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John Waters: Camp, Abjection and the Grotesque Body A thesis presented to the faculty of the College of Fine Arts of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts Whitney B. Porter March 2011 © 2011 Whitney B. Porter. All Rights Reserved. 2 This thesis titled John Waters: Camp, Abjection and the Grotesque Body by WHITNEY B. PORTER has been approved for the School of Art and the College of Fine Arts by Jennie Klein Assistant Professor of Art Charles A. McWeeny Dean, College of Fine Arts 3 ABSTRACT PORTER, WHITNEY B., M.A., March 2011, Art History John Waters: Camp, Abjection and the Grotesque Body Director of Thesis: Jennie Klein Camp is a style of art that is closely tied in with Queer Theory; both topics are of great importance in understanding John Waters‟ contribution to both the art world and the gay community. His work sexualizes the unsavory, glorifies the abject, yet it is done in such a manner that laughter ensues. This is a product of camp art, which explained by Susan Sontag in her article “Notes on Camp”, “The whole point of Camp is to dethrone the serious. Camp is playful and anti-serious. More precisely, Camp involves a new, more complex to „the serious.‟ One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious.”1 I‟m interested in using the Camp theme along with Julia Kristeva‟s work with the abject and Queer Theory to delve deeper into the artistic style of John Waters. Much like the content of his films, his artworks play into that frivolous side of the serious, he accentuates the frivolous by his inclusion of the abject finding something artistic and beautiful in the least desirable of locales. John Waters is best known for his accomplishments as a filmmaker and director in films that just push the envelope far enough to upset many people‟s idea of normality by likening the absurd to the normal, treating the normal in turn as Other. He accomplishes this through the medium of Camp, which he continued to utilize in his art making and collecting. Following in the footsteps of Andy Warhol, he applies similar tactics in finding desirability in persons and items not readily associated with beauty per 4 se. The photographic still; 12 Assholes and a Dirty Foot, along with his films Pink Flamingos and Pecker showcase his interests while the city of Baltimore provides the backdrop for his work and remains the thread that ties his work together. Approved: _____________________________________________________________ Jennie Klein Assistant Professor of Art 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract .................................................................................. …………………………... 3 Chapter 1:Methodological Approaches ............................................................................ 6 Chapter 2: Pink Flamingos and Drag Queens………………………………………… 19 Chapter 3: John Waters' Baltimore as seen in the film Pecker………………………….37 Chapter 4: Twelve Assholes and A Dirty Foot…………………………………………..47 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………57 6 CHAPTER 1: METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES In order to understand the nature of John Waters‟ films and artworks, one must first define the methodologies that he utilizes in their production. Camp, the abject and the use of the grotesque body are the three main components employed by John Waters to address the presence of “peripheral sexualities.” 2 Waters‟ situates his undesirables in his hometown of Baltimore, Maryland, and while it can be said that “home is where the heart is” for Waters “home is where the art is.” The city of Baltimore, Maryland is unique due to its central placement within the arsenal of works created by John Waters. Camp, as an art construct was still in its infancy in the early 1960s, when the teenage John Waters began to venture into the world of filmmaking. Susan Sontag is important to the discussion of camp due to the fact that she was the first theorist to attempt to define the fledgling artform. At the time she was writing her essay “Notes on Camp”, Pop-Art was new and not yet solidified within the canons of Art History. Artists such as Andy Warhol, and Roy Lichtenstein were drawing their inspiration from certain avenues of popular American culture, of which entertainment media and consumerism were at the forefront. Art culture was venturing out of the realm of the elite, and beginning to appeal to the average consumer. This transition is best visualized in the career of Andy Warhol. Warhol had begun his career as an advertisement artist, but by the early 1960s he was painting Campbell‟s soup cans. Warhol took an ordinary pantry item, one that most American families had in stock, and reproduced and multiplied it on canvas. He was making a statement on consumerism, and widening his audience base by being able to appeal to the lower classes. I