Interested in...

Joining eyecandy?
We will be holding meetings and putting together another issue over the summer
for fall quarter. We are looking for undergrad and graduate writers and bloggers
interested in:Advertising with eyecandy?

Film and Television, Digital Media, Architecture, Electronic Music, Art, Photography and/or Modern Culture and Communication. We are also looking for a new
editor, assistant editors and print and web production staff. Eligible for credit.

Please contact Eric Rivera, Advertising Manager
erivera@ucsc.edu
home: 831-420-1712

Please contact Jose Hernandez
jozecuervo@jozecuervo.com
cell: 831-818-5505

Our rates are very reasonable.

{film}Theory as an Act of Love

Film, Digital Media, Electronic Music
University of California, Santa Cruz, Summer 2004

by Lucia Blanchet-Fricke

Supreme Bureaucrat: Jose M. Hernandez
jozecuervo@jozecuervo.com

02

Co-Edtors: Lucia Blanchet-Fricke
Clinton Orman
Advertising Manager: Eric Rivera
erivera@ucsc.edu{film}

Caught in theSpider’s Webs

Production Suzanne Karnes
Michael DiCenzo

by Elizabeth Ambrose

Web Production Eleanor Biddle

04

Artist: Tyson Dai
Writing Staff: Elizabeth Ambrose
Eleanor Biddle
Lucia Blanchet-Fricke
Summer Sullivan{film}

Gays on Display

Advisor: David Crane

by Ellie Biddle

eyecandy is a quarterly, student-run film and digital media
journal founded in the fall of 1999. eyecandy focuses on analytical, critical, and theoretical issues in film and digital media, as
opposed to the more evaluative criticism found in popular press.
eyecandy examines film and digital media in relation to othersignificant issues such as art form, social and cultural theory
and politics. Above all, eyecandy is a forum for writers from all
fields to discuss and raise issues about film and digital media as
a popular phenomenon and area of critical study.

06{film}

eyecandy is published at the end of each academic quarter(November, March, & June) and is available by postal subscription for a $25 donation per year. POSTMASTER: Send addresschanges to Student Press Center, UCSC, Santa Cruz, CA,
95064.

John Waters:

Warhol or Jackass
by Summer Sullivan

All images contained within are copyright and property of theirrespective owners. Articles represent the expressed opinions
of individual writers and not necessarily those of the Film andDigital Media Department, UC Santa Cruz, or the Universityof California. Please direct all inquiries to The Student Press
Center, UCSC.
Special Thanks:
UCSC Film and Digital Media,
Robin Chanin and Marlene Olson @ Student Media
Alphagraphics - 525 Laurel Street, Santa Cruz
Apple Computer Corp. and Baytree Bookstore

contents

eyecandy

08
COVER IMAGE

John Waters(photo courtesy of ART21)

Table of contents images (top to bottom): Undefined; Poster for
M, Fritz Lang; A scene from My Best Friend’s Wedding; John
Waters. Cover Image Artwork: Jose M. Hernandez

ART:21 - ART IN THE
TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY,
This is an image from Season
Two of John Waters in the Studiowhere he opens program 5 with amonologue.
http://www.pbs.org/art21/

Please visit eyecandy on the web for
additional content and an archive of past issues.

http://eyecandy.ucsc.edu

Photograph by Peter Krogh

Theory as an Act of Love02 | eyecandy Spring 2004

Artwork by Tyson Dai.

One of the greatest joys of cinema is the virtually
endless multiplicity of it (in our imaginations as well as
in reality). There are so many different experiences we
could have. It beckons to us. And there are as manyreasons to love it as there are people who do. Love isthe operative word here. To love something is to try
to have a relationship with it, a back and forth, a pushand pull. To truly love something does not mean that
we will not wrestle and fight with it sometimes, that
we will always accept all of it; it just means that we will
stay engaged, committed and passionate. Film theory
for me is a way of enacting my love affair with thecinema. But not as a jealous lover, because I understandthat other people care about it as well. I want to hearother people’s thoughts and interpretations as I claim
mine, in my own voice.
Film and theory are intertwined in an embrace andthey feed off of one another. Dorothy Richardson
wrote, “Down through the centuries men and some
women have pathetically contemplated art as a wonder
outside themselves. It is only in recent years that man
has known beauty to emanate from himself, to be hisgift to what he sees” (Richardson 176). What she says
about art (film) can also be said of theory. We create artout of ourselves in response to the world in which welive. Don’t we create theory also as a response, as partof an interlocking dialogue, an attempt to understandthe world and other people? Theory is our “gift to what
we see” on the screen. Because as much as film is a
response to our world, it also becomes part of it.
Theoria, from the Greek, “a looking at,” theoreo,“to see,” theoros, “an observer.” These are dynamic
roots, related to vision and engagement. Film theory
embodies the active dialogue between film and people;
it is an open term for our hopes, prescriptions andquestions regarding this medium through which we see
our world reflected and refracted on the screen. What
does theory do for us? Ideally, it gives us new waysof seeing, of knowing, film. It provokes dialogue. In
this essay, I look to the past and the future, considering
work written in the early days of cinema as a reminderof a certain unabashed and inquisitive spirit that isoften lacking in “theories” that distance themselvesfrom the passion and pleasure in thinking, in speaking
about film. Film theory is the production of knowledge
about film. Like the film viewing experience, it isalways already collective; knowledge is produced andunderstood in relation to that which came before andthat which is yet to come. In this dialogic creation oftheory, embodied, passionate scholarship elucidates
the points of enunciation in this intertextual web, and it
ensures that the study of film is not only erudite but also
relevant to the social world in which film is produced
and received.
Theory is creative. When we create, we put partof ourselves into the production. Therefore we should
not homogenize our output and squeeze our inspiration

