looked up every kink or sexual act back in the early 2000s – bear culture, cunnilingus, adult baby diaper lovers, sploshing, exhibitionism, mysophilia, masturbation, good old fashioned threesomes – just to populate his film with things that the average viewer would find shocking. And, well, that’s exactly what he did. While it isn’t much of a shock these days (or even back then for queer viewers), it certainly was for the MPAA, who branded it with the dreaded NC-17 rating that cursed it to oblivion and a horrendously recut theatrical version. It is, however, a completely ridiculous film, a riotous little sex comedy inspired by the sexploitation films that Waters loves and spliced into his own cinema (including Serial Mom).
The film centers around two groups: neuters and apostles. The former – proudly declaring that “neuter means normal” – are the kind of people who believe repression is the only way to live. They’re willing to lock a young woman up in her childhood bedroom simply to stop her from embracing her exhibitionist ways, they hand out flyers and rant about how “perverts are taking over the neighborhood” and they hate any showcase of sexuality, even down to just a simple public display of affection like kissing. Suzanne Shepherd and Mink Stole lead the brigade as Big Ethel and Marge, with their crusade against sexual deviants coming across as overtly idiotic. But in spite of its absurdity, down to the idea of forcing a young woman to go on Prozac to calm her sexual urges, this kind of behavior is grounded in reality.
Once again, Waters’ scathing criticism of society is at the forefront of this film and taps into how cyclical this kind of behavior is. Big Ethel and Marge aren’t so far from the way that conservative politicians used (and continue to use) to persecute gay men with a national platform and others would encourage conversion therapy to “fix” queer people. Just as Anita Bryant once terrorized Florida, now we have Ron DeSantis banning queer education and stripping trans people of their rights. This extends beyond the United States, with even the United Kingdom playing host to some of the most vocal bigots in the world, like JK Rowling, who use their platform to harass trans people and prevent them from accessing healthcare. These people weaponize their perceived “normalcy” against those who are not, and position anything remotely “other” as monstrous.
But Waters knows that this is untrue, and instead frames the other as nothing but truly immaculate. The apostles are the film’s true gems, with even the most annoying of queer subcultures (bears, with all their grrs and woofs) being treated as part of a holy collective that will free these neuters from the shackles of repression. At its core is none other than Ray-Ray, played by Johnny Knoxville, who serves as a Christlike figure who can not only resuscitate people but bring them pleasure beyond their comprehension. Where most films would shy away from emphasizing that “spreading love” can and should include “through sexual means and pleasure”, Waters commits to showing that sexual freedom and embracing one’s identity is the only way to be truly liberated.
The mother-daughter duo of Sylvia and Caprice Stickles (the latter better known as Ursula Udders), played by Tracey Ullman and Selma Blair respectively, are a perfect means of showcasing the struggle between neuters and apostles. Everything about life in the normal/neuter world is one of misery, with the unhappy Sylvia (who won’t even have sex with her husband, played by Chris Isaak) literally locking up her daughter to ensure that she can’t go out dancing and showing off her “criminally enlarged breasts”. In her sadness, Caprice sits around watching The Red Shoes and lamenting that she can’t be out dancing to Billy Lee Riley’s “Red Hot”, showing off her body to a number of men, including her biggest fan, Fat Fuck Frank. The moment she is liberated via accidental head injury (the film’s means of “change”), Sylvia realizes that this kind of treatment is a mistake. And, while it sounds idiotic, there’s something truly sincere and lovely about Sylvia and Caprice’s relationship and the way that the two bond when embracing their identities – one as a “cunnilingus bottom” (a title bestowed to her by Ray-Ray) and the other as an exhibitionist.
That beauty extends to the way that A Dirty Shame plays into everyone’s favorite queer film trope of “the found family”, as the apostles are all loving and accepting of each other’s identities. Every single one of Ray-Ray’s followers gets at least a brief moment to shine, their commitment to the bit extending beyond just a chance to laugh at actors like Jackie Hoffman masturbating furiously or Hearst (in her fifth Waters film appearance) holding up a bottle of poppers in an attempt to save Ray-Ray from the sex nullifying powers of Prozac. As much as Waters wants you to laugh at the jokes he’s presenting, he’s also fairly committed to the uniting power that comes with bonding with other weirdos.
Twenty years after A Dirty Shame’s release, queer people find themselves faced with discourse about respectability politics. In an era where more and more identities are becoming part of the mainstream, and people have gotten the chance to truly connect and develop, queer people who are comfortable with the status quo find themselves falling into the realm of the neuter. Rather than succumb to the idiocy that is “No Kink at Pride”, with queer people willing to throw each other under the bus for being “too sexual” at an event that celebrates their liberation, A Dirty Shame presents an ideal alternative: all kink at pride. Down to its very climax, in which everyone in Baltimore has become a sex addict and Ray-Ray climaxes all over the world (and screen), John Waters is offering a hand to all those who have ever felt persecuted for their sexuality, not only to come with him, but to cum with him.
As many have noted in the past, genius is never appreciated in its time, and to look back at these two movies is to bear witness to a genius at work. John Waters himself has joked, “Is it perverse that I like my later films better than the early ones that made me ‘the King of Puke’?” and it’s easy to see why. It isn’t just as he says “they’re easier to watch and the acting is better”, but, rather, that they’re genuinely great and dense films. Beneath all the goofy humor lies a real love, not just for the history of art (both music and film especially, which Waters liberally references) but for the collection of weirdos that he always places on screen. No matter how “normal” they might seem at first, they’re all a little crazy and strange, and that’s what makes them so beautiful. To him, the characters of Serial Mom and A Dirty Shame aren’t people to be looked down on or chastised, but to be cheered on in all their filthy, monstrous ways, and there’s nothing more beautiful than that kind of radical acceptance.
