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Sleaze queen Divine in Pink Flamingos.

808 THE TERRAINOF THE UNSPEAKABLE

Pink Flamingos and the culture of trash

DARREN TOFTS

To me, bad rasre is whar enrertainmenc is all about. If someone vomits watching one of my films, it's like getting a standing ovation. John Waters 1

Theorizing crash culture presents cultural studies with some awk­ ward problems. The issue is not just che way crash culture rends co posicion irs audience with respect co gender and sexual policies. Ir is also chat rhe rerm is used both descriptively and normatively: ir designates a range of subcultural practices, but it also suggests a moral accirude , a cultural discourse on what is acceptable as representation - a discourse char emerged in overt confrontation wirh the guardians of high culture. In recent years the rerm has been used in rhe context of a continuing and increasingly sophisticated interest in che obscene, and also of a sustained intellectual inquiry inco rhe dynamics of populism and mass culture, and the conditions of production and consumption in post-industrial society. Within cultural studies there has been a rigorous critique of the ways in which crash culture has come co be understood, how it is used and by whom, and the ambiguous policical force it exerts within the domain of popular culture generally. Philip Brophy has distinguished between che rerm crash- ('all maccer of refuse ... all the material lefr over') and its erstwhile synonym, junk ('all rhe material injected, invited, avowed, support­ ed'), in cerms of their relation co the process of consumption (culture). Brophy's collaborative 'Trash and Junk Culture' exhibi­ tion of 19892 skilfully represented the extensive and hierarchical nature of crash culture, from the overtly visible (exploitation advertising, video nascies, pornograph�·) to che sublim�nal (body­ building and wresding magazines). The exhibition dramatized the extenr co which social reality is driven by consumption, and irs

809 rhemes of hunger, thirst, caste and appetite were contextualized in terms of the obsessive, the unhealthy and the unnatural.

Described by ics producers as an ' educational exhibition recom­

mended for che whole family ', ic drew accention co itself, ironically or otherwise, as a reflexive commemary on crash. lnsticucionalized wichin che Australian Cencre for Contemporary Arc, che exhibition removed irs subject maccer from che concexcs in which ic was produced

and circulated , and accordingly modified irs meanings; chis parricu­ lar collection of crash became something co be regarded and thought

about as culrure . Increasingly, critical self-consciousness sanctions the representation of offensive material in the name of culcural

critique. So, for example, Brophy's 1987 film Salt, Saliva, Spermand Sweat has been described as an 'essay film' about how sex and violence 'are used in contemporary cinema, and how "good caste" techniques ace used co seduce audiences', and Brophy himself has praised film-maker Russ Meyer for 'seriously dealing with the question, "What is pornography?'".3 If we see crash artefacts as constituting a meca-cric.ical poetics of the obscene, ir becomes possible ro focus on the ways in which we speak of che unspeakable and develop srracegies co legitimate its production and consumption.· When The Naked Lunch began co receive critical anenrion in Britain in the early 1960s, ic sparked a

three- month diatribe in che hallowed pages of the Time.s Literary S11pplement. This reactionary crusade invoked all kinds of metaphors ro describe Burroughs' work, one of rhe most common being che analogy with walking through che drains of a big city. The underlying moral objection to Burroughs, which unified rhe views of all his derraccors, was neady summarized in the description of The

Naked L11nch as life-denying , 'bogus-highbrow filch'; 'spiritually as well as physically disgusting, and casteless to an almost incredible degree, it offends against value of any kind . .. every bir as much as against public decency'. 4 The so-called 'Ugh' correspondence (pub­ lished in 1982 as an appendix co che John Calder edition of the book) also contained responses from Burroughs' supporters, who argued that Burroughs' work amounted co an imporcanr exploration of che dark side of che human psyche, comparable co rhose of Sade and Baudelaire, Becken and Genec. In the 'Ugh' correspondence , as well as in critical apologias such as Susan Sontag's 'The Porno­ graphic Imagination' (1967), theories of the obscene developed defensively, as rejoinders co hostility and derision. In recent years, however, more assertive claims have been made. Andreas Huyssen, for example, has argued chac che chrusc of che historical avanc-garde of the firsr chircy or forty years of this cencury