By Lucia Blanchet-Fricke

into one uniform mold. When I read the work of H.D.
or Dorothy Richardson, I feel a connection to it and insome ways to the authors themselves. They claim the “I”
and do not omit themselves from their ideas. Althoughwritten over eighty years ago, their writing lives. The
pieces of themselves they put into these writings havebeen granted a kind of eternal life within the pages. The
passion that they had for cinema is tangible. We can still
relate to that even if we are far removed from the films
they saw or the conditions of their time. This is not to
say that film theory should become a cult of personalityor that we should not take our work seriously. We
should make it seriously, joyfully, ironically, wistfully,
fervently, constantly: “we must work self-consciously
and at the same time leave vast areas of mind andspirit free, open to idea, to illumination” (H.D. 114). In
creating theory, we need to be self-conscious, both of
our role in theoretical production and of our theory’s
relationship to the cinema we discuss.
We have seen many kinds of films emerge fromthe cinema. Shouldn’t there also be many kinds offilm theory? We should take the wisdom (learned
from film) that there are numerous forms available
and “inventable” and apply it to the project of theory.
“Inventable” in that we create the way in which wetheorize as much as we create the what. My theory does
not have to be identical in shape and size as your theory.
Form, content, are they different? Does it matter? There
are many things to be said and we can say them in aplenitude of ways. Our own ways.
There are indeed many different kinds of films,
but it is also important to think about how there aremany different uses for films. For what is the point ofa film (or anything) if no one engages with it? A film
completes its purpose when an audience views it andthat audience integrates it into their lives. What arethe functions of film? “School, salon, brothel, bethel,newspaper, art science, religion, philosophy, commerce,
sport, adventure; flashes of beauty of all sorts. The
only anything and everything. And here we all are,as never before. What will it do with us?” (Richardson
171) Dorothy Richardson asked what film will do withus; I think it is also important for us to ask what wewill do with film. Invariably, we will not always dothe same thing with it, but that is not the point. The
point is that we will fully engage with it, in complex andmultifaceted ways. That’s theory.
The cinema is about people. Even when the express
focus of an individual film is on birds, it is not forthe birds. Always are we witnessing the curiosity,
obsessions or passing fancies of people, both the
producers and the viewers. People make films to be
seen and understood by other people. Cinema, as muchas it is also a technical and economic process, is made upof the dreams, ideas and perceptions of human beings.
It then reflects onto more human beings, catalyzing
further thought. When we write film theory, we cannever forget about the living people who interact with afilm, make it come alive in their minds, for “the onlooker
is part of the spectacle” (Richardson 176). There is no“text” in isolation, certainly not the theoretical text…
This thing that we call “theory” touches and merges
with film. It cannot be entirely separate as both areconstantly bringing something new into the world. We
make films to project our ideas, feelings and impressions
up onto a screen for others to see and hear and then we
make sense of them in our minds and on paper. Bothactions affect the world as long as people are watching,listening and reading. Neither the production of a film
or the production of theory exists in a vacuum. Theyinteract with one another reciprocally and also with the
myriad other methods people have for understanding
and experiencing the world: art, literature, poetry,music, science, etc. So it is not a surprise that the poet
H.D. used lyrical phrases and plentiful adjectives toexpress her theory of film, or that the novelist Dorothy
Richardson told stories about little boys sitting in thefront rows and loud women laughing and chatting in
the theater. These things don’t need to be separate;“theory” does not need to live isolated in a fortress,
looking down.

