Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Jiří Vrbas

The Gay Revolution and the Pink Flamingos Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: doc. Michael Matthew Kaylor, PhD.

2016

1

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

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“I thank God I was raised Catholic, so sex will always be dirty.” (John Waters)

Acknowledgement I would like to thank my supervisor doc. Michael Matthew Kaylor, PhD, for his help and for making me believe in this topic. I would also like to thank him and Jeffrey Alan Vanderziel, BA, alike for their Gay Studies course. Knowledge acquired in their class provided the necessary background for this analysis.

3 Table of Contents Introduction ...... 5

I. Being Gay in the Past ...... 7

I.1. 18th Century Europe ...... 7

I.2. The Early 20th Century USA ...... 9

I.3. The 1950s USA ...... 14

II. Early Gay Rights Activism ...... 18

II.1. The Mattachine Society (1951-1969) ...... 20

II.2. Radicalisation (mid-1960s) ...... 23

III. The Gay Revolution (1969 onwards) ...... 27

III.1. The Setting ...... 27

III.2. The Stonewall Inn ...... 28

III.3. The Stonewall Riots ...... 29

IV. Homosexuality in Hollywood ...... 35

IV.1. The Sissy ...... 35

IV.2. The Criminal and the Freak ...... 36

V. John Waters ...... 38

V.1. Mondo Trasho (1969) ...... 39

V.2. Multiple Maniacs (1970) ...... 44

V.3. Pink Flamingos (1972) ...... 50

Conclusion ...... 60

Works Cited ...... 65

4 Introduction

John Waters’ work is generally associated with poor acting, exaggerated displays of overt perversion and being mostly distasteful and revolting. For these qualities, his films have achieved a cult status among minority audiences who enjoy their novelty and boldness, taking pride in labels as exercises in bad taste and promoting John Waters to their Pope of Trash. When one attempts to research John Waters and his films, they will most likely discover articles describing controversy. Except for their shock value, however, there is one aspect of John Waters’ films that goes unnoticed.

Waters’ early films were made at the turn of the 1970s, which was a time when a nationwide movement advocating gay rights surged in the USA. Inspired by the

Stonewall Riots, the generation of the 1970s was the first one in history that advocated gay rights loudly, took pride in their identity and refused to conform to externally imposed moral standards. John Waters is a member of this generation.

This thesis will argue that characters and motifs in his films developed together with the spirit of the militant Gay Power movement and that the new generation’s attitudes resonate in Waters’ work.

In order to fully understand the dynamics of the Stonewall Riots, their significance and the force with which the defiant attitude spread subsequently, it is necessary to be familiar with the challenges which the homosexual minority was facing in the past, to realize how deeply the society’s hatred was rooted and how homosexuals internalised the hatred towards themselves.

Firstly, this thesis will analyse what it meant to be homosexual from the 18th to the mid-20th century in Europe and the USA respectively. It will capture how homosexuals were misunderstood by both the general public and by themselves, how

5 homosexuality was ridiculed and attacked and how these attitudes resonated in public discourse, literature and media.

Secondly, this study will outline how homosexual population remained shattered and lacking a sense of community. It will describe early gay rights activism and the challenges it was facing both from the outside and the inside. It will explain why homosexuals never revolted before the Stonewall Riots. The paper will also capture the radicalization of the gay rights movement, explain the dynamics of the riots and familiarize the reader with the zeitgeist of the 1970s.

Thirdly, this work will describe how homosexuality was depicted in Hollywood films and provide a close analysis of John Waters’ Mondo Trasho, Multiple Maniacs and

Pink Flamingos as his early works shot during the crucial period of the early 1970s. It will describe how the characters and the films’ level of expressiveness developed together with the Gay Power movement and prove that the reality of the time manifested itself in

Waters’ work.

6 I. Being Gay in the Past

I.1. 18th Century Europe

Prior to the 20th century, in the Western society, homosexuality was perceived mainly in legal terms as an activity punishable by the law. It was a taboo and a phenomenon universally rejected by the general public. The gravity of the crime and the subsequent punishment were changing with philosophical and political influences of the respective period, but remained hostile towards gays.

In the 18th century France and Britain, homosexuality was a crime punishable by death and executions were common practice (Crompton, Civilization 450-451). The persecution affected all social classes including the aristocracy and the powerful. For example, under the regent rule of Philippe d’Orléans — gay himself (339) — homosexuality was widely practiced at the French court (445). Still, the social attitude towards it was so hostile that even the favourable attitude of the ruler was of little help to exposed homosexual members of the aristocracy. They were usually not executed, but were “exiled to their country estates and deprived of royal favour” (444).

The situation was even more challenging to the common man. With the help of an army of spies, the French police were actively persecuting homosexuals. They were forming special patrouilles de pédérastie in order to patrol known cruising1 areas and arrest homosexuals. They were blackmailing male prostitutes, forcing them to act as agents provocateurs and lure others into police traps (Civilization 445). Except for facing legal harassment, homosexuals had no hope that their situation would change. The idea of advocating gay rights was unimaginable at that time and attempts at changing the situation were systematically repressed.

1 Searching partners for anonymous sex in public, especially in parks and public bathrooms.

7 Even as early as in the 18th century, the authorities were well aware of the fact that oppression was necessary to prevent emancipation of the homosexual population. They knew that had the homosexuals not been oppressed, they would “organise leagues and societies, which [would] be disastrous, with respectable people in the lead” (Civilization

447). This notion of forming a community advocating change will prove a vital presupposition later, in 1969.

The vocabulary used to describe homosexual acts at this time is also worth of attention. It was not differentiated between homosexual acts in consenting adults and any other deviation from heterosexual vaginal intercourse. Each such deviation was simply called sodomie and pédérastie and held in the same regard as paedophilia or zoophilia

(Civilization 446). The police reports then illustrated the taboo and disdain connected to homosexuality, when the authorities described homosexuals only vaguely as men engaging in “infamous acts” and “committing crimes” (449). This illustrates the complete misunderstanding of the very nature of homosexuality and the authorities’ ignorance about it.

While the Revolution of 1789 brought a relative relief in France (Civilization 450), in Britain, influenced by the Puritan movement (454), executions of homosexuals were not abolished until 1835 (456) and the public discourse rhetoric remained extremely hostile. Public figures were nourishing hatred by claims such as that hanging was not severe enough a punishment (451) and that “anyone convicted of sodomy should be castrated in open court” as “the Hangman sear up his Scrotum with a hot Iron” (455).

A notable label given to the homosexuals is that of “lewd night-walkers and most detestable sodomites” (Civilization 455). These “night-walkers” illustrate the fact that homosexuals were forced to live a double-life, pretending to be heterosexual in the public

8 and among friends and living a secret private life at night. This will remain the norm for over a century.

Besides the persecution and hate speech there was the archetypal portrayal of a homosexual of the time. Homosexuals were perceived as men “‘degenerated from all masculine Deportment’” who “‘speak, walk, talk, tattle, courtesy, cry, scold, and to mimick all manner of Effeminacy’” (Civilization 452). In literature, gays are portrayed with both ridicule and hostility as effeminate caricatures (461).

Another popular notion was men hating women (Civilization 452), as for the common man there was no other explanation for homosexual behaviour than hatred of the opposite sex. Hatred so strong that it overrides libido. The word “misogynist” was used interchangeably with homosexual (453). The public discourse showed utter inability and unwillingness to understand even the basic nature of homosexuality. The same sort of prejudice will manifest itself in the 20th century mentality and subsequently in cinema.

Despite the pervasive rejection, persecution and stigmatisation of homosexuality, being systematically harassed by both the state and the church and facing death sentences, homosexuals never ceased to look for the company of one another. Being it at the court of Philippe d’Orléans or cruising in the parks of London, no force ever was capable of eliminating homosexual behaviour completely. Nevertheless, unlike other oppressed groups, the homosexuals never revolted and silently accepted their fate.

I.2. The Early 20th Century USA

This hostility towards homosexuals and their passivity about it spread to the independent USA, as the Americans adopted the English sodomy laws (Crompton,

“Colonial America” 284). Homosexuals were still executed in the 19th century USA

(Herzog 13) and at the turn of the 20th century they kept being actively pursued and imprisoned (Werther 33). At the same time, however, a paradigm of change arrived. Since

9 disciplines as psychology, sexology and sociology established, the focus on homosexuality shifted from legal to medical and scientific terms (Vanderziel).

Ralph Werther’s Autobiography of an Androgyne (1919) represents one of the pioneering works dealing with homosexuality as a psychological and social phenomenon in the American society (Herring ix–x) and provides an excellent insight into stances towards homosexuality in the period of the late 19th and the early 20th century.

The Autobiography is a memoir of a double life. Ralph Werther (needless to say that his very name is a pseudonym (Herring ix) as it would have been dangerous for him to be exposed in his real life) acted as a respectable university-educated middle class gentleman, who, though showing feminine characteristics (Herzog 14), lead a life no different from other “intellectual workers” (Werther 18). He had moved from Connecticut to the New York City (Herring xii), where he adopted his alter ego of “Jennie June” or

“Pussie” — a sex-addict seeking sexual satisfaction in the working-class areas of the city (ix).

It is important to say that Werther was not a homosexual, but from today’s point of view would be described as a transsexual woman and a partial hermaphrodite.

Nevertheless, at the time where such identity was interchangeable with homosexuality,

Werther’s story illustrates challenges which a gay person was facing at the turn of the century as well as how such a person might have thought about himself.

Like homosexuals of the earlier periods, Werther’s sexual life was restricted to secret “nocturnal rambles” (Herring xiii) posing as Jennie. He had to live his covert identity in a major city, cruising streets in the poor quarters that his respectable colleagues would never have visited, in order to both increase the chance of finding a partner and minimising the risk of being exposed. He faced blackmailing and physical violence.

10 Among other things, he was group-raped and lived at a great risk of being killed (xxvi- xxvii).

Werther was convinced that his Autobiography was “a work which this epoch had been waiting for and which futurity will crown as a classic” (Herring ix), hoping for a positive development of the society’s understanding of his sexuality. Yet, because of the publishers’ “antipathy towards books dealing with abnormal sexual phenomena,” he had been waiting 18 years to merely have the book published (17).

Illustrating the emerging importance of science — however resembling quackery from today’s perspective — he was successful only after he had agreed to give up the copyright and let the book be published by a prominent physician, Alfred W. Herzog, as a sexological case study (Herring xvii). The book had a limited printing of 1,000 copies and was “sold only, by mail order, to physicians, lawyers, legislators, psychologists, and sociologists” (Werther 4). The book was concealed from the general public as non- heterosexual practices were still a taboo in the society.

In addition, the concept of sodomy remained valid. According to the law, sodomy was still understood as any deviation from the norm, where homosexuality — still together with zoophilia and necrophilia or even mere anal or oral sex — was punishable by up to 20 years of imprisonment (Herzog 9). Even though Herzog still mistook homosexuality for transsexuality (11) and condemned males engaging in active anal sex, there was a significant progress in his understanding of homosexuality.

In his introduction, Herzog begins with a comment about a “void […] of colossal ignorance of the reasons for homosexual practices on one side and the pharisaical pulchritude on the other side”, emphasizing that homosexuality has always been a part of human society (7). Instead of rejecting homosexuality as an abominable crime and calling for death sentences, there is now a respected physician making a clear cut between

11 homosexual conduct and other activities qualifying as sodomy (10) and criticising the sodomy laws (11).

Moreover, he introduces homosexuality in strictly technical terms as a topic worth unbiased scientific attention (Herzog 8). He also differentiates between volitional sexual behaviour and homosexuality as an innate sexual orientation (Herring xxiii), which is a notion inconceivable in the past. Most importantly, he advocates those who engage in passive anal sex, acknowledging them as feeling themselves as female, thus being naturally2 attracted to men (Herzog 11). His revolutionary approach was not a sporadic one, but rather a direct result of a broad paradigm change.

By 1900s, though only in the scientific community, the umbrella term of sodomy starts crumbling apart. There are works of sexology published that describe and categorise various aspects of human sexuality, using novel specialised terminology for each separate phenomenon (Herring xxi). Over the course of the late 19th and the 20th centuries, sexologists “indelibly altered how modern Western societies understood sexual desire, sexual attraction, and sexual categories” and facilitated broader understanding of homosexual identity (xix). This marks a new era, where science will judge what is degenerate and pathological and what is natural and normal (xxi), thus acceptable.