810 was obliterated by conformism. s In his analysis of postmodernism and mass culcure Huyssen has noted a revival of rhe avanr-garde's subversive iconoclasm. It is not hard to subscantiate chis claim. The Nalud Lunch, for instance , has much in common wich Bataille's surrealist classic of agonistic eroticism, Story of the Eye. The blasphe­ mous, confrontational element in Bataille was ·icself reminiscent of Dada outrage, which, apart from the more traditional artistic forms (Duchamp's 'L.H.O.O.Q.') was channelled through public �pace, such as billboard posters and manifestos ('we demand che right tO piss in different colours,· Tristan Tzara asserted in 1916). The use of the public spectacle as a site of political subversion can be traced, as Greil Marcus has demonstrated, in the slogans and activities of the Siruationists of the L950s and the Sex Pistols in the late 1970s. 6 Similarly, as Frank Zappa has noted in a recent 'autobiography', the Mothers of Invention also conceived of their performances as Dada events.

One day, rhree Marines, in full dress uniform ... sat down in che front row . . . I asked them if they knew any songs. One of the guys said char, yeah, they knew 'House of the Rising Sun' and 'Everybody Must Gee Stoned'. I said, 'That's great. Would you guys like co sing wirh us tonighc? We'd just LOVE to have Marines singing on scage with us'. They said, yeah, they would. I said, 'Go across the Street w che Tin Angel, have a few drinks, and come back when the show is on'. When they came back , I brought them up on stage -although it must have been against regulacions for them ro do this kind of thing in full dress -and had them sing 'Everybody Muse Get Sconed'. By that time they were preuy well wrecked, so 1 suggested, 'Why don't you show the folks in the audience what you guys do for a living'. I handed them a big baby doll and said, 'Suppose you just pretend chat this is a "gook baby".' They proceeded to rip and mutilate the doll while we . played. It was tt"Uly horrihlt. After it was over, I thanked them and, with a quiet musical accompaniment, showed the ruined parts of the doll to rhe audience. Nobody was laughing. 7

The representat ion and exploration of prohibited aspects of experience has been a staple of the histOrical avanr-garde, and has brought about a liberation of the body as macter, as an 'organism of accivicy and consumption, digestion and evacuation. (Brophy's display of 'gross-out coys', which seem ro cucn the body inside out, makes it dearthat this neo-Rabelaisian attention to the body can be found in the mosr 'innocent' and unex�!<:red places.) The body has always been something of a cultural cerror in Westecn art and morality, and avant-gardism has never been fully accepted as a

811 reasonable excuse or occasion for its display. When Ezra Pound, that staunch advocate of the new, removed a reference co masturbation from a typescript of the 'Nausicaa' episode of UlymJ, he was reinforcing a cultural assumption of his own time chat vecy few of the body's secretions are mentionable. 8 Similarly, Virginia Woolf had to forgo her initial solidarity with Joyce when his characters began to menstruate or urinate. When the American ban on U/yJJes was finally lifted in 1933, the Hon. Judge John Woolsey comment­ ed that Joyce's treatments of the body were emetic rather than pornographic - a statement chat apdy expresses the Manichaean conception of the body as something that repels rather chan excites. The conflarion of the prohibited and the unnatural is provisional, and changes as morality comes co grips wich new attitudes to censorship, permissiveness and sexuality. Menstruation, defecation and urination all feature nowadays in television commercials, usu­ ally in relation co produces chat either conceal them or keep them under control (the removal of condom commercials suggests that ejaculation is scill de trop on television). But they also feature in less contiguous, more casual ways, such as men discussing insurance while assembled unselfconsciously at the urinaL When represencations of che body chat were once considered taboo now turn up in something as pervasive as advertising, it is clear chac the terrain of the unspeakable has fairly flexible boun­ daries. Susan Sonrag's now famous articulation of 'camp sensibiHcy' is useful in identifying how purveyors of the obscene have had to reinterpret and extend the boundaries of che unacceptable to keep ahead of a culture chat manages to absorb and defuse the transgres­ sive. In her 1964 essay 'Notes on "Camp'", Sontag describes a modern sensibility that is marked by arcifice and the 'spirit of extravagance'. Camp is an exaggerated and self-conscious deca­ dence, an elaborate and overdone indulgence in che 'off'. 9 It is all a question of self-consciousness and degree, for even rhe most recuper­ ated image or suggestion can shift from good to bad tasce through overuse, exploitation or rheatricalization.