simply taken for granted. For if the cinema is made by,
for and out of human beings, who are part of social andpolitical structures, then we know that the cinema is also
complicit, enmeshed in these human formations. In the“movies” we can find clues, patterns, and knowledge
about people, how they tick, what they want. Fueledby our passion for the cinema (and for thinking), we canunlock mysteries.
This love affair that we, through theory, are havingwith cinema is not static or one-sided. It needs us tocare about it, to take it apart and put it back together
again, to give it new meanings, to give it threedimensional life – outside of the theater, outside of the
television. There are questions, encoded within film,
which we raise to the light through our investigations.
We respond with more questions, digging deeper.
There will never be one answer, and we wouldn’t want
there to be. This exchange of questions, this flow ofideas and passion running through cinema keeps it
constantly up to date, relevant and alive. Theory is
how we make sense of the cinema, how we make senseof ourselves, how we make sense of our relationshipwith the cinema. My theory is my gift to the cinema,an infusion of life, freely given.
H.D. “Restraint” Close Up 1927-1933: Cinema andModernism. Eds. James Donald, Anne Friedberg, and Laura
Marcus. New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1998. 110-114.
Richardson, Dorothy. “Continuous Performance” Close Up
1927-1933: Cinema and Modernism. Eds. James Donald,
Anne Friedberg, and Laura Marcus. New Jersey: Princeton
UP, 1998. 170-171, 174-176.

We do not need to be afraid of theory. And in turntheory should not be frightening. But it can and will be
rigorous. Rigorous in that we will throw our hearts andour energies into it willingly (it will not be boring). We
will work (play) hard with it.
We will vigilantly interrogate and investigate
the dark corners where meaning is unclear. We willthoroughly unpack what we find to be new and always
question that which seems suspect, disturbing, or
eyecandy Summer 2004 | 03

Caught in the Spider’s Webs

Pumping iron in Metropolis.

Spiders are really interesting little creatures. They weave
intricate lairs and lie in wait for their dinners to come along.
These lairs can be deviously simple or truly complex, froma sticky lure to a multilayered web. People weave webs tosurvive as well, but to survive socially rather than hunting
for food. These people weave their layers of plans aroundother individuals’ plans, creating a vast, complex web ofrelationships between people. Nowhere are there more ofthese webs than in an urban space, and nowhere in film domore of these webs of relationships intersect and interact thanin the films of Fritz Lang. Lang, one of the most well-known
directors of silent films in the 1920’s, maintained an interestin these social webs and even made a two part film titled
The Spiders in 1919. The films of Fritz Lang feature different
visions of modern urban life but in many of these films, thisspace is divided and dissected into individuals and groups
manipulating other individuals and groups for good and for
ill.
Metropolis is one of the best known of Lang’s films. It begins
introducing Johan Fredersen, who runs the futuristic city froma high remote view, and the workers who live underground.
His son Freder has an encounter with Maria, who is acting asteacher and pacifist prophet to the workers. Freder falls inlove with Maria. Fredersen seeks to discredit Maria and hires
Rotwang, a mad scientist, to create a robot double of Maria to
do his bidding, while the real Maria is held captive. Frederattempts to free Maria while the robot incites the workers toriot and destroy Fredersen’s main factory. The destructionof the “Heart Machine” in Fredersen’s factory causes theworkers’ quarters to become flooded and Maria and Frederrush to save the workers’ children. Meanwhile the workers
realize that they have been duped and go hunting the robot
Maria, who they believe tricked them. At the end of their chasethey catch the robot and destroy it while Rotwang chases thereal Maria and fights with Freder. Rotwang is killed and thefilm ends with Freder acting as mediator between his father
and the workers.
M, Lang’s first sound film, is about the hunt for Hans
04 | eyecandy Spring 2004