Werther was also aware of this new paradigm and — like his successors in the

20th century would — he used scientific argumentation to account for himself. He was familiar with the ground-breaking works of psychology of his time and referred to them, drawing parallels between the recent discoveries and himself (20), trying to portray his life as a scientific study and attempting to achieve change in society. With Werther, there emerged a voice advocating homosexuality.

2 Suggesting that there might be anything natural about any behaviour qualifying as sodomy seems ground-breaking.

12 Werther pointed out that he was not an isolated anomaly. He claimed that, by conservative estimates only, one in three hundred men was a “passive invert”3 as he himself (18). By emphasising the number of homosexually behaving men, he portrayed homosexuality as a phenomenon worth of scientific interest. He claimed that certain kinds of homosexual behaviour were innate (30) and directly addressed the authority of “every medical man, every lawyer, and every other friend of science”, who would, supposedly,

“be moved to say a kind word” about the “sexually abnormal by birth” (18). Yet, however revolutionary these new ideas were, misconceptions about homosexuality were still widespread.

Similar to Herzog still being wrong in his understanding of homosexuality and in spite of his aspiration to provide an unbiased portrait of a homosexual, Werther too accepted a broad variety of prejudice. His misconceptions about himself ranged from the classic images of a homosexual as “helpless, immature, incapable of manual labor”

(Herring xxiii), to more peculiar ones like his conviction that his “inability to whistle is a general characteristic of passive inverts” (Werther 42) or that his polyglotism was a natural result of his sexual identity (27). Moreover, he refused to acknowledge the very existence of physical males who do not identify themselves as transsexual females (33), thus denied the very existence of homosexuality as understood today. Both the experts and the laymen of his time remained highly biased in their perceptions of human sexuality.

Furthermore, the development of professionals’ approach to homosexuality had little effect on everyday life of non-heterosexuals and the related social stigma. Despite being an educated man actively speaking for himself and according to Herzog “extremely vain” and “extremely proud” of his nature (14), Werther clearly was clearly a martyr. In

3 “[A] popular pseudoscientific term for a male attracted to the same sex who also feels himself to be a female trapped in a male’s body — or vice versa” (Herring x).

13 his memoir he shows symptoms of self-loathing, suffering from his inability to fulfil the desired role of a masculine man, and succumbs to hysteria and depression, namely after his night experiences as Jennie (Herring xiii). He felt his desires were “unnatural” (xii) and considered himself a “victim of inversion” (xiv).

What is lastly worth attention regarding that period is the state of the community, which was very fractured and hostile towards its own members (Herring xxvii). Notably, fairies4 were relatively tolerated in the low-class environment, but were detested by the middle-class homosexuals, who were blaming “the anti-gay hostility on the failure of fairies to abide by straight middle-class conventions of decorum in their dress and style”

(Herring xxiv). The same pattern of inner hostility will emerge repeatedly in the 20th century in the early Mattachine Society and between the 1950s and 1970s generations of gays.

I.3. The 1950s USA

According to Eisenbach, in the 1950s New York gay men were living in an environment both oppressive and allowing a certain level of freedom (1). The New York gay population was numerous and provided its members with “unparalleled sexual and social opportunities.” Gay men were holding “positions of power and influence in every professional field, from business and the arts to religion and politics” (1). On the other hand, for those who aspired to be allowed in the respectable class it was still necessary to live an officially straight life and a separate secret gay life “in the bars, the subway station men’s room1, or out on Fire Island” (1). Homosexuality remains hidden and taboo.

Despite talking about a numerous population, there was still no sense of community. Admittedly, there was some progress when the gay men of the 1950s were

4 “[A] popular slang term for an individual male who engaged in receptive sexual relations with other men” (Herring x).

14 well aware of the existence of others and even knew that some of them were leading figures among politicians, artists and the clergy (Eisenbach 1). Nevertheless, their secret lives were to be lived alone and being aware of others sharing their fate provided nothing more than a kind of consolation (1).

Hostility and rejection remained the predominant attitude towards homosexuals and the notion of sodomy was still present in the 1950s: “The American Psychiatric

Association officially categorized […] homosexuality as sickness, along with pedophilia, transvestitism, exhibitionism, voyeurism, sadism, and masochism” (Eisenbach 2) and presented pseudoscientific causes of homosexuality such as “‘close-binding, intimate’ mothers and ‘absent, weak, detached, or sadistic’ fathers” (2). The APA5 also claimed that homosexuals could be converted to heterosexuality by undergoing therapy (2).

Apparently, the rather revolutionary efforts of experts like Herzog, who were three decades before already criticising the ignorance and simplification of the universal concept sodomy and its immediate rejection, had no other effect than the developing a set of new labels while the attitude remained unchanged. Psychology did not bring unbiased scientific defence of homosexuality. On the contrary, together with becoming an authority on deciding what is normal, it became a means of advocating and legitimising prejudice.

In the 1950s, homosexuality slowly entered the public discourse and was then referred to and denigrated in the media and popular culture. In the earlier times, homosexuals were “caricatures with mincing gaits and sex addictions” or simply degenerates (Eisenbach 2). In the 1950s the archetypal gay persona was not only an effeminate pervert, but also a criminal: “[N]early every reference to lesbians and gays in the New York City’s newspapers was connected to crime” and the newspapers wrote

“almost daily” about “police sweeps of ‘deviates’” (2).

5 American Psychiatric Association

15 This rhetoric was feeding the picture of a degenerate felon. It is important to realise that at that time, as gays were closeted6, the media image was the only knowledge which the general public had of homosexuals. The media was the main instrument of steering public opinion, which would prove to be of utter importance later in the 1970s.

Moreover, the systematic persecution continued, the exception being that it was not the police and the clergy, but rather the police and the Mafia who were posing as gay decoys and would “destroy [gay men’s] career[s] or subject [them] to years of blackmail”

(Eisenbach 2).

With the Cold War and the Red Scare on the rise, homosexuality also became a political issue. The American federal government was “one of the main forces promoting gay stereotypes” (2-3). The infamous senator Joseph R. McCarthy was wedging a witch- hunt war against communists and homosexuals alike, labelling them as “cookie pushers”,

“cocksucker[s]” and enemies of the state (3).

A congressional investigation report with a “charming” subtitle of “General

Unsuitability of Sex Perverts” illustrates the state harassment in 1950 and the ongoing utter ignorance of homosexuality’s nature. The case was dealing with the issue of “3,750

‘perverts’ [who] worked in the U.S. government” (Eisenbach 3). The report claimed that

“[homosexuals] constitute security risks”, that “those who engage in overt acts of perversion lack the emotional stability of normal persons” (italics added) and that homosexuals were a “corrosive influence in government” because they “frequently attempt to entice normal individuals to engage in perverted practices” and that only “[o]ne homosexual can pollute a government office” (italics added) (3-4).

The government then continues with claims about homosexuals being emotionally unstable, of weak “moral fiber” and “susceptible to the blandishments of a foreign

6 Not openly homosexual, pretending to be heterosexual.

16 espionage agent,” and pictures scenarios in which foreign agents use these morally degenerate perverts who “seldom refuse to talk about themselves” to be a threat to the USA (4).

Surprisingly, the report does rebut one prejudice when it assesses that “[c]ontrary to common belief […] all homosexual males do not have feminine mannerisms” (3).

Within the given context, nevertheless, it can hardly imply any progressive thinking. On the contrary, this ridiculous rhetoric of a subversive threat together with the idea that gays were widely spread in the governmental bodies and some of them were not even easily distinguishable from “normal people” “fed common fears about homosexuals and shaped public policies” (4), making a less hostile attitude unthinkable.

The media and government-nourished belief that a homosexual was a weak effeminate perverted sex-addict or an insane criminal monster had two major implications: First, it made it “impossible for even the most self-confident and successful gays and lesbians to completely escape feelings of inferiority” (Eisenbach 2). Second, it made it quite easy for gays to pretend being straight. The prejudice was so strong that they could “pass for straight simply by defying the stereotypical image of gays” (5). These factors created a generation of closeted gays, who feel inferior about themselves and will want to stay closeted, resenting the Gay Power movement.

17 II. Early Gay Rights Activism

One of the first modern attempts to dismiss the prejudice against homosexuals and educate the public was Donald Webster Cory’s7 book The Homosexual in America

(1951). It was the first non-fiction publication describing gay life in the USA “not from the viewpoint of a psychiatrist or a criminologist but of a gay man” and the first book

“not demonizing, diagnosing, or patronizing the homosexual” (Eisenbach 12).

Cory helped to humanise the eerie public enemy of a homosexual by bringing him to light. He portrayed gay life as a world of its own, with rich culture, covering its various aspects; from “cruising practices, bar scenes, and tactics of concealment” to explaining the coded speech of gay slang (Eisenbach 13). According to him, homosexuals were not only “worthy of understanding and respect,” but also “possessed a special ‘homosexual creativity […] freed from conventional thought’” and as such fulfilled leading roles in the society as scientists, “educators, religious leaders [and] inventors” (13).

Besides merely introducing the idea of a gay culture, Cory used the federal government’s treatment of homosexuality as a political issue to fight back. The

Homosexual in America was the first book that “did not attribute the idiosyncrasies of gay life to mental illness or moral weakness. Instead it described a gay culture that contributed to the glorious diversity of American culture” (Eisenbach 13), addressing the notion of the American melting pot.

In addition, he adverted to the fact that both Hitler and Stalin were persecuting homosexuals as a “smoke screen” to achieve political goals and drew a parallel between the dictators and the government being hostile towards homosexuals for similar reasons

(Eisenbach 17). For Cory, advocating gay rights equalled advocating democracy and

“preserve[ing] the liberty of the American Republic (Eisenbach 17). He deliberately used

7 A pseudonym. His real name was Edward Sagarin (Eisenbach 12).

18 America’s bloated sentiment about its own greatness to fight for gay rights. For the first time, gays were not only sick and their culture had a value.

Cory also dismissed the popular practice of “curing” homosexuality with psychoanalysis, using his own experience of several failed attempts to be converted as an example. Instead, he believed that psychology should help homosexuals “to achieve self- acceptance” and proposed that gays should meet regularly in groups of gays only (so that nobody has to “feel inhibited”), where they would discuss “‘their personal and psychological problems’” and “be free of ‘the burden of secrecy and shame’” (Eisenbach

13). He is basically saying that psychology should not be here to change homosexuals, because there is nothing wrong with being one.

Nevertheless, nobody was openly advocating gay rights as there was the vicious circle of social stigma. Eisenbach called it the “conspiracy of science” (18). Cory was well aware of the paradox: If the homosexual “‘never rise[s] up and demand[s] his rights, he will never get them,’” but at the same time he “‘cannot be expected to expose himself to the martyrdom that would come if he should rise up and demand them.’” (Eisenbach

14). Similar to his utilization of the American sentiment, proposed another original way of altering the status quo:

Cory pointed out that the gay community was invisible and claimed that, similar to the blacks or the Jews, gays were an oppressed minority. However, unlike ethnic groups who “take refuge in comfort and pride of their own” (Eisenbach 14), being accepted by their family and community, homosexuals suffered alone (14). On that account, Cory called for a social change that would allow homosexuals to live without the need of hiding, in the same way other oppressed groups did (Eisenbach 15). Cory claimed that the right to live openly was a human right. Be making gay rights human rights, he forced

19 every liberal and human rights organisation to stop ignoring homosexuals and to take a stance (Eisenbach 15).

Lastly, Cory was aware of the crucial role of the media only who could kindle the general debate and “‘establish truth’” (Eisenbach 16). He suggested that in order to achieve change, homosexuality had to stop being a taboo and had to be “‘discussed as freely as any other subject’” (Eisenbach 16). He demanded that it was the homosexuals themselves who had access to the media, forming public opinions. He “saw the need for a ‘gay hero’ who could counteract the stereotypes”. This hero would “force straights to reconsider their assumptions about homosexuals and perhaps make them more comfortable with gay rights” as well as to allow gays to identify with a positive character

(Eisenbach 16).