doubt this would‟ve happened if he had 7 painted caviar. Pop-Art was really nothing more than a marketing ploy, albeit a brilliant one. Camp art, however, is entirely situated within the lower classes. Sontag, like many of her contemporaries, saw Camp as being synonymous to kitsch, both of which were seen as objects that lent a hand in the perceived death of art. This “conflation of Camp with kitsch and schlock, is a confusion that entered the discourse as a result of the heterosexual/Pop colonization of Camp in the 1960‟s.”3 This was the movement in New York, so how does it apply to Baltimore. Baltimore is unique, according to Waters‟ because it does not fall prey to the East and West Coast fads, its appeal is highly original.4 When Sontag defined Camp as „apolitical,‟ a sentiment that has been challenged by many of her successors, she was not aware of the political agenda of camp within homosexual communities. According to Moe Meyer, “Sontag killed off the binding referent of Camp-the Homosexual-and the discourse began to unravel as Camp became confused and conflated with rhetorical and performative strategies such as irony, satire, burlesque, and travesty; and with cultural movements such as Pop.”5 Even though Sontag has been accused of removing the homosexual from camp, she did acknowledge the importance of their presence in the movement due to fact that she referred to Camp as the “solvent of homosexuality.”6 Baltimore has a prominent gay community, and ties to Gay Rights History due to the fact that the Pepper Hill Club, a gay club, located ironically enough on Gay Street was raided on October 2, 1955, where 162 arrests were made.7 This raid occurred 14 years prior to Stonewall in New York. The young John 8 Waters was only 9 years old when this raid occurred, what kind of influence would that produce in a young child, even one with a gay sensibility. Jack Babuscio argued in his essay Camp and the Gay Sensibility that one needed a Gay Sensibility in order to understand the style of Camp. He defined the gay sensibility as: a creative energy reflecting a consciousness that is different from the mainstream; a heightened awareness of certain human complications of feeling that spring from the fact of social oppresssion; in short, a perception of the world that is colored, shaped, directed, and defined by the fact of one‟s gayness. 8 Camp as a style is typically divided into two categories, High Camp and Low Camp, and within these two categories there are four main features to camp that are present. Although, there are two categories, the focus of my argument revolves around Low Camp, and its importance in the career and works of John Waters. According to Babuscio‟s essay Camp and the Gay Sensibility, there are four fundamental features to camp: irony, aestheticism, theatricality, and humor.9 Waters maintains a strict adherence to the four fundamental features of camp, incorporating each in various guises throughout his extensive film catalog. Two of his films Pink Flamingos and Pecker are outlined in the following chapters. Low Camp is identifiable through the visibility of homosexuality in the lower classes, of which the drag queen is the most prominent feature. The inclusion of the drag queen is necessary when discussing the career of John Waters due to his relationship, both personal and cinematic, with Divine. No “real” man will allow himself to express fear of another man dressed in women‟s clothing. For most heterosexuals, the drag artist is the least threatening and most visible part of gay subculture, and consequently the first element of gay social practice that straight people are willing to confront, probably because they can feel superior to it. 10 9 In the Introduction of Camp Grounds Marty Roth was quoted as saying, “From the very beginning transvestism and drag were the epitome of Low Camp. Indeed, if the word camp is drawn from the French camper, to pose, to strike an attitude, then the drag performance is the essential act of camp.” 11 Camp, through its introduction of style, aestheticism, humor, and theatricality allows us to witness “serious” issues with temporary detachment, so that only later, after the event, are we struck by the emotional and moral implications of what we have almost passively absorbed. The “serious” is in fact crucial to camp. Though camp mocks the solemnities of our culture, it never totally discards the seriousness of a thing or individual.12 It is for this reason that camp imagery is most closely associated with the gay community, especially female impersonators whose flamboyant and often ridiculous dress and behavior act as a comic or dramatic barrier against ignorant prejudice. This particular example is the tame, palatable version seen in nightclubs, the kind where even the most crotchety of grandparents would find some amusement.

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