By Elizabeth Ambrose

Beckert, an insane child killer. The criminal organizations
mobilize to find Beckert themselves, catch him and put him
on trial in front of a kangaroo court. The police arrive in time
to save Beckert from the mob. They arrest everyone and thefilm ends with three women mourning their dead children as
Beckert is being sentenced “legitimate” court.
Metropolis and M use their settings to draw attention
to the machinations of the characters through dialogue,choreography and voiceovers. Both films have individuals
and groups thinking up and carrying out schemes for various
reasons. For film theorist Thomas Elsaesser, “The difficult
delights of [Lang’s] work are that, strictly speaking, there neverseems to be a ‘ground,’ a solid world from which the realm of
appearances might be confidently asserted to be either true or
false” (Elsaesser 153). All of this scheming creates a narrativeenvironment that is constantly changing to adapt to the new
set of circumstances with the results of each plan.
In Metropolis, Maria’s image is often the focal point ofmass attention. Maria’s possession of her own image becomesblurred with the introduction of the robot. In the beginning,
this attention is quiet, reverent and receptive to her pleas. Laterthe attention is focused in a destructive manner by the robot
wearing Maria’s image. The mob’s attention towards Maria
then becomes destructive as a result of the robot’s interference.
The quality of the attention that the masses give Mariachanges with the interference and intersection of two different
objectives, making it difficult to determine whose influence
counts for more. While the robot and her creator certainly havea noticeable effect upon the city, Maria’s preaching acted as apassive, expressive outlet for the city workers and may have
prevented prior wholesale rebellions from happening. The
difference in Maria’s manipulations and the robot’s actions
for Rotwang is shown in the outward reactions and attentionsof the masses. Maria’s webs of communication are usurped
and twisted by the sudden interference of Fredersen’s andRotwang’s networks of surveillance and wrested away fromequilibrium and relative peace.
M uses the voiceover to guide the viewer through amontage of people using technology and detective work to
track, and catch, a child killer. The voiceover of the police
inspector paired with the actions of people carrying out theinspector’s instructions gives a visual feeling of progress. In
the film’s narrative reality, the effort is too late and ineffective,
but the viewer is misled by the voiceover and image. The brisk
pace of the editing and the bustling activity of the inspectors
during the voiceover indicate otherwise. The sequence
manipulates the viewer into thinking that the detectives aremaking progress in their manhunt. Actually, the police’s
efforts prod the criminal organizations into launching theirown hunt for Hans Beckert. It eventually gets the criminalorganizations to do the surveillance work for the police andfor the overall good of society. The criminals are a mob, albeit
a better organized one than the masses in Metropolis, but they
are still denied the aural authority of playing out an acceptable
trial. This convergence and metamorphosis of interests
destabilizes the foundations of the social world created on
the screen. Lang ensures that neither organization, legal or
criminal, is entirely effective by themselves, creating a web ofmutual gain and equilibrium.
“Simultaneously reflecting a positivist belief in the accessibility
Metropolis and M both use graphic motifs to illustrate a of knowledge through close and systematic observation, andcharacter’s interior state or exhibit a character trait that becomes new systems of social control through a pan-optic system ofmore pronounced with outside manipulation. Metropolis surveillance, the detective sketches the ideology of modernity
depicts Maria pinned by a spotlight in a dark cavern when she until it breaks into a violent confrontation and the repression
is caught by Rotwang. The camera’s point of view mirrors that upon which order is founded becomes explicit” (Gunning 94).
of the mad scientist and puts the viewer in Rotwang’s position The criminal organization in M and Fredersen in Metropolis bothof visual power over Maria. He has chased her through the exercise their control over their domains through surveillance
web of tunnels underneath the city and has now overtaken her and manipulation of their personnel resources. Fredersen has
and her social networks. M illustrates the chase and capture of spies to do his bidding and a network of video phones bywhich to keep tabs on any potential uprising by the workers.
Hans Beckert in the enclosed space
In M, the crime lords mobilize theof the warehouse with converging
Beggar’s Guild to act as eyes andlines and parallel editing to placeears to keep watch for anybody
our sympathies with Beckert as hewho might be the murderer. This
tries to avoid capture by the crimeis visually heightened by extreme
lords of the city. The viewer watches
high angle camera shots and a shotas criminal agents of the city cornerwith the camera looking at Beckert
Beckert in a street intersection.
through a hedge. In both cases, theBeckert is caught in the middle ofsystems of surveillance work as
his pursuers, very much the fly
a way to manipulate the police incaught in the spider’s web. While
M and the workers in Metropolis.
Beckert hides in the warehouse, heLack of sufficient surveillance isis shown with linear shadows acrossblamed for the murders in M, both
his face, further indicating that he isof Hans Beckert and of the children
trapped with no escape. Now he is
he killed. Surveillance is a means
fully caught by a web of opposingof communication in these films as
forces laid against him.
well as a visual representation of the
Similarly, M and Metropolis
webs of connections the charactershave at least one character thathave.
is permanently scarred by theMetropolis and M both present
manipulation
andcountera modern city as a collection ofmanipulationsofeverything
manipulations
thatintersect,around them. In all of these films, Peter Lorre in Fritz Lang’s M.
this aspect of expressionism is centered on someone or interact and edge towards madness. Like a spider castingsomething that has gone out of control and is wreaking havoc. a gossamer web, groups and individuals participate in a
The things that go out of control often inhabit a borderline complex network of surveillance to prevent any and all fromspace where they are manipulated or hunted from both sides upsetting and breaking the strands of the web which cocoonsof their existence. Another person or event causes the person them and society at large. We weave our own networks ofor thing to go haywire from its originally structured existence contacts and observation for our own benefit and interact withand they become a catalyst for everything else in the film. the schemes of others on a daily basis. We are caught in theseIn the case of M, it is Hans Beckert who is out of sync with everyday webs and are expected to participate in the process
the machinations of both legitimate and illegitimate society. of unraveling and reweaving them to keep in balance with all
Because Beckert cannot fit in, he must be stopped, caught in the other spiders out there.
the high angle camera shot as the manhunt closes in on him. In
Metropolis, Rotwang’s house is the only two story building in acity of skyscrapers. Rotwang also moves between high places
and low places as much as either Freder or Maria. Rotwang’s Elsaesser, Thomas. Weimar Cinema and After: Germany’s Historicalcounter-plan goes beyond Fredersen’s wishes to ruin Maria Imaginary. New York: Routledge, 2000.
through the guise of the robot. These rogue members ofsociety are caught, conspired against and used by society, Gunning, Thomas. The Films of Fritz Lang: Allegories of Vision andand strengthen society’s webs by the attempts to break those Modernity. London: British Film Institute, 2000.
networks.
Authority manipulates its subordinates in M and Metropolis
through various forms of surveillance. The power figures inMetropolis and M use investigative techniques and technologies
in very deliberate ways to serve their own ends. The criminal
mob and Fredersen act the part of the detective to figure out
what’s going on. According to film historian Tom Gunning,
eyecandy Summer 2004 | 05

