13 ms·

Somehow I Became Respectable

170 points by shange 7y ago

pwinnski 7y ago
I also don't understand how John Waters came to be seen as respectable, but I suppose it might help some people to hear that a lack of respectability, or even acceptance, is not always permanent. Sometimes it is, but not always.
- mieseratte 7y ago
  At least among the well-heeled and the culture-class that Waters cites as his markers of acceptance. Should you take his films to a Baptist lock-in you will surely be in trouble. Widespread acceptability of formerly fringe-lifestyles and a rejection of socially-conservative values ranging from widespread availability of high-grade marijuana to drag-queens showing off their twerking capabilities at public libraries. It's in, it signals you're not "part of the system." In a way it reminds me of the path that "shock rock" has taken, from Alice Cooper to Marilyn Manson and beyond. There was a good show on the history, I believe "Metal Evolution," which featured an interview with Till Lindemann of Rammstein who remarked, when asked about what he could do to shock at this point, "Suicide on stage." Which I think is a fair statement from a band famous for simulated sodomy on-stage. Perhaps they should try the real thing for sport.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - cgh 7y ago
    When I was a kid, Metallica was widely seen as completely crazy (this is the Kill 'Em All to Master of Puppets era). "Big kids" who listened to Metallica were vaguely threatening and best avoided. Now even those early thrash monsters are considered to be classic rock. Metallica is eminently respectable. There is some extreme metal that will never be mainstream or widely listened to but that mainly comes down to the amount of work that's required to listen to it (Deathspell Omega) or the purely misanthropic production quality (Darkthrone's Panzerfaust, an album I adore). This sort of music is "shocking" in the sense that most people assume bands make music because they actually want people to listen to it.
    - lb1lf 7y ago
      Totally different genre, but German industrial/art/whatever band Einstürzende Neubauten has a song titled 'Hör mit Schmerzen' (Listen with/in pain) - which, as far as titles go, is pretty descriptive. (I love the Neubauten, by the way - but I will admit to preferring their output from Zeichnungen des Patienten O.T. onwards - where at least fragments of melody can be heard... The debut Kollaps is... Well, challenging.)
- joncrane 7y ago
  Being respectable means finding a kernel of truth (that isn't necessarily widely known) and working diligently to clear the way for it to come out. Hard work and devotion to a cause is, in itself, respectable. Having the courage to stick with something even when it was unpopular is respectable. Heck even Terry A. Davis, late creator of TempleOS, gets some grudging respect on here.
  - tictoc 7y ago
    Wow. Didn't know Terry Davis died. Has anyone used TempleOS? What is it like?
whatshisface 7y ago
If you really want to shock everybody, and become a highly respected artist known for redefining the modern gallery in ten to thirty years, you should probably paint some nice landscapes or portraits.
- tombert 7y ago
  I think you're a bit too late for that; Bob Ross seems to have made a recent resurgence....I don't think you get any more landscape-ey than that.
  - zrobotics 7y ago
    I think that resurgence is more due to "happy little trees" memes from his show than his actual paintings... I don't see his finished paintings I'm memes, just pictures of Ross whilst painting.
- cm2187 7y ago
  Or a pro-Trump statue. That would reliably get you kicked out of every art gallery.
  - Cthulhu_ 7y ago
    Nah, remember that a lot of people voted for him not that long ago.
    - esyir 7y ago
      Yes, but fine arts in guessing does not swing right /center
  - croon 7y ago
    Shocking can become respectable in the future. Shockingly stupid can't.
    - whatshisface 7y ago
rinchik 7y ago
Ah he's a classic! The bold moves, the rebellion! He's a symbol of LGBT "revolution". The acceptance of what was previously considered unacceptable. There was only one, unique place in history for his genre and he took it.
gaze 7y ago
A true American hero.
acomjean 7y ago
Compared to our current politics, John Waters is kinda respectable. I saw him at a university auditorium a couple years ago. Entertaining. Plus he was great on the Simpsons. Time seems to take the shock out of things. Maybe its the non-stop access to interesting things on the internet and photos and videos of everything taking the rumor and imagination out of things. GWAR's shows were mythic but now we have a nice wikipedia entry explaining it all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwar.