All Cory’s ideas had a “revolutionary impact on his readers” (Eisenbach 13) in

1951. He proposed that gays not struggle alone any longer but instead help each other in the therapy groups. He created a positive image of a homosexual, who had a rich culture to be proud of. He made the homosexual realise that he was a member of an oppressed group and that he should fight for his rights and called for using the media to do so. The community spirit among homosexuals was slowly forming and the struggle for their freedom could begin.

II.1. The Mattachine Society (1951-1969)

In the same year The Homosexual in America was published (1951), the

Mattachine Society was formed in Los Angeles, marking the beginning of an organised gay rights movement (Eisenbach 19). Its founders were Henry Hay, a “fervent

Communist Party member”, and other gay leftists, whom he convinced to start a movement loyal to Cory’s beliefs (19). Hay also saw gays as a special community with a unique culture and as an oppressed minority.

20 The early Mattachine Society was a radical movement influenced by the spirit of its founders’ Communist activities. Similarly to the Communists believing in a class revolution, the Mattachine “looked to mobilize a large gay constituency that was capable of militancy if necessary” (Eisenbach 20).

In order to make gays feel as a class, following Cory’s thoughts they opened branches in other cities and started organising “semipublic discussion groups that affirmed the self-worth of participants” (Eisenbach 20). They also started issuing One, “a gay-run and -edited newspaper”, for which Cory “became a contributing editor”

(Eisenbach 20).

One was spreading the ideas that “‘homosexual acts between consenting adults are neither anti-social nor sinful [and that] legal attempts to regulate such behavior violate principles of American freedom’” (Eisenbach 20). The magazine was calling for

“‘solutions’” to be found for “‘millions of American men and women who refuse any longer to tolerate suppression, subjection, and abuse from every side’” (20-1). It was quickly spreading throughout the entire country and made millions of gays and lesbians aware that “a homosexual movement was on the rise” (21).

Radical as the Mattachine was at the beginning, the character of the group changed with new members coming. Newcomers, faithful to the status quo, thought that rather than celebrating homosexual identity, the group should endeavour to integrate gay people in the majority population, presenting homosexuals “as citizens who [merely] happened to be gay” and who are no different from heterosexuals except for what happens in the realm of their bedrooms (Eisenbach 21).

This opinion grew even stronger when Hay together with the society’s lawyer were investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee” (Eisenbach 22) and the media started speculating that oppressed homosexuals could form a subversive

21 political clique with “tremendous political power” (22), reinforcing the stereotype of gay as a threat. Subsequently, Hay left the Mattachine society (22) and the group’s character changed significantly.

The Mattachine passed a declaration that it would act in a “‘law-abiding’ manner” and that it was not aspiring to “‘overthrow existing institutions, laws or mores’”

(Eisenbach 23). It started describing homosexuals as variants and the entire movement as the homophile movement, a term that was “chosen because it was ambiguous enough not to arouse suspicion in a society increasingly anxious about homosexuality” (23).

The homophile press started condemning homosexuals that might give offence by their apparel or behaviour and asserted that “the best adjusted individuals are those with the fewest contacts in the homosexual world” (Eisenbach 24). It is worth mentioning again, for comparison, the contempt and hostility which the middle-class homosexuals had for the low-class fairies4 in Werther’s time as well as the previously described closeted gays of the 1950s. The inner homophobia manifested itself again.

The Mattachine then continued in their efforts to create the image of respected citizens instead that of a struggling class (Eisenbach 24) and wanted to achieve slow progress by convincing respectable experts to advocate homosexuality (22). They created an important platform which, by issuing its own publications, gave the whole movement a certain level of legitimacy (25), but failed to become an organisation with which the gays could identify as a group supporting their rights (25). Instead, the organisation was actively opposing any attempts for change, such as fighting the sodomy laws, out of the fear of public backlash (25). This attitude lasted to the 1960s, when it was condemned by the next generation of gay right activists.

Landmark events preceded the discourse change. In 1957, Britain repealed criminalization of consensual sex between adult men (Eisenbach 24). In 1959, the One

22 magazine won a legal dispute with the U.S. Postal Service, which previously refused to distribute it on the grounds of its alleged “obscenity” (26). Victories as these, together with the election of John Kennedy and the arrival of liberal politics, gave gays hope that their struggle was not pointless (26-27).

II.2. Radicalisation (mid-1960s)

By 1960 the Mattachine Society started dissolving into several independent groups with the Mattachine Society of New York assuming the lead, advocating a “less accommodationist" attitude (Eisenbach 26). However, for its representatives this meant only that they would start approaching experts and push changes through convincing leading figures to lobby for the gay cause rather than to organise groups of gays to press for legal changes (27).

The Washington, D.C., branch lead by Frank Kameny represented the next step in the gradual radicalization of the gay rights groups. In 1964 Kameny achieved a landslide victory and valuable publicity with his case against a conservative Congressman John

Dowdy, who proposed a bill to restrict Mattachine’s funding (Eisenbach 29-30). This case marked the moment when the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) decided to reassess their policy of ignoring gay rights. The ACLU started actively opposing the bill

(30) and joined the struggle to end employment discrimination of homosexuals (33).

Kameny opposed the other groups’ approach of pressing change via convincing authorities. As a PhD himself, he was sceptical about the supposed “wisdom of the experts” and maintained that the homosexuals themselves are the only experts and authorities on the matter (Eisenbach 31). While other groups were organising public debates with physicians and psychologists “on causes and cures of for homosexuality”,

Kameny’s group was working on educating straight audiences (31).

23 By 1965, Kameny’s group fully transformed into an organisation advocating gay rights as civil rights of an oppressed minority. They claimed that debating with experts about causes and cures for homosexuality was as absurd as speculations about what genes were responsible for black skin or eradicating antisemitism by converting all Jews to

Christians (Eisenbach 32). Nonetheless, these efforts were not unanimously supported by the gays.

Despite the legal and moral victories which some of the activist groups achieved, in the global perspective, these were minor and had little effect on how a common

American thought of homosexuals. The image of a weak effeminate pervert was still alive. “Before Stonewall, gays in America existed in the eyes of the larger society as sinners, criminals and lunatics” (Eisenbach 65) and were seen as inherently sick. Even in

1967 on a university ground, traditionally in space understood as liberal and progressive, a student gay rights group — the Student Homophile League — was facing strong public backlash about its mere existence, joined by the Dean himself, who was accusing them of “proselytizing” innocent young men as homosexuals (65).

Instead of earning a universal support for the gay right groups from all homosexuals, these activities made many oppose what the activists were doing.

Considerable numbers internalised the widespread superstitions and were proclaiming how disgusted they were with the homophile movement, bitterly calling its supporters names like “Miss Mattachine” (Eisenbach 33). They were claiming that they wanted to get cured themselves and that a homophile movement was as useful as a group of lepers advocating their rights to remain sick (66). They did not want “people to know that [gays]

[look like] everybody else.” Their belief was that “as long as [people] think everyone’s a screaming queen with eyelashes, we’re safe. We’re not suspected. We don’t want publicity” (33-4).

24 Once again, we see the same inner opposition and inner homophobia that prevailed between the low-class fairies4 and the middle-class gays in Werther’s times and the same mentality of the closeted gays of the 1950s, who put an end to the efforts of the early Mattachine Society. The community was still divided and supporters of gay rights were scorned and detested both from the inside and the outside. The time of a radical change was still to come.

The above-mentioned Student Homophile League (SHL) at Columbia University was among the first radical gay rights groups, who in the period around 1967 initiated the

Gay Pride movement (Eisenbach 77) and its “in your face” attitude. Its leader Bob Martin was a representative of the new generation of gay activists, who grew up in a more liberal atmosphere of the 1960s and refused to follow the “intellectual and educational” line of the Mattachine (72). “As he wrote, ‘we will not be content to sit back and let others inform us of what the decisions are—we will be asking for a voice in these decisions, and asking loudly’” (Eisenbach 72). This was a crucial turning point, which adumbrated the development in the 1970s.

Among other activities, the SHL, being aware of many anti-gay thinking members of the New Left, ambushed a New Left’s anti-war demonstration, distributing “thousands of leaflets that ‘called the left to task for its anti-gay positions’” (Eisenbach 72). They actively supported student groups opposing the NROTC8 presence because of its anti-gay discriminatory politics and were demanding the university explain why they were

“allowing a discriminatory group to operate on campus” (73). They were also organising events at the campus where gay men and women would dance together. These “Dance-

Ins” initially caused a sensation, but “eventually men dancing together was accepted” and these activities, showing that “homosexuals were not predators or contagious”, greatly

8 Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps

25 contributed to the general acceptance of gay people by other students (73). The new era of gay right activism begun.

The SHL were heavily criticised by the Mattachine as irresponsible radical extremists jeopardising the interests of the homosexual movement (Eisenbach 70-71).

However, their “Dance-Ins” and the SHL’s radical approach in general proved highly effective and was about to become the tactics of the gay movement. Besides being effective, for the organisers, these activities were also “fun” (73). This new archetype of a provocative activist who finds pleasure in causing public nuisance will become the new norm. The nationwide uproar will start a year later with the Stonewall Riots in 1969.

26 III. The Gay Revolution (1969 onwards)

III.1. The Setting

The above-described significant progress in understanding gay rights in the previous two decades might leave the impression that the situation for gays in the 1969

New York City was relatively satisfactory. On the contrary, the opposite was the truth. In pre-Stonewall New York, “everything from serving alcohol to homosexuals to cross- dressing was illegal” (Eisenbach 9). Consensual sex between adult men was not illegal per se, but it was an offence to “frequent[] or loiter[] about any public place soliciting men for the purpose of committing a crime against nature or other lewdness” (11). The police and state harassment was little different from the practices of the 18th century.

The police continued their 200 years old technique of using undercover agents to hunt down homosexuals cruising1 in parks, bars and public restrooms, arresting over a thousand people annually (Eisenbach 13). In addition to being arrested in concordance with the law, gay men were also subject to police brutality. Those arrested were frequently beaten up. Victims of such abuse were very reluctant to file official complaints as many were afraid to be exposed to their families and employers, subsequently losing their jobs

(12). Many homosexuals internalised the prejudice and were enduring the bullying, convinced by the predominant media image of gay “criminals and traitors” that

“antihomosexual discrimination was not without justification” (12).

Gay bars were systematically being closed down by the police and the New York

State Liquor Authority. Since 1959, the NYSLA was revoking licences to facilities serving homosexuals (Eisenbach 10). In 1959 only, tens of bars were closed down on the grounds of “encouraging a homosexual clientele” or having “patronage […] committing indecent acts” (10). The combination of the high demand for gay bars and the state repression was taken advantage of by the Mafia.

27 The Mafia were running a scheme of buying rundown bars, turning them at minimal costs into gay bars and paying ransom to the corrupted NYPD, who in return let them stay in business (Eisenbach 10). It was impossible to run a gay facility in the city without cooperating with the Mafia (10). In addition to being beaten by the police and being forced to buy over-priced watered-down drinks in these bars (10), wealthy patrons were also blackmailed by the Mafia.

III.2. The Stonewall Inn

One of such places was the Stonewall Inn in Christopher Street. In early 1960s, it was a restaurant of the same name that had burned down and the space remained empty until 1967, when “a 420-pound mafioso […] decided to open a ‘fag bar’” (italics added)

(Eisenbach 84). The renovation was carried out in accordance with the latest trends of minimalism, when Fat Tony simply painted the charred walls black and “christened his new enterprise the Stonewall Inn, saving himself the further expense of replacing the rusty sign that hung above the entrance” (84).

Historically, the Stonewall Inn was a horse stable (Eisenbach 84). Now it was once again rebuilt into a facility resembling that for cattle. The bar was violating every fire safety and health regulation imaginable. There was no fire exit except for its narrow main entrance. There was no running water and used glasses were simply rinsed in a “vat of dingy water and [refilled] for the next customer” (Eisenbach 85). The horrible sanitary conditions of Stonewall were allegedly the cause of a hepatitis outbreak among its customers (85).