Gays on Display“Throw out your hands, stick out your tush, go on ahead, giveit a push, you’ll be surprised you’re doing the French mistake,
Voila!”-Buddy’s Singers in Blazing Saddles (1974)
Representations of non-heteronormative sexuality canbe seen in many different types of contemporary films, fromdramatic cinematic epics based on the life of a murderedtransgender person, to the “stereotypical flamer” asexemplified by the feminine male singers or “ladies” as Buddy(Dom DeLuise) calls them in Blazing Saddles. One function ofthis “gayness” I wish to examine more closely is related to
Buddy’s aforementioned singers: the gay character as comic
relief. From the early cinema to today, regardless how much
has changed in terms of visibility, one thing is certain: the useof queer characters as the scapegoat, the fallback, or the buttof the joke has been consistent within mainstream dominantcinema.
I will start by examining early filmic representation of the“sissy” character, looking at how the character type became
prevalent in early cinema and has retained its position inmainstream cinema. Two films that specifically exhibit thetransformation of this character archetype are Broadway Melodyof 1933 (1933) and My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997). This article
will then move onto the broader subject (or subjectivity) of
the gay character as comic relief and the implications of suchcharacters functioning as a source of laughs simply by virtue ofbeing gay and on display. I will look at the “exhibition” of gay
characters in terms of more contemporary films, such as Saving
Silverman (2000), and other films of the same general time
period. For the purposes of this article, I will move away fromJack Black and Steve Zahn in Saving Silverman.
06 | eyecandy Spring 2004