John Waters' Pink Flamingos (1972) scill occupies an important place as a cult classic of bad casce, and is very much representative of camp sensibility as Somag described it. Pink Flamingos was promot­ ed in America as an 'exercise in poor taste', and Wacers has noced in his book Shock Value that he made rhe film for an audience 'char chinks they've seen everyching'. 10 The plot revolves around two rival groups of self-proclaimed perverts, who compete for the tide of 'The Filchiesc People Alive'. Fetishism, exhibitionism, crypto-

812 bestiality, exploitation of women, sexual violence, defecation and sacrilege figure prominently in chis batde. When we witness che forced insemi�acion of a kidnapped and abject hitchhiker (her capcors run a baby ring chat services lesbian couples), it appears that things have gone far enough. But Waters saves his final outrage for che last frames of che film, when his central character, che sleaze queen Divine, hungrily scoops up and eats a dog turd -a single, unedited shot foregrounded by an accompanying voice-over declar­ ing chac whac we are seeing is 'the real thing'. Waters, by his own admission, wanes co extend the bounds of rhe obscene, to shock an audience that presumes to be unshockable, and there is a kind of offensive authenticity in the designation of the·shic-eating scene as being real. Ic purports co be a ne pluJ ultra, che ultimate crash stacemenc. It is for many viewers the most memorable and notorious image from che film. Along with a rec��nt example (an early scene in Peter Greenaway's The Cook, The Thief, Hi! Wifeand Her Lover where an unfortunate rescaura'teur is forced tO eac dog shit), it remains a powerful association of abjection and consumption. Waters' cuJc heroine Divine exemplifies the stylistic celebration of rhe tacky and the decadent. She represents cultivated bad caste- a rare quality in Wai:ers' view ('To understand bad taste one musc have very good casce'11). Indeed, che entire film incerprers decadence as high fashion, and revels in kicsch and outrageous cerro cos­ turnery, quirky popular music of the '60s and early '70s, and an almost obsessive preoccupation wirh coiffure (especially che bee­ hive). Waters has noted char Pink Flamingos is a 'very American film', 12 and one of rhe effects of watching it is a sense of witnessing American popular culture on parade, with plenty of scratch-and­ smell toilet srops along che. way. One of che last exchanges in the film delights in the possibilities of fashion and filch, of depravity and style:

COTTON: Let's move co Boise, I always wanted co go there. BABS: Boise, Cotton? Why, that might nor be a bad idea. CRACKERS: Were you ever there, Cotton? COTTON: Only once. We robbed a cransir bus chere, remember? BABS: I remember, the number forcy-cwo. CRACKERS: Lee's sleep in gas-scacion lavatories chis rime, Mama. Fuck permanent residences. It'll strengthen our filthiness. COTION: Crackers, that's a wonderful idea. What do you say, Babs, let's move co Boise.