Moreover, the doorman was in the past involved in blackmailing homosexuals in an extortion scheme known as the “Chickens and Bulls” operation (Eisenbach 9). In this scheme, a young man would act as a decoy and lure a wealthy man to a hotel room. Then his accomplices would burst into the room disguised as policemen and the victim would

28 offer them a bribe out of fear of being arrested and exposed. In other cases, the chicken would steal the man’s wallet and run away. Fake policemen would then come to the victim’s home and blackmail him (8). Now, a person extorting homosexuals in this way was working in the club and was controlling a gang stealing the patrons’ wallets (86).

Saying that the Mafia were selling a wide range of drugs in Stonewall (85) would be the proverbial icing on the cake.

For a mere chance of being themselves and dancing with each other, gay people, transsexuals and transvestites depended on a place where they were ripped off, stolen from, extorted and had to entertain themselves in conditions resembling those of a pigpen.

Nonetheless, it was a place where they were protected from the police, although only to a certain extent. The protection money the Mafia paid to the police ensured that the place would not be closed down and revoked the liquor license, but did not make the Stonewall

Inn exempt from “periodic harassment raids” (Eisenbach 87). As it was still prohibited for people of the same sex to dance with each other, when the police approached the front door, the patrons were warned by the music being interrupted and bright lights being turned on, so that they could stop dancing and touching each other in time (86).

III.3. The Stonewall Riots

The Stonewall Inn was the headquarters of the Mafia’s large scale blackmailing operation of New York’s gay bank employees. The scheme was so extensive that it was investigated by the Interpol as a “multimillion-dollar international criminal enterprise”

(Eisenbach 87). In order to prevent further financial loss, the police decided to close

Stonewall down completely. Because of the precinct’s known relations with the mafia, the task was carried out by an independent Morals unit (87).

On Tuesday June 24, 1969, the police raided Stonewall and confiscated the

Mafia’s alcohol only to find the bar fully operational the next day (Eisenbach 87-88).

29 Even this initial raid caused upheaval in the community. The anger pent-up over the years of police harassment was about to burst (88).

On Saturday June 28, 1969, after the first raid proved unsuccessful, seven members of the Morals squad returned to Stonewall. Since this time the aim was to prevent the Mafia from reopening, they started violently smashing the bar’s equipment,

“heighten[ing] tensions that had hung in the air since the Tuesday night raid” (Eisenbach

88).

Normally, a police raid meant that the patrons would be assembled and released after showing their IDs. “Usually gays in raided bars were only too happy to flash their identifications, many of them fake, and disappear” (Eisenbach 88-9). Cross-dressers would be “examined” and those after a sex-change operation would be let go as well while others would “surrender to arrest, knowing they would be released after just a few hours” (89).

That night, the crowd was angry and defiant. Instead of showing their identifications and leaving as soon as possible, people started shouting “We’re not taking this, […] I’m not showing you my ID!” and the cross-dressers were refusing to undergo the humiliating “examinations” (Eisenbach 89). The police decided to “avoid further conflict” by “‘taking everybody in’” and started releasing everybody except for the bar staff and the transvestites (89). However, instead of dispersing in the streets and parks as usual, patrons leaving Stonewall started gathering outside “watching what the police would do next” and discussing raids on other bars in the previous days (89).

What is significant here was the attitude of the patrons. Besides the anger there was also humour and campiness9. Eisenbach observes: “As the crowd outside grew to about 150 strong, the scene began to resemble an Academy Award red carpet walk” (89)

9 Exaggerating effeminate stereotypes in order to amuse.

30 with people applauding to those coming out of Stonewall, who bowed and “threw their arms out in dramatic acceptance of the applause. Several camped[9] it out for the crowd:

‘Have you seen Maxine? Where is my wife?—I told her not to go far’” (89). The violating of the traditional gender roles in order to amuse is notable. This excited atmosphere and the camp9 humour ridiculing both heteronormative morals and the stereotypical image of gay people are recurring leitmotifs in gay community and will be exploited by John

Waters.

The relaxed atmosphere changed when the reinforcements with the police van arrived and the police started taking the bar staff and the transvestites in. When they started clubbing “a transvestite who turned around and slammed [one of the] cop[s] with his purse” (Eisenbach 90), the crowd, now counting both the released Stonewall patrons and random passers-by, started shouting, “beating the wagon [and] booing” (91). When the police started pushing “a butch lesbian” who was fighting back, the crowd replied with shouts about police brutality and a man “picked up a loose cobblestone and hurled it across Christopher Street at a squad car. Bam! The riot had begun” (90).

The crowd started throwing bottles and the seven police officers were forced to retreat back to Stonewall and barricade themselves in, waiting for reinforcements. Seeing the retreat, the crowd went berserk and threw a dust bin through one of the bar’s windows.

Upon hearing the sound of shattering glass, “the crowd heaved a collective ‘Ooooh!’”

(Eisenbach 91). They continued bombarding the bar with “bottles, bricks, and beer cans and anything else” (92). They ripped parking meters off ground and used them as battering rams against the bar’s door. When the police’s emergency barricades gave in, they “lit a trash can full of paper” and set Stonewall’s cloak room ablaze. An eyewitness remembers: “That night, the closet was set on fire both symbolically and literally” (93)

31 When the reinforcements arrived and started freeing the officers trapped inside, clearing the area at the entrance and taking in the arrested transvestites, the crowd decided to prevent that from happening and a street war broke out. And as the riot police with shields and helmets were clubbing gays and drag queens setting dust bins on fire and breaking windows, “a brave, if foolish, group of street kids […] formed a Rockette-style kick line while singing,

We are the Stonewall girls,

We wear our hair in curls.

We wear no underwear:

We show our pubic hair” (Eisenbach 94).

The first riot lasted about an hour, after which the crowd realised that merely vandalising the neighbourhood was “dull” (Eisenbach 95), but the reports of the previous night spread. The following day hundreds of homosexuals went to the streets with signs, forming spontaneous rallies and holding hands and kissing in public (Eisenbach 97). By the night the crowd counted thousands and was chanting “‘Gay Power,’ ‘We Want

Freedom Now,’ [and] ‘Equality for Homosexuals’” (97). The Gay Power movement and the militant gay activist were born.

Another riot broke out that night, when the crowd started smashing police cars and attacking police officers. A notable scene, illustrating the new aggressive attitude, was to see when the riot police arrived again. When one of the police units lashed out at the crowd grabbing a random boy, the crowd of “‘nelly’ homosexuals” screamed “‘Save our sister!’”, pulled the boy back and formed a barricade to protect him and let themselves be clubbed instead (Eisenbach 98). And of course, there was again a campy9 Rockette-

32 style kick line. It was ironically the most effeminate sissies10 who fought the police the hardest (98).

The Stonewall Riots released the accumulated anger and frustration and sparkled a nationwide movement. Gay newspapers and magazines were calling to arms, writing about a new generation of gays, who were no longer willing to put up with oppression and would fight back. They wrote about the police being “scared shitless” (Eisenbach

102) and protesters chasing them screaming “Catch them! Fuck them!” (102), challenging everybody to follow the example of the Stonewall rioters. That had a massive empowering effect on gays, many of whom started fully realising that they indeed were an oppressed minority and that being afraid and silent was no longer an option (102). A true gay community was finally born.

Stonewall was significant not only because of its formative and unifying effect on the gay community, but because of its strong message to the public. The riots were not important because of their size or the damage they caused. They mattered because now the rioters were homosexuals (Eisenbach 98-99). Homosexuals, viewed by everybody as weak, sick, effeminate perverts, were now bravely setting fire to buildings, smashing cars and intimidating and injuring the riot police (95).

As the police continued raiding gay bars, protests and marches grew stronger. New

Gay Power groups started forming and the movement turned militant (Eisenbach 104-5).

Jim Fouratt, one of the leading figures of the new groups, formulated the new philosophy that defined a generation:

We don’t want acceptance, goddamn it! We want respect! Demand it! […]

We’re through hiding in dark bars behind Mafia doormen. We’re going to

go where straights go and do anything with each other they do and if they

10 An effeminate gay person (see chapter IV.1.).

33 don’t like it, well, fuck them! And if some of us enjoy a little group sex at

the docks or in the subways we’re going to have it without apologising to

anybody! (Eisenbach 119)

In the following years, gay activists were not only challenging discriminatory laws and the previous generation’s dream of a calm life within the gay ghetto. They were convinced that it was necessary to “destroy the image of homosexuals as sick, silly sissies and show both homosexuals and straights that ‘gay is good’” (Eisenbach 111). They followed Cory’s ideas about the importance of the media. They were using so called zaps to attract media cover and achieve their goals.

A zap was an arranged rally “designed to disrupt corporate offices or political events like campaign rallies” to “force media corporations and politicians into complying with their agenda.” The activists “stormed the offices of broadcasters, newspapers and magazines and demanded more sympathetic coverage of gay rights and homosexuality”

(Eisenbach viii). With the publicity attracted, they “turned high priced political fundraisers into highly visible gay rights demonstrations” (viii).

The activists would, for example, attend a political rally in great numbers and when politicians were being asked questions, they would confront them in front of the cameras with questions about gay rights. The politicians were forced to either deny their claims about equality or publicly support gay rights. By forcing many leading politicians to voice their opinions about homosexuality, the zaps started a “national political debate”

(viii) on the matter. By 1973, homosexuality was present in the media and general discourse even without zaps (244).

34 IV. Homosexuality in Hollywood

The 20th century’s changing conceptions of homosexuality were manifesting themselves in film. Homosexuality was portrayed in cinema as early as in the late 19th century. In early cinema, opposite sex impersonators were a popular theme, but soon

“total character impersonation disappeared.” The ridiculed character of a sissy came instead (Russo 6).

IV.1. The Sissy

At the time when merely dressing a man in women’s clothes was considered utterly comical (Russo 10), despite the ongoing hatred associated with homosexuality, the sissy himself was considered an not-sexualised, innocent and ridiculed “member[] of a family group” (59).

A typical sissy of that time is the Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of Oz. When he appears for the first time, he acts as archetypal masculine character of a dominant and an aggressive lion. Everybody is scared of him and he is threatening the others with fists, threatening to fight them with “one paw behind [his] back” and “standing on one foot”

(0:49:39). However, the moment Dorothy gently slaps his face, the masculine persona is gone.

The Lion bursts in tears and is concerned with the possibility of his nose bleeding, admits being a coward and starts singing about sadly being “born a sissy without the vim and voive” (0:52:16). He acts out the female stereotype throughout the entire film, being very happy about visiting a hair salon and wearing a ribbon (1:01:50), having “a permanent just for the occasion” of meeting the Wizard (1:03:25) and generally moving with effeminate gestures and crying on multiple occasions. This was supposedly amusing in 1939.

35 What is worth attention is the homophobia in The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy is an archetypal good-hearted heroine and is supportive of her friends despite them having rather serious imperfections as lacking a brain and a heart. Dorothy acts only with affection when Scarecrow reveals not having a brain (36:32) and Tin Man’s missing heart arouses mere surprise and a compassionate sigh (0:42:48).

There is not a single hint of there being anything improper about a missing heart or the lack of brain. But in the Lion’s case, just seconds after he bursts in tears is his unmanly behaviour rejected as improper when Dorothy screams in disbelief: “My goodness what a fuss you’re making!” and accusing him of being “nothing more than a great big coward (0:51:03). While despite their imperfections Tin Man is no heartless cynic and Scarecrow is not mentally handicapped, Lion’s entire character is defined by his lack of courage and him being sad (and hysterical) about not meeting the masculine standards of a lion.

IV.2. The Criminal and the Freak

From the 1940s on, “attitudes toward queerness were shifting because men were going off to war” (Russo 59). Questioning a male character’s manliness started being frowned upon (4) and alleged homosexuality of a character became a “yardstick for the masculinity of the men around them” (59), humiliating homosexuals. Also, because of the Catholic Church’s pressure, Hollywood developed a code of restricted topics (Epstein

0:15:24). Screenplays touching homosexuality were censored (Russo 122), removing it from scripts before the early 1960s (119).

The 1950s’ notion of the homosexual as a dangerous underground criminal threatening the state security also manifested itself in film. Hollywood’s censorship failed to remove all hints of homosexuality from the scripts, especially the subtler ones.