By Ellie Biddle
the issue of “positive” or “negative” implications and focus on
how the characters are depicted as the “comic relief.”
The “sissy” character has appeared since the early daysof cinema. In general, one can define the sissy character as asecondary or “extra” within a film – someone whose presence
is not extremely needed or deeply missed, and mostly there fora good laugh. The sissy of the late 1920’s and 1930’s appeared
primarily in musicals, which were at that time, analogous (inpopularity) to the comedies of today. The sissy characters ofthe musicals were used to alleviate tension from any dramathat might be occurring at that moment. Typically, they weremiddle-aged males with extreme feminine mannerisms, a keen
fashion sense, and ambiguous sexuality. Because of the Motion
Picture Production Code’s (a pre-rating self-censorship system
for films) presence during that era, regulations were put on films
to cover any elements deemed unacceptable, including “sexual
perversion” (the category that included homosexuality). In The
Broadway Melody of 1933, the un-named, un-credited secondary
character referred to as the “costume designer” only arrives
when there is tension among the characters. Whether thetension comes from being stressed out about a play or thecompletion of a certain costume, the designer always has asnappy comment ready to deliver to 1) take the tension off
the stressed main performers and 2) deliver the comment ina effeminate way, allowing a good laugh for the audience.
By not clearly identifying the character’s sexuality, Melody
avoids giving the designer visibility as a queer character. Such“masking” of the sissy was a very prominent characteristic ofearly cinema because of the Code.
In more recent times, even with more widespread
acceptance of the homosexual (or at least acknowledgment ofa strong homosexual presence in society), and even with thedissolution of the Production Code, films still have looked tothe sissy of yesteryear. However, the sissy has been given
some alterations. The 1990’s showed the persistent popularityof the sissy, mostly due to high audience numbers attending
films in which there was a gay character. A key thing to noteis that the sissy and other queer characters in both recent andearlier cinema is that the queer characters are used for theentertainment of a presumed straight spectator, hence the highaudience numbers.
My example for the films of today shines brighter thana flame with Rupert Everett’s character, George, in My Best
Friend’s Wedding. George seems to have almost all the same
qualities as the costume designer from Melody, with hisover-the-top feminine mannerisms and foppish gestures of
the hands and wrists. These behaviors are only shown when
his character isn’t masquerading as straight. This adds to the
comic relief aspect of the sissy by showing a gay man portraya straight man; it’s funny because it calls attention to his otherflamboyant characteristics that ultimately stick out like a sore
thumb. Other sissy qualities include his keen fashion sense, his
impeccable grooming and his propensity to comment on othercharacters’ clothing, fitting the stereotype that only a gay man
would do such things. His snappy comments create laughs thattake the edge off of the lead character’s heartbreak in the film.
George’s relationship to Julianne (Julia Roberts) shows how
a queer character functions to entertain a presumed straightspectator in the way that he is there for Julianne; to console,entertain and serve the straight character (the viewer’s proxy).
Something worthy of mention here is that the more recent films
openly acknowledge the gayness of their sissy characters. In
Melody, the early sissy character was asexual – that is, he wasnever deliberately referred to as gay. In the case of Everett’s
character, the main source of comic relief and entertainment isbecause of his character’s visible gayness.
In the 1990’s and 2000’s, a new incarnation of the gay
comic relief character emerged, though one still open to
critique. These films “other” (but do not openly revile) thequeer character; they accept this character on the surface, but
the character is still marginalized. In films such as Wayne’s
World 2 (1993), the main characters are chased into a gay malebiker bar, full of middle-aged men clad in tight black leather.
Wayne and Garth are looked upon with objectifying eyes,
as they walk towards the closest exit, the stage, where they
perform a rendition of the Village People’s “YMCA” (alreadya stereotyped gay song). The bar and its patrons are put on
display for a predominantly and presumably straight audience.
The creation of this awkward situation provides the audience
with yet another laugh from the gays on display. Another more
recent example of the “gay bar scene” is in American Wedding(2003), where the character Steve Stiffler (Seann William Scott)has a “dance off” with a gay man to gain the respect of thepeople in the bar. This time the gay bar is more contemporary,
populated with a range of queer characters but still resortingto hackneyed caricatures of lisping gay men, man-hating butchdykes, and burly middle-aged men. Right off the bat, thegay bar is yet again the object of exploitation, submitting thequeer characters to the criticizing and humiliating gaze of astraight spectator. Of course, to maintain his power, the Stiffler
character comes out victorious with both his masculinity intact
and the respect of the homosexuals at the bar, all while making
a laughing stock of the homosexuals present, by “out-gaying”
the gay characters.
Another recent representation of gayness on display isin the film Saving Silverman with the character JD, played by
comedian Jack Black. When JD comes out near the end of thefilm, his excessively performed gayness creates an awkward
interaction with the straight characters. His gayness is
displayed as the principle source of laughter because of how hecomes out: he says it bluntly, catching the other characters off

guard. Because of the reaction of the others, he is subsequently
put on display for the audience. He says he’s gay almost every
chance he gets, completely out of context, just adding to thediscomfort produced by his gayness. The JD character is seen
as an excessive individual, one that parades his homosexuality.
This puts the straight spectator in a position of judgment
over the queer characters, who themselves are confined tostereotypes that flaunt sexuality.
One thing that the representations cited above have incommon is the creation and/or use of stereotypes of queer
people. This creates the false idea that certain mannerisms(i.e., lisps, etc.) are exhibited by all queer people, and that the
purpose of homosexuality in cinema is to be on display for theentertainment of the predominantly heterosexual population.
From the sissy to the contemporary comic-relief gay character,these characters are presented in ways that reinforce and create
stereotypes of the queer community. It is indefensible that
Hollywood finds profit in the exploitation of homosexuals
and situates queer people as a source of laughter and an objectof exploitation for a straight spectator at the expense of real
narrative significance .