813 BABS: If chat's what you wane, my children, chen that's what you'll gee. Boise, Idaho, here we come! I hope Boise's ready for some star residents. Why, I'll have co change my appearance. I think I'll dye my hair another color and srart dressing like a dyke. COTTON: Me, roo. I'll gee a crew cue. CRACKERS: Maybe it's about time I started dyeing my hair coo. BABS: What color do you wane, honey? I'm gonna make mine hot pink with a DA and Elvis Presley sideburns. 13

Such exchanges emphasize the problematic namre of speaking the unspeakable. If we enjoy its camp sp ectacle of pecverced glamour, of fashion violadons made in the name of good bad taste, do we implicidy supporc its misogynistic representations of women, and its construction of a masculine, scopophilic gaze? To critique what is in face a common response to the film - a view of trash as pleasurable indulgence in bad caste - is co call into question what it actually means co view the film and formulate a position on it. The persistent reflexivity of interpretacion and speccatorship rhese days makes it difficult to relate co any texc without being hyper­ conscious of other, potentially conflicting views. When addressing a popular culture seminar on transgression last year, for example, I found myself in a quandary as to whether or nor 1 should refer to the film in favourable or unfavourable terms. How ro frame it within that discussion became a more pressing concern chan rhe theme of transgression itself. The blurb describing Waters' films on a 1979 Valhalla cinema poster identifies a world of 'extraordinary moral perversity that is at once vulgar and gross yet exuberant, wiuy and innovative'. For parr of the viewing community implied here, Waters' films provide an opportunity for the unashamed liberation of forbidden thoughts, emotions and practices. The viewers ace provided with a generic context in which chis is permissible. My memory of first seeing chis film (during the halcyon days of the original Valhalla cinema in Richmond) is of an audience laughing and enjoying the film's excesses- the more gratuitous the offence, ·the heartier the guffaw. Parker Tyler has demonstrated how one of rhe functions of Ameri­ can underground cinema has been to introduce and record 'realms which have co some degree remained taboo - coo private, too shocking, too immoral for photOgraphic reproduction'. Its 'uncriti­ cal permissiveness' is symbolic of a kind of infantile eroticism, 'the moral seance of che child who stages absolute rebellion against

814 parenrs and aJI adults'. 14 Bur such a code, like rhar of satire, doesn't rake into accounr the fact that there are as many kinds of response to the obscene as rhere are varieties of obscenity. Totalizing accounts of films such as Pink Flamingosignore elements of difference within the viewing community, and rhe sexuaVrexcual polirics that are con­ cealed or neutralized by the juxtaposition of terms such as 'vulgar' and 'witty' in rhe promotional literature. Scholarly readings of the film are pe.rhaps even more influenrial, in that they can smooth over and reconcile complex issues of exploitation and subject positioning. A psychoanalytic reading of the film could eloquently portray it as a return of the repressed, a resurfacing of rhe destructive, anti-social energies of pre-Oedipal auto-eroticism. With its representation of infantile behaviour and perverse pleasures (the dyeing of pubic hair, various fetishes, the eating of human fiesh), and its preoccupation with excrement (at one point a curd is presented as a 'gift'), rhe film appropriates Freud's representation of the pre-Oedip.ll libido in terms of atrocity ('the grotesque monsters painred by Breughel for the temptation of Sc Anthony'). 1 � But such a reading assumes an audience literate in psychoanalytic theory, and only has significance and value for that audience. Again, in attempting to reclaim offensive matter in terms of symbolic expressions of stages in the development of the psyche, a quasi-scientific reading may naturalize particular drives and con­ fuse important differences between. sex and gender, as feminist theorists have noted of Freud's work. Annette Kuhn has observed that the cask of writing about pornography is hazardous for a feminist, because of

the very complexity of the questions pornography raises, the dif­ ficulty of constructing, distinguishing and sustaining positions, and 16 so of producing coherent political programmes on the issue.