Homosexuality was now covert and characters with suspected homosexual orientation

36 became portrayed as “coldblooded villains” (Epstein 0:16:56) and mentally disturbed people who were dying, either being murdered or committing suicide (Russo 347), presumably to satisfy the public order of a personified enemy. This way of portraying homosexuals continued through the 1960s (122).

In 1970 — after Stonewall — Hollywood made The Boys in the Band, a film starring openly gay men. However, they remained the archetypal homosexuals portrayed as sad characters with mental disorders, “villains, fools and queens” (Russo 178). Despite the efforts of the gay rights movement to educate the public about what homosexuals really looked like, even as late as in 1980 gay activists “rioted in the streets” because of how Hollywood was portraying homosexuality. In Hollywood films, even in 1980 “the hero still could not be queer” (178-9). Nevertheless, this is not the case with John Waters’ films. Unlike Hollywood, his film provide the queer hero and much more.

37 V. John Waters

John Waters represents a very different approach to portraying (not solely) homosexuality and the lives of gay people of his time. He was directly addressing the society’s views of homosexuals, including prudent morals, and was mocking them in his films. The films are famous for exploiting the traditional concepts of what is tolerable.

They are also known for using controversy, shock and disgust to amuse, earning Waters the title of the Pope of Trash (Egan xiii).

Because of the normative character of Hollywood films, Waters’ works of the

1970s offers an independent alternative where homosexuality and anything regarded

“obscene” is portrayed openly and “perverts” are heroes. His filmography follows in the footsteps of the Gay Power activists’ attitude, defined by Jim Fouratt as “if they don’t like it, well, fuck them!” (Eisenbach 119).

Waters started his film directing career before Stonewall in 1964 with short films

Hag in a Black Leather Jacket, then Roman Candles (1966) and Eat Your Makeup (1968) followed. These were film experiments which were never released in commercial distribution and were screened for “semi-private audiences” (Egan 3). Together with his last short film, The Diane Linkletter Story (1969), they are not significant for the purpose of this thesis and their analysis is not included.

Nevertheless, in order to illustrate John Waters’ enfant terrible character, the plot of Hag in a Black Leather Jacket is worth attention. It “moves from a fictitious interracial wedding conducted on a roof by a Ku Klux Klansman to a wedding reception on top of a moving automobile and other rich fare, including a trashcan ballet” (Egan 3). Even the semi-private screening of Hag in 1965 aroused controversy in a Baltimore newspaper

(Egan x).

38 Despite his early films taking place in Baltimore, in 1965 Waters was already present in the New York scene and in contact with the local gay community (Egan xi).

Knowing New York as the city so prominent in the gay rights movement’s history, he could apprehend all social and political implications of being gay at that time.

V.1. Mondo Trasho (1969)

Mondo Trasho is Waters’ first full-length film. It almost lacks dialogues and narrates the plot using musical themes, song lyrics and the songs’ unuttered titles instead.

Its main theme is capturing the common archetype of sexual perverts. In Mondo Trasho, the way homosexuals were treated by the state and society and how were they thinking about themselves resonates.

The film opens with a man dressed as a headsman, executing a chicken with an axe while a song named “Jack the Ripper” (Blevins) is heard. The chicken is observed twitching in a puddle of water. Then, Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance March No. I”, a musical theme traditionally associated with royalty and majesty, introduces a young

Woman walking to a bus stop. The Woman travels to a public park, where she is followed by a Foot Fetishist. While she sits on a bench and feeds bugs and insects meat, the

Fetishist appears from beneath the bench. The Woman is startled at first (0:11:06), but a song singing “something in your eyes was inviting” starts playing and the Woman lets him lick her feet, carefully looking around (0:11:11) — she is aware of doing something inappropriate.

After a mother with a pram passes by, being visibly disgusted by what she is witnessing (0:11:54), the Woman and the Fetishist hide in the surrounding bushes, where he continues licking her feet while she moans ecstatically (0:19:00). This conspicuously resembles the practice of cruising, when gay men would go to a park and have sex in a public place. Moreover, by introducing the Woman with the royal theme and now

39 revealing that she is actually a pervert, Waters is mocking the contempt for perverts by making them royalty.

After this scene, Divine is introduced. Divine is a recurring character in John

Waters’ films. She is an obese transvestite and a criminal with numerous perversions.

Divine is now lasciviously observing a young hitchhiker, whom she imagines naked, not paying attention to driving, and as the Woman emerges from the park, Divine runs her over. She puts the now unconscious Woman in her car and drives off (0:25:50).

Divine then steals clothes from a shop (0:30:32) and carries the unconscious

Woman to a laundromat, where she undresses her and changes her clothes. Stravinsky’s sinister “Rite of Spring” is playing (0:34:50), signifying either the gravity of Divine’s crime of hitting the Woman, or more likely her lesbian tendencies, being aroused by the

Woman’s exposed body. This reading is supported by the following scene, where Virgin

Mary appears. Divine is startled and a religious hymn starts playing (0:36:08).

Divine starts ecstatically screaming: “Oh Mary! Oh Mary!” She kneels down praying: “Oh Holy Trinity! Oh God! It isn't easy being Divine! Oh the good Lord knows it is not,” and asks Mary to help her “to stay out of temptation” by curing the unconscious woman (0:37:03). This monologue identifies the previous scene as a lesbian one, where

Divine is tempted to take advantage of the unconscious Woman and is stopped by Mary.

Divine is feeling guilty and asks for help. This is arguably a representation of being gay and living with guilt about one’s nature, imposed by the church.

In the following scene, a female Lunatic is chased by a pair of mental hospital wardens. The wardens catch the Lunatic and when they see Divine and the Woman, they capture them, too. Beethoven’s Fate motif is playing. Divine and the Woman are driven off to an asylum and, while forced inside, “We're Off to See the Wizard” is playing. Using the contrast of the carefree and playful theme of The Wizard of Oz, which is in this context

40 clearly used ironically to hint that Dorothy and her friends are all insane, is exploited to criticise the practice of treating homosexuals as mentally ill and using psychiatry as a repressive tool of population control.

Waters further captures the confusion of mental illness and minority sexual orientation when all the inmates turn out to be perverted. The Lunatic undresses and starts dancing on the table while the others are cheering (0:50:20). The Foot Fetishist from the park scene is among the inmates (0:51:06). One of them seizes the Lunatic and starts putting a paper bag over her head and raping her while the crowd chant “fuck her!”

(0:51:41). Divine is clearly appalled when she sees the perversion around her (0:48:14), but continues watching the entire rape (0:52:07). Her contempt for the other inmates/perverts markedly resembles the pre-Stonewall closeted ego-dystonic homosexuals, who despised the gay rights activists and accepted the society’s homophobia.

At this moment, the Virgin Mary reappears. Divine is praying in a desperate voice:

“Once again my god-fearing soul has been blackened by the evil hold of original sin,”

(0:53:04) while the camera turns towards the helpless raped body of the Lunatic. The proclaimed “original sin” is connected with the naked female body and seems to be a metaphor of innate homosexuality/perversion. Although manifesting disgust now, when she is being confronted with the moral authority, Divine was watching the rape, tempted by the naked woman’s body. She feels guilty and asks Mary for redemption and for being cured (0:54:00), once more proving her rejection of her own nature.

In the Doctor’s office scene, Waters is ridiculing the medical experts considered by the pre-Stonewall Mattachine society to be perfectly competent in deciding what is and what is not acceptable. The entire health service is now depicted as a community of sadists and drug addicts: The Doctor’s Assistant is reading a sadomasochist novel

41 (0:57:05), qualifying as a pervert herself. When Divine and the still unconscious Woman are waiting to see the Doctor, a female Patient emerges crawling out of the Doctor’s office, with unbuttoned shirt, presumably raped and apparently injured; “help someone” is heard in a song (1:03:07). She is followed by a Nurse, who is covered in blood, carrying a long knife. The Patient is clearly the Doctor’s victim. She is subsequently captured by the clinic’s employee and dragged away. This clinic is a place where people get harmed instead of helped.

When the unconscious Woman is taken to the Doctor’s office, the Doctor is seen for the first time, applying a substance intravenously (1:05:19), and the archetype of a helping physicist is shattered. Obviously, he is a drug addict. Instead of wearing the traditional white coat, he is wearing a black one. He and the Nurse start operating on the

Woman, using a giant handsaw while horror organ music is playing. The Doctor takes off the Woman’s shoes, amputates her feet using the handsaw and replaces them with chicken claws. This can be read as Waters’ reaction to “curing” homosexuality, which was nothing more than mutilation.

The Woman is a pervert. As a foot fetishist, her feet are the source of her perversion and the source of her sexual pleasure. Waters portrays a highly incompetent drug-addicted Doctor, who together with his sadistic staff “cures” the Woman by simply cutting off her feet as the alleged cause of her perversion, replacing them with something obviously not being natural to her. Instead of curing her, he cripples her.

Later, the Woman and Divine escape from the clinic and Divine dies on a pig farm

(following the Hollywood cliché about a homosexual villain, who must die). The Woman finds out that she has the power of being teleported by clicking her heels three times.

Again, this is an obvious reference to The Wizard of Oz, where Dorothy clicks her magical red shoes to get back home from the Land of Oz. In contrast with Dorothy, the Woman

42 only has the chicken claws. When she clicks them, unlike Dorothy, who gets back to her loving family, the Woman is teleported onto the street.

She appears next to two women who are looking at her with disgust and comment on her appearance. Their two minute dialogue consists purely of guessing what kind of a pervert the Woman might be:

Is that a boy or a girl?

Is it a faggot?

It's a dyke.

No, it's a hippie!

A communist?

Perhaps it's a drag queen… (1:24:58)

For the whole two minutes, the Woman is being accused of various sexual perversions as well as being a “beatnik”, a “flower child” or “some sort of intellectual” (1:24:50-26:52), showing the contempt for liberalism of any kind.

In order to emphasise this scorn, when the camera pans up, we learn that they are standing at a shop window that says PEST CONTROL (1:26:09). This clearly identifies the two women as exterminators, while the pervert is the pest together with liberals, hippies and others who might have defied the authorities.

Once again, Waters is ridiculing moral purists using the contrast with The Wizard of Oz. He pictures the unfortunate reality which a person of minor sexual orientation has to return to instead of a loving home. The opening scene of brutally killing the innocent chicken (which the Woman now partially is) can then be seen as a metaphor for the hardship of being a member of a sexual minority and as such suffer.

43 V.2. Multiple Maniacs (1970)

In Multiple Maniacs, Waters works with the topics of repressed sexuality, blasphemy and to a certain extent captures the after-Stonewall militant gay rights policy.

The topic of repressed sexuality appears at the beginning of the film. We can see a ringmaster (later known as Mr David) advertising a circus show to the passers-by:

Yes folks, this isn't any cheap X-rated movie or any fifth rate porno play.

This is the show you want! Lady Divine's Cavalcade of Perversions. The

sleaziest show on earth. Not actors, not paid importers, but real actual filth

who have been carefully screened in order to present to you the most

flagrant violation on natural law known to man. (0:02:05) […] These

assorted sluts, fags, dykes and pimps know no bounds. They have

committed acts against God and nature, acts that by their mere existence

would make any decent person recoil in disgust. You want to see them and

we’ve got them. (0:02:37)

The rhetoric here is worth noting. Mr David is advertising sexual perversion as something indeed abominable, but at the same time highly tempting for people to see. He is addressing the audiences’ inner temptation to see perversion and stresses its purity and intensity to make it even more appealing. The scene shows the archetypal respectable citizens to attend the show: Three women in Sunday dresses are hesitant at the beginning, they are not sure whether they “have time”, but agree on the condition that the show is free of charge (0:03:07) as if they used that as an excuse for themselves. A pair of respectable citizens is also concerned about time and the man asks with contempt: “This isn’t one of those sex shows, is it?” Without that being denied, the man does not even stop walking and drags his wife inside (0:03:25).

44 Only one woman refuses to go in to “see some puke eater” with visible disdain, but the ringmaster convinces her by saying “come on, you'll see two actual queers kissing each other like lovers on the lips!” (0:06:03). The respectable citizens are acting out the disgust required by the moral code, but not a single one actually refuses to enter. Inside, they all act demonstratively appalled ("She's a dyke! Look at those tattoos!”) (0:05:01), but all keep watching.