eyecandy Summer 2004 | 07

John
Waters:
Latterday Warhol or Just a Jackass?
The climax of John Waters’ cult classic, Pink
Flamingos, reveals a three hundred pound dragqueen eating dog shit. Do I have your attention?
Are you disgusted, yet interested, in seeing sucha spectacle? I know I was oddly compelled to see
what my peers described to me as a repulsive
must see – and that’s exactly what John Waters
wants. He wants to be the one to show you themost disgusting thing you’ve ever seen. He is the
king of trashy, campy movies. Jackass and SouthPark have nothing on Pink Flamingos and Female
Trouble, and these films were made over twenty
years earlier. Right about now you may be asking
yourself: who cares? Why isn’t she writing about
quality cinema? Well that’s just the thing. John
Waters gets me thinking about the boundaries weplace on cinema. Waters’ early films defy what is consideredtasteful and artistic. Many critics thought these films were
horrible and a waste of time. However, there were also reviews
that praised Waters and referred to his style as avant-garde andcomparable to Andy Warhol and Salvador Dali.
There is a fine line between what is avant-garde andwhat is just crap, and John Waters perpetually teeters back andforth on that line. For example, his outright defiance to conformto traditional notions of how “quality” films are made and what
they are about is the ultimate “fuck you” to Hollywood cinema,allowing Waters to be classified as a revolutionary artist. Yet
his subject matter and technique also operate on an adolescentlevel, fulfilling audience desire to see the most extraordinary
taboos and disgusting things imaginable. Thus his films attimes seem more like a circus freak show than art. I find merit inboth of these viewpoints and intend to explore the overlapping
space in between the avant-garde and distastefulness that
Waters occupies.
John Waters was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland,and consequently, that is where all of his films take place.
Waters made several shockingly trashy low budget films withthe aid of some friends and his star performer: the threehundred-pound drag queen he christened Divine. His first
film to get a distribution deal was Pink Flamingos (1972). In thefilm, Divine and her incestuous, deranged family compete witha couple who sells kidnapped women’s babies for the title of the“Filthiest People Alive.”
At a time when studios were releasing big blockbusters likeStar Wars and The Godfather and saturation advertising cameinto full force, Pink Flamingos reared its head with a $l0,000
budget, little to no advertising, and an unknown director. The
film was a success largely through word of mouth and badreviews. People wanted to tell their friends that they had seensomething shocking and repulsive. As Waters stated in aninterview, “I’ve always tried to please and satisfy an audience
who thinks they’ve seen everything. I try to force them to laugh08 | eyecandy Spring 2004

By Summer Sullivan
at their own ability to be shocked by something.”
He followed Pink Flamingos with a few otherequally trashy films but the toned-down ultra
campy Hairspray (1988) was his crossover into
the mainstream. Waters continues to make moremainstream films with bigger stars and budgets,
but they don’t lack campy, quirky sensibilities;
they just won’t make you want to vomit.
However, in this article, I am concerned with
Waters’ early work—specifically, Pink Flamingos,
because the film not only launched his career, butalso exhibits the dichotomy that I am attempting
to explore between the avant-garde and crap.
Personally, after watching Pink Flamingos, I was
disgusted and I wasn’t sure if I liked the film, but
it got me thinking and questioning the standard
film aesthetic and the importance of artists who forge radical
new ground.
Waters’ films definitely offer something new; specificallya low-budget, campy, white-trash aesthetic and a cinematic
language of bile, mucus and feces. He does not, however,stay within the borders of Hollywood cinema or “quality” art.
Waters’ early films are not traditionally beautiful, nor are they
meant to be. What Waters brings to mainstream cinema is achallenge to the notion of good taste. He presents an alternate
aesthetic: that of raw guerilla filmmaking, complete with nonprofessional actors and a home-edited print. Quality cinema
seems to be largely defined by how much money is spent on thefilm. With a budget of $10,000, it seems improbable that Pink
Flamingos could ever be considered a quality film regardless of
its content.
Waters’ characters are considered avant-garde because of
their “trashy” tendencies. They are often surrounded by actualrefuse, live in poor conditions and are considered by many to be
actual human waste. As an audience, we are not used to seeing
obese drag queens that live in trailer parks and want to be thefilthiest people alive. We normally see “pretty” characters thatavoid or aspire to leave these conditions. Waters’ characters,
however, wallow in their filth. They roll around in it like pigs in
the mud and they won’t stop until they are absolutely drippingand oozing with muck.
Yes, Waters is doing something different, but that does notnecessarily qualify it as artistic. What is deemed artistic or not
is often decided by those in the high-brow art community. As
Waters writes in his book Shock Value, “to understand bad taste
one must have very good taste.” What Waters is referring to is
the high-brow sensibility that allows for a distinction between
what is really just bad non-artistic work and what is good badtaste. Good bad taste is a work that the art community deems
socially relevant and artistic, and that also utilizes a low-browsentiment. To many, this distinction may seem very arbitrary