This is aJso the case with theorizing trash culture. Cultural theory offers a diverse range of theoretical positions, yet that very diversity can destabilize any particular posicion. The identification and articulation of a culture of crash by the insrirution of cultural studies attests to yec another phase in what Adorno called che 'administra­ tion' of culcure. 17 As wich the administration of rhe avant-garde, trash is co-opted into pedagogy, scholarship aod the mass media,

which can then govern how trash is represented and managed , and how its audiences participate in it. In accordance with prevailing theoretical agendas, che 'new humanities' inscirucionalize and scan­ dardize the new and the disruptive. Universccy courses char incorpo­ rate attention to crash culture amount to a canonization of che

81) transgressive , in a way that resembles the insticucional appropria­ tion of critical theory. Whar was once subversive heterodoxy becomes a docile orthodoxy. Formal academic interpretacion of crash cui cure is very much a revenge of conformism, a silencing of the unspeakable's powers of disruption . Waters himself has contributed to the manufacturing of his work as administered culcure. Since gaining nocoriecy with Pink Flamin­ go;, he has regularly lectured on his films in American universities and colleges, and has been employed as a reacher in US jails, counseliing inmates on the value ,of displacing criminal desires onto film. He has also given regular interviews in which he comes across as a criminal, accempcing co secure our sympathy by appealing co his motivations in perpetrating such aces. Two of his Iacer films,

Polyester (1981) and Hair;pray (1988), are much more 'acceptable ' films, Hairspray in particular being a benign celebration of Ameri­ can youch culture of che early 1960s. The escablishmenc of 'John

Waters Day ' in Baltimore following the commercial success of this film attests co the socialization of che 'anal anarchist'. Jonathan Ross put ic well when he observed chat wich Hair;pray 'it seems that che bad boy of Baltimore has finally made good- well, goodish ' . John Waters' films of the lace 1960s and 1970s (Mondo Trmho, Multiple Maniacs, Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble� Desperate Living) may be recuperable, and could be anaesthetized by any number of elegantly turned theories. And, despite the terrestrial nature of his most recent films, Waters still has an underground past. The unspeakable is resilient; ic defies total absorption. Tobe Hooper's Texm Chaimaw Mmsacre remains .a horrifying and enthralling experience for me despite readings of ic (by Robin Wood and ochers) 18 as a kind of parable of the conditions of life within lace capitalism. Commentary, exegesis, cheorecical inquiry into the multiplicity of viewing positions. can never simulate or totally efface che experience of visceral encounter, no maccer how persuasive chey are in reinforc­ ing che oppositional nature of such texcs. In a review of che Marion Boyars edition of Story of the Eye, Angela Career nores char Susan Sontag, in her essay 'The Pornographic Imagination' (appended to che volume), refrains from mentioning che detail in the scory where che Priest is made to quaff his own urine from a chalice (please imagine the preceding JOUJ rature). Career is trying co point ouc that, while Sontag attempts co define pornographic literature, she misses the point that the Story of the Eye is 'didaccically lewd'. 19 Career herself, however, fails co perceive che significance of the face chac che story is surrounded by cwo critical essays, one of which is a

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commencacy on che text, as well as by a number of personal observations by Bataille himself. Given that it is marketed as a story already being read, and that these readings in one way or another defuse or transform its shock value (Bacaille's recounting of the unpleasantness of his 'real life'), it seems to me fitting chat Sontag refrains from mentioning that particular derail. It remains unmen­ tionable; co cake a memorable phrase oflyocard's out of concexc, the 20 essay imparts a 'stronger sense of the unpresencable'. Career's celebration of the obscene, in the face of what she perceives to be Sontag's Protestant squt:amishness, is evidence of rhe problems of choice facing consumers of crash culture: one can acknowledge its faccicity and che need to address it critically, only to encounter the ideological problems chat arise from this pro­ cedure; or one can paccicipace in irs neo-Dada accack on bourgeois morality and revel in ics offensivene!:s, at the risk of appearing oppressive and apolitical. Trash culture is the most recent mani­ festation of an aesrherics of silence that baffles and defies the practice of criticism, for, apart from the impossibility of deseribing it without domesticating it, it precludes what Rodolphe Gasche (wich Mallarme in mind) has referred co as 'che decidabiliry all criticism 21 presupposes ' . It would seem that we have not yet developed the language with which co describe the unspeakable and yet retain a sense of its

unspeakability, or accommodate crash cui cure 's questionable poli­ tics co rhe desire ro revive a genuinely adversarial culture- one thac can defamiliarize che social world, destabilize its habitual percep­ tions and values, in order co stimulate, through obsolescence if necessary, a radical critique of whatever ic is chat constituces normality in our society. For it is quite often chis normality char is truly shocking.