Later we see Divine as the leader of a gang, lying naked on a bed, taking drugs and preparing for her part in the show. Bonnie is thrown to Divine’s feet as a prisoner, claiming that Mr David has invited her for an audition. Divine gets upset, accusing Mr

David of contaminating “her dressing room with this little piece of filth”, to which Mr

David replies: “She is not! She's an auto-erotic acomprophasiac and a gerontophiliac”

(0:09:20). Clearly, the understanding of what is filthy is highly relative here. Sexual deviation is presented as not being filthy, or at least being presented as a positive quality by being put in contrast with filth.

The next scene reveals that Lady Divine’s Cavalcade of Perversions is actually a trap. After seeing a woman licking a bike seat, a bra fetishist, men licking a woman’s armpits, a naked human pyramid and the advertised “actual queers kissing”, the spectators are lured to a “special display room” to see the Cavalcade’s highlight (0:11:22). Instead,

Lady Divine appears with a gun, a net is thrown over the spectators and they are robbed.

Divine promises them to be released if cooperating. When a woman screams: “She's sick!

We'll never get out of here!”, Divine is infuriated and shoots her (0:12:36).

Two themes can be observed here: First, Waters is using the scheme of the

Chickens and Bulls operation where extorters would take advantage of people’s natural urges to rob them. In Multiple Maniacs, the audience are hidden perverts seeking to satisfy their needs. They are lured to see a pervert show (i.e. satisfy their needs) only to

45 be attacked and robbed. Some might claim that curiosity about disgusting things and a certain level of voyeurism is natural to humans and that the audience are not actually perverted. Even with this in mind, the parallel with the extortion scheme still stands. They are satisfying their needs in both cases, being hurt because of them.

Second, there is a new type of hero, an aggressive one. Divine’s character is treated as purely feminine and the fact that the actor is actually male is irrelevant to the plot. For a queer audience, however, the violation of heteronormativity in Divine’s character is obvious and they are directly invited to identify themselves with her.

Waters offers the audience an opportunity to identify with a strong character avenging them. Divine is a gang leader and a killer. She shoots a woman merely because she called Divine sick. She is attacking respectable citizens who were acting as disgusted when seeing “actual queers kissing”. Later, upon actually killing all the hostages, the gang is going through the loot. “They don’t deserve to live” and “what ugly children they have”

(0:13:35) is heard. The perverts get their revenge. Now somebody is treating the heterosexuals in the same way they have treated homosexuals. Heteronormativity is an enemy. Moreover, the Cavalcade are an organised group of criminals with no mercy. This is a manifestation of the after-Stonewall aggressive attitude towards heteronormativity.

In the part when Divine is introduced to her daughter Cookie’s new boyfriend

Steve, whom Cookie “met in D.C., during the riots" (0:21:38), there is also an absurd homage to the militant leftist protesters. Steve wants to know whether Divine had killed

“some pigs” that day, wishing to kill some himself (0:22:13). Divine admires him for

“protecting [her] and [her] kind of people” and for “stick[ing] up for [her] kind”, wishing to also be “that political” (0:22:30). Waters recognises the militant activists, who fight for gay rights in rallies, and expresses the community’s contempt for the police.

46 Cookie and Steve then tell how they met. When the police used tear gas against the protesters, Cookie came with Vaseline for their eyes and they went “to this clump of bushes next to the Justice Department” (0:23:11). They are describing the smell of gasoline and wearing handkerchiefs around their faces with romantic nostalgia and the spectator learns that they “just lay there and made love.” “And fucked” (0:23:18).

The couple are describing fighting the police in a cloud of tear gas as fun and a romantic adventure. They even had sex in the middle of the riot, as if out of spite, directly in front of the Justice Department. This is an obvious mockery of the police and once again a manifestation of the defiant spirit of the 1970s, when gays enjoyed fighting the system, be it the SHL’s dance-ins or Stonewall kick-lines.

Later Divine discovers that Mr David is having an affair with Bonnie and decides to kill him. On her way to do so, the Infant of Prague appears to her and leads her to a church. In this scene, there is ultimate mockery of Catholicism. Except for Divine seeing the apparition as a sign that her decision to murder Mr David “has been approved in the heavens above” (0:32:11), she is approached by Mink, feeling “strong sexual vibration”

(0:38:36).

Being led to the church by the Infant of Prague, Divine decides that it is God’s intention that she gives in to the erotic play, though “in all [her] distaste for such perversion” (0:39:13). She starts kissing with Mink passionately and describes it as "the most satisfying sexual experience of [her] life" (0:40:00). Mink screams passionately:

"Think about the Stations of the Cross" (0:40:03) while inserting her rosary into what appears to be Divine's anus (0:40:30). The sex scene is intercut with re-enactments of the individual Stations of the Cross and ends in a wild orgasm while Jesus is being crucified

(0:44:10). Joyful music is playing as Mink is wiping the rosary in a towel (0:44:25).

47 Waters clearly insults the Catholic Church and what it considers holy for its conservative and hostile stands on homosexuality. Similar to the way the Justice

Department is discredited by a pair of hippies having sex during a riot, the church is desecrated by wild lesbian sex and brutal blasphemy. In addition, he accuses divinity of being an evil force when Divine is lead to believe that God wants her to kill.

When it comes to the topic of inner perversion, we find out that Divine is actually a lesbian or at least a bisexual. At the same time, despite being a killer gang leader and thus a person of little credit, she feels ashamed of being such. When Mink touches her on the street, Divine recoils, concerned with people staring at them (0:47:06). She is irritated by being called a lesbian (“He called us lesbians, that pig!”) (1:04:53).

Mr David behaves similarly. It was revealed that he had a history of “snatching purses and committing sex crimes” (0:18:55), there is a scene of him having perverted sex with Bonnie (0:49:41), but he reacts in an irritated way upon being called “Mr. Fag

Man” (1:02:34), talking about homosexuality as “the particular neurosis you so rudely attribute to me” (1:03:41).

Both the characters manifest hostility towards the very thought of them being gay, actually accusing each other of homosexuality as if that was an insult: “So you’ve finally turned dyke? I'm not surprised.” “Dyke?! Look who's talking, all peroxided up” (1:09:41).

By associating criminals and perverts with concerns about the purity of their heterosexuality, Waters is mocking the majority population’s hypocrisy.

The concept of inner perversion then develops together with the theme of Divine as the nemesis of the gay movement. When Mr David and Bonnie are killed, Divine starts eating Mr David’s entrails and fantasising about killing and eating “Ronal Reagan and his family” and the “entire Baltimore Police Force” (1:14:44). Similar to the beginning

48 when she is seen as an enemy of the heterosexual audience, she is now clearly addressing conservative politics and police oppression as her enemies.

The inner perversion theme reaches its climax when Divine kills Mink and starts losing her mind. Foaming at mouth she talks to herself: “You are finally there, Divine!

And you don’t ever want to go back. Oh, I have to go out now. I better change” (1:17:18).

She puts on a coat and continues deliriously:

You know it’s all right. You know no one can hurt you. […] You have x-

ray eyes now and you can breathe fire! […] You are a monster now and

only a monster can realize the fulfilment I’m capable of feeling. Oh

Devine, it’s so wonderful to feel this far gone into one’s own depravity! I

am a maniac! A maniac that cannot be cured. Oh, I am Divine. I am Divine!

(1:19:01), upon which Lobstora — a giant lobster monster — appears and has sex with her, to her satisfaction (1:21:04). Divine then goes into the streets, attacking a heterosexual pair and destroying the city while people are fleeing in panic (1:28:14).

It is not difficult to see parallels between Divine turning into a horror-film monster and her accepting her homosexuality. Waters uses reappropriation. By using Lobstora as a metaphor for homosexuality and making Divine turn into a monster, he owns the archetypal portrayal of homosexuals as monsters. The “going out” and “changing” is clearly a metaphor for one’s coming out (of the closet). By “you are a monster now and only a monster can realize the fulfilment I’m capable of feeling” she declares coming to terms with her sexuality and feeling good about it, as similarly only a gay person understands another. Seeing herself as a powerful and invincible monster destroying the city is then another manifestation of the hostility towards heteronormativity and the newly

49 acquired faith in militant gay rights activism. She once more becomes the means of revenge when she sets out to destroy the city.

In the end we find out that every person in this film was perverted. Presumed heterosexual citizens are latent perverts, supposedly heterosexual criminals are perverts

(Mr David and Bonnie) and lesbians (Divine). The very name of the film, Multiple

Maniacs, suggests the multiple layers of perversion in everybody, addressing hypocrisy in society, mocking both homophobic homosexuals and guardians of morality. Waters introduces a new type of hero, who kills and mocks these hypocrites, be it heterosexuals, the police, politicians or the church. All of them are the new enemy of the Gay Power movement and are dealt with accordingly.

V.3. Pink Flamingos (1972)

Pink Flamingos opens with a scene of a mobile home and the narrator introducing its inhabitants: Divine, “the filthiest person alive” and a runaway criminal, her companion

Cotton, Divine’s “delinquent son Crackers and her mentally ill mother Miss Edie”

(0:03:27). Then we are presented with Divine’s archenemies: “Connie and Raymond

Marble, two jealous perverts” (0:05:23) who envy her the status of the filthiest person alive.

The central topic of this film is from the very beginning a competition in filth.

Unlike previous works by Waters’, where there was a contrast between perverts and respectable citizens, Pink Flamingos is set in an enclosed community of people who are all mentally disturbed criminals and perverts from the very beginning.

The opening continues with Divine and Crackers going to the city, because Divine has not “fallen in love for three whole days” (0:10:08), addressing promiscuity associated with homosexuality. On their way, they intentionally nearly hit a runner and then pretend to stop for a hitchhiking soldier only to drive away before he gets on board. Divine is then

50 walking down the streets of Baltimore, passing a graffiti saying “FREE TEX WATSON”, a mass murderer. She then buys a piece of meat, inserts it in her crotch and goes out.

There is a close up of the American flag on a pole followed by Divine confidently walking down a street while people are turning their heads. She then urinates/defecates in a park.

Three things are worth noticing:

First, the characters are maliciously attacking people who could be characterised as coming from the outside world, heterosexual and/or not-perverted. There is again the hostility towards heteronormativity. Second, by panning towards the fluttering flag and immediately back to Divine (0:18:22), the same as in Mondo Trasho with the royal theme,

Waters creates a moment of nobility to be immediately put in contrast with the perverted transvestite. Together with the graffiti calling for freeing a murderer, Waters once again mocks and challenges the establishment, its values and its imposed order. Third, Divine is walking down the pavement in a mock film-star fashion. Pink Flamingos is a low budget film and while this scene was being made, non-actors were filmed. In reality, they are probably turning their heads in disbelief, seeing the 150 kg transvestite, but Waters makes it seem as if they saw and admired a very famous person (0:18:51). Waters creates another “in your face” moment, promoting perversion to a value.

As for the other characters, Crackers lives outside the trailer in a henhouse. He is expecting Cookie – his date. Cotton and Crackers are revealed as perverts when they discuss in private how Crackers is going to have sex with Cookie. Cotton is a bisexual sadist and a voyeur. She asks whether Cookie has a nice body and is eager to know what is Cracker “going to do for [her] today” (0:25:25), begging for “some blood in this one”

(0:25:51). Crackers is a sadist exhibitionist with zoophilic tendencies. He promises to perform for Cotton and that his “little chicken’s going to be in the show today” (0:25:33).

We then witness Crackers raping Cookie together with a chicken. The scene is violent,

51 there is blood, Cookie suffers (0:28:59) and Cotton is watching with satisfaction

(0:29:12). Crackers is later seen sleeping with the (presumably) dead chicken (0:39:52).

The Marbles also appear perverted. However, their perversion is of a different character. It is revealed that Cookie is actually a spy hired by the Marbles to find out

Divine’s whereabouts. When discussing the task, the Marbles say that “Divine has achieved a sort of fame lately, both locally and on the national level” (0:23:10) as the filthiest person alive. They feel her reputation to be unearned as they “far surpass her in every aspect of the term filth” (0:23:28). They justify their claim by revealing running a

“baby ring”, kidnapping women, having them impregnated by their butler Channing and selling the babies to lesbian couples. They also invest the profits to run a network of pornography shops and to pay “front money to a chain of heroin pushers in the inner city elementary schools” (0:23:54).