and of course, not all critics agree. For example, consider thecontroversy that surrounded avant-garde artist Damien Hirst’s
decomposing bullhead with maggots enclosed in glass.
When deciding if an individual’s work is avant-garde ornot, previous works or artistic influences and educational
background are called into question. For example, Marcel
Duchamp was already an established artist when he displayed afound urinal in a museum. The urinal, like Pink Flamingos, wasbanned at first and later critically acclaimed as revolutionary.
Duchamp’s status as a respected and educated artist allowed
the urinal to be validated as high art. Because Waters claimed
to be influenced by avant-garde film artists and theorists like
Jonas Mekas and Stan Brakhage, the art community is more
willing to accept him. Because Waters loves “quality artistic”
cinema and not just bad B films, his work is more easily accepted
as good bad taste. Waters also thoroughly enjoys art exhibitions
and is currently showing photographs at the New Museum ofContemporary Art in New York.
Like Mark Rothko or Jackson Pollock, Waters is pushing
the limits of what can be considered artistic expression. These
abstract expressionist painters have led many people toquestion their legitimacy as artists because their work may notseem to utilize any special skill or talent. A similar claim could
be made about Waters’ filmmaking. The fact that legitimacy
is questioned and a definition of what is “artistic” is debatedproves that Waters’ films are thought-provoking and interestingenough to challenge viewer assumptions, which is an essential
part of being an avant-garde artist.

the words, “What are these people laughing at?” Immediately
the trailer wants us to desire to be in on the joke, to be one ofthe people who have witnessed such a spectacle. We then see
audience members saying how funny and also how disgusting
the film was, cut with similar review quotations. This trailer
plays on the hip aspect of seeing the film; it makes it seem likea circus freak show; something so outrageous you have to see it
to believe it and to brag to all your friends. Waters’ charactersoften seem like the freaks at the circus. Not only do they lookodd, but they also do outrageous stunts.
Some reviewers believe Jackass has surpassed Waters
in gross out shock value, while others claim Jackass could
never live up to Waters and Pink Flamingos. Waters is a selfproclaimed fan of Jackass and has said that the show has stolen
the mantle from him. In fact, the two worlds will soon collide
because Johnny Knoxville (star of Jackass) will be starring in
Waters’ new film, A Dirty Shame.
John Waters is so easily compared to both avant-garde
artists and low-brow bad bad taste that often the distinction isblurred. When deciphering what is good bad taste, frequently
the context or intention of the work plays a bigger factor thenthe actual work itself. Questioning how much validity theboundaries of good and bad taste have on the classificationsof John Waters work allows us to better see that often there isno clear boundary or distinction between the avant-garde andcrap. Whether Waters is a circus master at a freak show or arevolutionary artist, he keeps trying to shock and entertain us,
and I for one will always be interested in his ability to do so.

When watching Pink Flamingos, I had to turn away from thescreen several times and I felt guilty for laughing at some of thesick jokes. But I kept watching because I wanted to see how thenext scene would top the last. It’s similar to when I watch theshow Jackass, which consists of several guys doing dangerous,
asinine and disgusting stunts. However, Jackass is definitely
considered bad bad taste. This is primarily because Jackass does
not claim to be influenced by, or want to be, associated with theavant-garde or art in general. Instead, Jackass’ culture is that ofskateboarding and debauchery. Yet most of the film reviews for
Jackass: the Movie use John Waters or Pink Flamingos as a basis
for comparison. Comparing Waters to Jackass is as legitimate ascomparisons to Rothko and Pollock. Pink Flamingos and Jackass
are both like car wrecks on the side of the road that you can’t
stop staring at; they are compelling because they are spectacles,
not because they are artistic. Jackass and Pink Flamingos arealso both like circus freak shows, playing on our desires tobe shocked at the breaking of social taboos, especially those
involving bodily excrement.
When New Line Cinema distributed Pink Flamingos, they
released an unusual trailer: one with no scenes from the film,
just audience reactions cut with review quotes on a black screen.
It begins with laughter and the black screen, on which appears

Divine going for the ‘natural look’ in a scene from Pink Flamingos.
eyecandy Summer 2004 | 09

The Bay Tree Bookstore
Graduation Specials on
PowerBooks!
Discounts on
12-and 15-inch
PowerBooks!
LimitedQuantities!

We also carry
iPods andaccessories!
Special PowerBook pricing
is only available at
Bay Tree Bookstore.



12-inch MODEL AS MUCH
AS $350 OFF RETAIL PRICE

15-inch MODEL AS MUCH
AS $340 OFF RETAIL PRICEYour Campus
Resource
http://slugstore.ucsc.edu