NOTES

Shock Value. A Tasteful Book About Bad Taste (Deha, New York, 1981), p. 2. 2 This exhibition was held at the Australian Centre for Comemporary Art, Melbourne, in March 1989, afrer its original presentation at the Performance - Space in Sydney in July 1988. It include<:! the work of Maria Kozic, Ian Haig and Andrew Haig. Quotes are taken from the accompanying 'Program Notes', which are unpaginaced. } These observations by Adrian Marcin and Rod Bishop (respectively) ace quoted in Tom Ryan's interview with Philip Brophy and Rod Bishop, 'Philip Brophy's Fantastic Voyage', Cinema Papers, 71, January 1989, p. 71. 4 Vicroc Gollancz, Letter co che Editor, Times Literary Supplement, 28 November 1963, reprinred as pan of an appendix co Tht Naked Lunch (john Calder, London, 1982), p. 265.

817 5 After the Great Divide. Modernism, Mass Ct�ltNrll and Poitmodemism (Mac­ millan, London, 1988), p. 3. 6 Lipstick Traces. A Stm!tHistory of the Twtntieth Cen111ry(Se<:ker & Warburg, London, 1989), p. 18. 7 Frank Zappa and Peter Occhiogrosso, TheReal Frank Zappa Book (Picador, London, 1990), pp. 93-4. 8 In a letter from Pound to John Quinn (8 November 1920), the New York lawyer and patron of modern art, Pound admitted that 'I did myself dry Bloom's shirt'. One of the more famous instances of this policing of the vescimentary code involved the Church's commissioning of 'trousers' co be paimed on some of rhe more offensive figures in Michelangelo's 'Lase Judge­ mem' in 1564 (Clare Robertson, 'lralian Pa inting 1550-1600', in Rubens and the Italian Renaissancs, exhibition catalo�ue, Canberra, Australian National Gallery, 1992), p. 17. 9 'Notes on Camp', in A Swan Sontag Reader (Penguin, Harmondsworch, 1982), p. 112. 10 Shock Valu11, op.dr. II Ibid . 12 Ibid. 13 Trash Trio. Three Smenplays (Vi mage, New York, 1988), pp. 87-8. 14 Untkrground Film: A CriJical HiJtory (Seeker & Warburg, London, 1969), pp. L, 24. 1� Sigmund Freud, 'The Sexual life of Human Beings', in lnJ1YJ(,/pcJory Let:ture.s in Psychoanalysis (trans. J. Strachey) (Penguin, Harmondsworch, 1991), p. 346. 16 The Power of the lm4ge. Euays on Representalion and Sexuality(Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1985), p. 21. 17 'Cuhure and Adminisuation·, Telos, 37, 1978, p. 93. 18 Robin Wood, 'The Return of rhe Repressed', in Wood er al. (eds), AmeriCAn Nightmare: l!ssays on the Horrtlt' Film (Festival of Festivals, Toronto, 1979), p. 22. 1 9 'Georges BaraiUe: Story of 1ht E.yi, reprinted in Expletives Dele�td. Sel«ted Writings (Charco & Windus, London, 1992), p. 37. 20 The Posttwtkrn Condition. A Report on Kn()U}Iedge (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1991 edn), p. 81, 21 The Tain of the Mit't'Or. Derrid4 and the PhilfiSophy of Rejlenion (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1986), p. 266.

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