Be it perverted to a certain degree, most of these activities seem to be of a business character and more than to their perversion they testify to their criminal nature. Perversion per se is shown when the Marbles have sex. Raymond is about to have an orgasm in result of Connie violently sucking his thumb (0:34:35). They declare their love to each other:

Connie loving Raymond “more than the sound of bones breaking, the sound of death rattle, even more than [her] own shit”, Raymond loving Connie “more than the sound of babies crying, of dogs dying” (0:38:16).

Except for their rather special concept of what is romantic and Raymond being an exhibitionist, who exposes himself to women in public parks with a long sausage tied to his penis (0:21:03), the Marbles seem not to be really perverted. On the contrary, they are portrayed as respectable citizens. They live in a tastefully furnished house (0:24:21) and wear semi-formal clothes. Raymond wears shirts and jackets (0:24:21), Connie wears dresses and fur coats with brooches and jewellery (0:32:05), presenting herself as a

52 respectable businesswoman (0:15:26) and they both speak with a rather posh accent, using semi-formal register (0:23:26).

In addition, they are easily repulsed by external manifestations of perversion.

When they find out that Channing is a crossdresser who puts on Connie’s clothes and impersonates her, they are appalled, angry and mock him (0:49:28). The second time

Raymond is exposing himself in a park to a girl, she turns out to have a penis, which she exposes in return. Raymond is disgusted and runs away (1:00:49).

Nevertheless, the Marbles want to believe they are perverted. In the scene when they set Divine’s trailer on fire, Connie screams frantically “the battle of filth has been won!” and “we are the filthiest people alive!” (1:11:08), as if arson was an act of perversion. Another interesting aspect is them being catholic. They have statues of the

Virgin Mary and the Infant of Prague in their home (0:22:46), through which — aside from his mocking the church as usual — Waters puts their apparent religiosity in contrast with their criminal nature, and thus emphasises their hypocrisy.

The reason why the Marbles strive so intensely to be the filthiest people alive instead of Divine is that, in the world of Pink Flamingos, starting with the theme of the

American flag, perversion is promoted to a virtue. The film is an homage to deviants and it is Divine and her family who are the real deviants, thus the heroes here.

A clear example of the film glorifying perversion as a virtue in sharp contrast with the heteronormative proprieties is Divine’s birthday party. The guests are mostly longhaired hippies (0:52:16), among them a woman with a Nazi swastika armband

(0:52:15) and a drag queen (0:52:20), all of them are gulping food like animals (0:52:22).

Divine gets vomit, lice shampoo, a giant butcher’s chopper and a pig head as birthday presents, visibly happy about the choice (0:53:51). The party climax then is a scene where a naked man, lying on his back, exposes his dilated sphincter to the guests and imitates

53 singing by periodically closing and opening his anus in the rhythm of the music (0:56:00).

The guests are visibly amused, clap, cheer and laugh (0:56:08). The Marbles witnessing the scene, on the other hand, are shocked and disgusted (0:56:11) and run off to call the police.

Not only do they call the police. They also appear to be sincerely concerned and report the party in the way a moralist would: “I’d like to report a lewd and disorderly party. […] It’s making me sick. […] The sight of such perverts […] She is a whore, officer” (0:57:13). Except for them revealing not being true perverts, their arrival to the scene is accompanied with the musical theme changing from cheerful party music to a sinister motif (0:52:25). They are now revealed as not true perverts, but mere hypocritical criminals and (thus) clear antagonists.

The relation which the Marbles and Divine have with the police is also significant.

When the police arrive to the party, Divine and the guests hide and ambush them belligerently. Without hesitation they shoot all four armed policemen, beat them to death, chop their bodies with axes and eat them (0:58:40) while party music continues to play and the guests laugh and enjoy themselves (0:59:01). In that way, Divine’s role as the avenger of the perverts is emphasized.

The Marbles, on the other hand, are scared of the police. When Divine later discovers their plans and breaks in their house, upon finding out that the intruder might have released the imprisoned girls, the Marbles panic. Connie screams frantically:

“Raymond, check the pit! […] They’ll call the police! […] Oh my God! The police! […]

Raymond, I’m afraid” (1:15:45). Moreover, they scream in horror when they discover

Channing having been castrated (1:15:35). Again, they are no perverts. They are mere imposters and arguably a mock representation of the homophobic gays of the 1950s, who pretend to be something they are not and are enemies of the Gay Power movement.

54 Divine’s breaking in the Marbles’ house underlines the motif of perversion being a virtue. Divine and Crackers decide to desecrate the Marbles’ house by licking everything and salivating all over the flat. Divine instructs Crackers: “Get this couch real good. They probably sit here and say all sorts of banal things to each other” (1:02:49).

Crackers replies: “They think they are filthy. We’ll just see what the furniture thinks”

(1:02:59). Divine then decides to give Crackers “a gift so special it will curse this house for years after we're gone” (1:05:12) and performs oral sex on her son. Crackers screams with pleasure “This will ruin this house forever” (1:05:49). When the Marbles get back home, they find the furniture moving, ejecting them onto the floor whenever they sit down on it (1:14:30).

This absurd theme of furniture being cursed with Divine and Cracker’s filthiness, together with Divine and Cracker’s proclaimed contempt for the Marbles not being really filthy, further proves the hypothesis of the Marbles being impostors. Moreover, Divine and Crackers release the girls the Marbles have kept prisoners. Divine and Crackers act as heroes. They are not afraid of the police, they go to confront the Marbles directly in their house. The Marbles, on the other hand, are scared of the police and only cowardly use them against Divine. There is no doubt that, despite — or as things stand because of

— being a pervert, Divine is the hero.

The last theme in Pink Flamingos is the role of the media. When Divine finds her trailer ablaze, she screams: “Bag the Marbles! A press conference! Back to the Marbles and seize those fuckers! I’ll kill them!” (1:12:40). She has been hurt and one of her immediate thoughts about it is having a press conference. She calls for media attention to achieve justice. Later Divine invites the press to document her show trial with the

Marbles.

55 We see her and the press being already familiar with each other and Divine greeting the journalists: “Divine, you look fantastic!” “Why, thank you, Mr Vader. I’m so glad you could come.” (1:18:08). She announces to the newsmen that the Marbles will be executed to which they react with enthusiasm: “We’re gonna witness an actual murder?” “A live homicide?” (1:18:26). The close relationship between Divine and the press represent the symbiosis between the activists organising zaps and the journalists being excited about a scandal. This claim about a long-term and intentional collaboration is later supported when the journalists are leaving, saying about Divine: “Always count on her for a story” and “she always was a news-conscious woman” (1:25:40).

Moreover, Waters again uses appropriation in the following dialogue:

Curzan: Divine, are you a lesbian?

Divine: Yes, I have done everything.

Vader: Does blood turn you on?

Divine: It does more than turn me on, Mr. Vader. It makes me come. And

more than the sight of it, I love the taste of it, the taste of hot, freshly killed

blood.

3rd Reporter: Could you give us some of your political beliefs?

Divine: Kill everyone now. Condone first-degree murder. Advocate

cannibalism. Eat shit! Filth are my politics. Filth is my life!, upon which Divine starts posing for the camera, trying to be disgusting (1:19:18). Waters declares Divine to be a first-degree pervert and a criminal whose political beliefs are utterly dangerous to the public as she promotes killing everybody and bringing doom to the moral system. This is another (arguably only slight) exaggeration of how the gay politics must have been perceived by conservative bigots. Even today there are people

56 who believe that things like gay marriage will bring doom to the entire world. Waters mocks this belief and disarms it by clearly showing its absurdity.

Another important moment in the film is when Cotton says that we are witnessing

“not exactly a murder” but “a kangaroo court,” because “if we were involved in merely another murder it could hardly be headlines” (1:18:54). This demonstrates how homosexuality entered the public space in the 1970s and how the activists were using zaps to attract media coverage: With homosexuality now being a public theme, same as

“merely another murder” it ceases being a scandalous enough a topic on its own. It requires an added value of the “kangaroo court”, or the zap respectively, as a trick to attract media attention.

The parallel continues with Crackers saying: “It's not just the publicity. My mama couldn’t go on with her everyday life with this kind of shit going on. My mama was not the aggressor in this little war we had. She only did what had to be done.” This can easily be read as an analogy to Stonewall. The perverts/homosexuals are being forced to act by being attacked and not being able to withstand it any longer.

The link is then developed: “Cotton, I notice smile on your lips. Does murder make you happy?” “Murder merely relieves tension, Mr. Curzan. For murder to bring happiness, one must already be happy. And I am; completely at peace with myself, totally happy” (1:19:22). Waters is employing the pun of gay and happy being synonyms in the past. If perversion and crime are a metaphor for homosexuality and murder for homosexual sex, then clearly only a happy/gay person enjoys killing/homosexual sex more than a mere relief from (sexual) tension. Moreover, why would Cotton otherwise point out being “at peace” with herself? She is clearly declaring being happy both as gay and accepting her identity. It is again a manifestation of the atmosphere of Gay Pride where people no longer feel ashamed of being gay.

57 Another parallel between the perverts in the film and the gay rights movement in the 1970s is Divine’s increasing fame. Not only do the Marbles talk jealously about her as becoming famous. The newsmen ask Divine: “Divine, do you think that there are other filthy people in the world? I mean, is it now a cult?” and Divine replies:

It is a very minor cult right now, Mr. Vader, but one that is growing and

growing. Growing faster than you could imagine. I will be queen one day

and my coronation will be celebrated all over the world. (1:22:50)

This is obviously an allusion to the vision of the Gay Power movement growing and the belief that one day its values will prevail.

The last aspect of Pink Flamingos worth attention is its explicitness. In Mondo

Trasho we see a naked hitchhiker’s backside and a rape, but the rapist is in full clothing and the Lunatic only topless (0:51:54). In Multiple Maniacs there is nudity, for example the naked human pyramid, but the performers’ genitals are covered (0:04:16). In the church sex scene, only a backside is explicitly shown (0:43:02) and Divine is in full clothing even when having sex with Lobstora (1:19:57).

Pink Flamingos on the contrary borders on pornography several times:

Raymond’s penis with the tied-on sausage is shown (0:21:25), then there is Crackers raping Cookie (and the chicken), both of them naked with Cracker’s genitals visible

(0:28:03). There is a scene of Channing masturbating and inseminating the unconscious girl with his sperm while the other girl is vomiting (0:34:13). Sperm, vomit and the girl’s vagina are explicitly shown (0:34:23). The incestuous oral sex scene is also explicit, building up its shocking effect by Crackers screaming “Do my balls, mama” (1:05:56), exploiting the taboo of incest to the maximum.

Last but not least, there is the final scene. For no other reason than to prove that except for being the filthiest person alive, Divine is also “the filthiest actress in the world”

58 (1:27:37), Divine eats dog faeces on camera. While frolicsome music “How Much is that

Doggie in the Window” is playing, Divine is breaking the fourth wall, looking directly in the camera, rolling the excrement in her mouth, smiling (1:28:15).

This, together with other manifestations of perversity, might seem as a shallow attempt to shock. It is not. In 1972, homosexuality was still a controversial topic. The wave of gay rights activism was surging but the misconceptions and intolerance dating back a long time beyond the 18th century were still deeply rooted. Many people continued seeing homosexuals as mere perverts and in their minds the concept of any violation of the heteronormative standard qualified as sodomy. What Waters’ films do is that they reappropripate these beliefs for the queer audience and use them as a weapon against the aggressors.

Pink Flamingos presents an alternative reality, where all the characters are perverted. There are clear parallels between the perversion in the film and homosexuality in the real world at the time. There is a new type of an aggressive hero, who avenges the homosexuals and their oppression. Heterosexuals from the outside world are hurt and those who betray perversion are punished. Only those truly perverted are the heroes.

There is a clear link between the characters’ proclaimed innate perversion and homosexuality.

59 Conclusion

Over the course of history, homosexuality was considered a lewd vice and a crime punishable by death. Homosexuals of all social status alike were an oppressed group facing systematic state bullying and police harassment. They were subject to general contempt and hatred. They were forced to risk their lives and, in order to be themselves, they had to live underground, maintaining double identities. The arrival of psychology and the scientific interest in homosexuality proved to be of little help and science, on the contrary, became another means of oppression.

Homosexuality remained deeply misunderstood. It was confused with different sexual practices and being attributed unfounded implications on one’s personal traits, sanity and moral purity. Homosexuals were considered to be effeminate caricatures of the masculine ideal; insane, ill and perverted; and also seen as dangerous criminals and subversive political forces threatening the state.

Homosexuals were depicted in literature, newspapers and later in film in accordance with the abovementioned beliefs. Homosexuality in popular culture was a tabooed topic. When suggested in period literature and early film, it was ridiculed as a caricature of masculinity. Later it was associated with madness and crime. Open manifestations of homosexuality in film were censored and the gay audience was exposed to their nature being depicted in strictly negative terms. That was further strengthening the already established hostility towards homosexuals and making them vulnerable to internalising the hostility and self-despise.

The background of general hatred and prejudice inducing self-contempt in homosexuals made it impossible to start a gay rights movement. The self-loathing was present even in Werther as an educated person advocating minority sexuality and it lead

60 him to distorted beliefs about himself and homosexuality as such. Homosexuals convinced of being rightfully oppressed crave little for recognition.

Before the late 1960s and the Stonewall Riots, the gay population remains shattered and invisible. Those who started advocating gay rights in the 1950s USA were facing not only rejection from the majority population but also inner opposition from homosexuals who internalised the society’s homophobia and wanted to remain hidden.

The conservative politics of the 1950s, together with the social stigmatisation and the absence of a gay community made it again impossible to bring change.

A new approach emerged with the liberal generation of the 1960s. The Student

Homophile League and its activities proved the proactive approach to be effective. With the Stonewall Riots, the sense of community spread throughout the country and the radical attitude became the dominant force within the gay rights movement.

The Stonewall generation of homosexuals refused to conform to the majority’s moral standards and refused the hypocrisy of the previous generation. They were convinced that it was their right to live their lives openly and were defiant towards authorities imposing conservative standards. They were treating such attempts with both hostility and ridicule. The mass media became the main means of pressing for social changes and achieving the movement’s goals. The activists were using the media’s crave for sensation and enacting controversial situations to attract coverage.

John Waters’ Mondo Trasho, Multiple Maniacs and Pink Flamingos were made at the time of substantially changing attitudes towards homosexuality. The films were intended for the queer audience and allowed it to identify with the heroes through numerous metaphors and by reappropriating the prejudice and hostility towards homosexuality.

61 As such, the films used overt perversion of the characters as a metaphor for minority sexual orientation. By introducing openly perverted characters, they offered a new type of heroes, which the mainstream culture would not provide. The films chronologically captured the development of the gay community’s own changing attitudes and stances towards the majority population and its moral standards. Major motives of the Gay Revolution and its consequences resonate in them.

In Mondo Trasho, Waters captures the pre-Stonewall atmosphere. There are perverts/homosexuals hiding in parks and being ashamed of themselves. Perverts are considered both mentally and physically ill and treated as a pest detested by decent people. Physicians and psychiatrists are portrayed as villains, who instead of helping the perverts are hurting them. In this film, the pervert suffers and dies. The film reappropriates the negative stereotypes by associating perversion with royalty.

In Multiple Maniacs, shot after the Stonewall Riots, there is a visible shift towards an aggressive hero, who avenges homosexuals and will not conform. The characters directly attack enemies of the homosexual movement and there are numerous examples of reappropriation. Heterosexuals and conformists are portrayed as the enemy, hurt and killed. Waters reappropriates the general prejudice about homosexual criminals and monsters. He mocks and gravely offends the Catholic Church, conservative politics and the police, further inviting queer audience to identify with the characters. In this film, however, the hero still suffers to a certain extent. At first, Divine does not accept her own sexuality and despite being ruthless and strong, she feels ashamed in the public because of being lesbian. Other characters despise homosexuality.

In Pink Flamingos, together with the Gay Power movement spreading and growing stronger, the shift towards aggressiveness and reappropriation is complete.

Waters mocks the establishment by creating an alternative reality where perversion is the

62 norm. In this film, the heroes show traits of multiple sexual perversions, among them zoophilia, sadism and incest, all of which is explicitly shown on camera. Minority sexual orientation is directly compared to murder and as such celebrated. The characters declare their desire to destroy the world of traditional values.

At the same time, the characters feel no longer ashamed of being perverted. On the contrary, they are very proud. Perversion is portrayed as a positive quality to which people aspire. It is those who are not perverted and those who betray perversion who are again attacked and killed.

There are multiple examples of reappropriation. Waters completely shatters the feelings of guilt imposed on homosexuals and dismisses every offensive stereotype by owning them, rendering them harmless by turning them into an absurd farce. Moreover, he uses weapons of moralism against the moralists themselves. He intentionally goes beyond every standard imaginable to deeply offend them by explicitly showing their own ideas about homosexuality.

Waters captures the way the militant activist used media to achieve their goals and draws direct parallels between them, their ongoing fight for gay rights and the characters’ proud perversion. By creating this farce, Waters gives the queer audience the possibility to feel empowered and identify with the new radical gay movement, which is something

Hollywood would not offer. Pink Flamingos is a full-scale revenge to the oppressive ethics and a retaliation fully in concordance with the after-Stonewall acquired sense of freedom and Gay Pride.

Together with the Gay Power movement being born and gaining strength, in John

Waters’ films there was a clear shift from perverts being victims to perverts being heroes.

Aggression and hostility towards heteronormativity increased chronologically both in the films and the real world. Similarly, the level of perversion and explicitness rose. John

63 Waters reappropriated attacks on homosexuals and attacked heteronormative values in return. His films contain direct references to both homosexuality and the Gay Power movement. John Waters’ film chronologically capture the atmosphere in 1970s gay community.

64 Works Cited

Blevins, Joe. “The Music in Waters‘ Films”. Dreamland News. Jeff Jackson, 2000.

15 Apr. 2016. Web.

Crompton, Louis. Homosexuality & Civilization. 3rd ed. Cambridge: Belknap Harvard

UP, 2003. PDF.

Crompton, Louis. “Homosexuals and the Death Penalty in Colonial America”. Journal

of Homosexuality 1.3 (1976): 227-293. DigitalCommons. PDF.

Egan, James, and John Waters. John Waters: Interviews. Jackson: U of Mississippi, 2011.

Print.

Eisenbach, David. Gay Power: An American Revolution. New York: Carroll, 2006. Print.

Epstein, Rob, and Jeffrey Friedman. The Celluloid Closet. Sony Pictures Home

Entertainment, 2001. DVD.

Herring, Scott, ed. Autobiography of an Androgyne. By Ralph Werther. New Brunswick:

Rutgers UP, 2008. Print.

Herzog, Alfred Waldemar. Introduction. Autobiography of an Androgyne. By Ralph

Werther. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2008. Print.

Russo, Vito. The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies. Rev. ed.

New York: Harper, 1987. Print.

The Wizard of Oz. Dir. Victor Fleming. Perf. Judy Garland. MGM, 1939. BitTorrent.

MP4 file.

Vanderziel, Jeffrey Alan, and Michael Kaylor. “Gay Studies.” Masaryk University.

Faculty of Arts, Brno. Winter Semester 2014. Lectures.

Waters, John. Mondo Trasho. John Waters, 1969. BitTorrent. AVI file. 8 Mar. 2016.

Waters, John. Multiple Maniacs. John Waters, 1970. BitTorrent. AVI file. 22 Feb. 2016.

65 Waters, John. Pink Flamingos. John Waters, 1972. New Line Home Entertainment,

2005. DVD.

Werther, Ralph. Autobiography of an Androgyne. Ed. Scott Herring. New Brunswick:

Rutgers UP, 2008. Print.

66 Abstract

This thesis deals with the history of the Gay Power movement and with John

Waters’ films Mondo Trasho, Multiple Maniacs and Pink Flamingos in the context of the social and political changes in the early 1970s’ USA. John Waters’ films are known for their shock value. The aim of this thesis is to prove that apart from being merely shocking,

John Waters’ films reflect the identity of the queer audience and that this identity develops together with the newly established Gay Power politics.

The first chapter provides an introduction to the historical background of being homosexual. It deals with the situation in the 18th and 19th century Europe and in the USA from the 20th century to the 1950s respectively. It describes the systematic state oppression of homosexuals and the impossibility of advocating gay rights at the time.

The second chapter deals with the pioneering efforts of early gay rights activism from the 1950s to pre-Stonewall 1960s. It describes how the movement started as a radical force, then adopted very moderate views and after that started radicalising again in the late 1960s.

The third chapter is dedicated to the Stonewall Riots. It familiarises the reader with the state of the gay community in the 1969 New York City, the conditions in the

Stonewall Inn and the dynamics of the night that sparkled the nationwide Gay Power movement.

The fourth chapter provides an insight in how homosexuality was stereotypically depicted in films. It offers an analysis of The Wizard of Oz and the Cowardly Lion’s character as the archetypal sissy and explains how this archetype changed to a mad villain and a murderer.

The last chapter provides a close analysis of John Waters’ early full length films.

Each film is treated within the previously provided historical context. The thesis

67 comments on scenes, themes and dialogues that seem directly connected to the way in which homosexuality was treated by the majority population and how homosexuals thought of themselves. It describes how the characters’ nature and the treatment of perversity changed over the time. It proves that this development directly reflects the social changes of the time and capture the dynamics of the Gay Power movement gaining strength.

68 Resumé

Tato práce se zabývá historickým vývojem Gay Power hnutí a filmy Johna

Waterse, konkrétně Mondo Trasho, Multiple Maniacs a Pink Flamingos, v kontextu společenských a politických změn, které se v USA odehrávaly na začátku 70. let. Filmy

Johna Waterse jsou obecně známé svým potenciálem šokovat. Cílem této práce je dokázat, že tyto filmy nejsou pouze prvoplánově šokující, ale že přímo reflektují, jakým způsobem se vyvíjela identita queer publika, a že se vyvíjela společně s nově vzniklým

Gay Power hnutím.

První kapitola přibližuje čtenáři konotace homosexuality v historickém kontextu

18. až 19. století v Evropě a 20. století v USA a popisuje tehdy panující systematický státní útlak a podmínky, které učinily boj za gay práva nemožným.

Druhá kapitola se zabývá průkopnickými snahami o raný gay aktivismus v období od 50. let do doby před Stonewallskými nepokoji na konci 60. let. Popisuje, jak hnutí za gay práva vzniklo zprvu jako radikální hnutí, ve kterém záhy převládl značně umírněný proud, aby se v pozdních 60. letech začalo znovu radikalizovat.

Třetí kapitola je věnována Stonewallským nepokojům. Seznamuje čtenáře se stavem, ve kterém se gay komunita v New Yorku roku 1969 nacházela, a s podmínkami, které panovaly v baru Stonewall Inn, a zachycuje dynamiku osudné noci, která zažehla celostátní Gay Power hnutí.

Čtvrtá kapitola popisuje, jak byla homosexualita tradičně zobrazována ve filmu.

Analyzuje Lva v Čaroději ze země Oz jako archetyp zženštilého homosexuála a vysvětluje, jak se tento archetyp později proměnil v homosexuála jako šíleného zločince a vraha.

Poslední kapitola přináší detailní analýzu Watersových prvních celovečerních filmů. Každý film je prezentován v rámci dříve poskytnutého historického kontextu.

69 Práce komentuje scény, motivy a dialogy, které se jeví, že mají přímou souvislost s tím, jak k homosexualitě přistupovala většinová populace a jak homosexuálové smýšleli sami o sobě. Práce popisuje, jak se postupem času měnil charakter jednotlivých postav a způsob, jakým Waters přistupuje k perverzitě. Práce dokazuje, že tyto motivy jsou přímo provázány s tehdy probíhajícími společenskými změnami a že Watersovy filmy v sobě zachycují postupný vývoj sílícího Gay Power hnutí.

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