- jedberg 7y ago
  It's funny that you mention the Simpsons, which itself used to be so counterculture that you were a bad parent if you let your kid watch it. Now it's so mainstream that they can't find a plot that offends people anymore, not so much because they toned it down, but because society caught up to the Simpsons.
  - ticmasta 7y ago
    First that job went to Southpark, then Family Guy. Now we show the most offensive plots of all but call it "reality TV"
    - taneq 7y ago
      > Now we show the most offensive plots of all but call it “the news”
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago
    >they can't find a plot that offends people anymore, I doubt that is true. I bet that it is more like the people they offended could not really do much about that offense other than yell about it which just made the sows writers more popular in Hollywood. Now, if they come up with a plot that offends, they are likely to get de-platformed and lose their ability to find a job in Hollywood.
    - merpnderp 7y ago
lifeisstillgood 7y ago
Radical is merely common sense, thirty years early. I still want to turn Serial Mom into a Netflix series
- cgh 7y ago
  This is one of those "I want to subscribe to your newsletter" comments.
  - lifeisstillgood 7y ago
    I have just been planning on setting up a newsletter - just got the "idea" right. So thank you - a nice comment online at just the right time - you've put a smile on a wrinkly old face :-)
Loughla 7y ago
Honestly, inside me it makes me wonder if we're seeing the cultural movement toward more progressive ideals, or if we're just seeing the cumulative generational shift away from what their parents stood for. Meaning - WWII's "the greatest generation" was a relatively conservative generation, and it's gone more liberal in terms of social movements ever since. Are we going to keep seeing this movement toward liberalism, or are we going to see children rebel against their parents and move toward more traditional and conservative values?
- bnjms 7y ago
  When we see the move back to conservatism we won’t recognize it as traditional. The things that were feared didn’t change society much so there won’t be a movement to return to old norms.
- coldtea 7y ago
  >Are we going to keep seeing this movement toward liberalism, or are we going to see children rebel against their parents and move toward more traditional and conservative values? We've already had it, remember Family Ties, the Yuppies, that "hippie" had become a dirty word, the "stick it to the Man" type a caricature, and so on? Those were still within the framework of Baby Boomers though. Now we'll see even more backlash. It's a tide, not a line...
- rogerkirkness 7y ago
  Gen X / early millenials are the last progressive liberal generation for sure. If you really think about what late millenials, etc. are about, it's both conservative and classical liberal, but not particularly 60s esque.
  - 420codebro 7y ago
    (Gatekeeping intensifies.)
- pjc50 7y ago
  Maybe this is where all the young fascists are coming from. To be genuinely outrageous these days you've got to hurt people, or threaten to.
nessunodoro 7y ago
"Personality disorders are a terrible thing to waste." I need a Waters-only fortune module.
- contingencies 7y ago
  FWIW added to https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup
lacampbell 7y ago
If it helps, based on the first paragraph I don't think the guy is remotely respectable. Maybe he just started hanging out around people with lower standards?
jfengel 7y ago
Honestly, John, you were responsible for a massive hit Broadway musical, one that's entirely acceptable to the out-of-towners after their visit to Times Square. You didn't "become respectable". You sold out. Getting gross stuff shown in a modern art museum is hardly an accomplishment. Manzoni did his "canned poop" thing in 1961. You're gonna have to try a lot harder than clips from porn movies. Pink Flamingos is still gross. You could do that again, if you wanted. Though these days you're competing for attention from everybody on YouTube. You were an attention whore when it took some real effort to get it distributed. Now everybody can do it. They'll censor Pink Flamingos to put it on TV, but I'd be shocked if there weren't a dozen imitators on YouTube. (No, I'm not going to look.) Congrats, you lowered the bar on bad taste, and I guess that's enough of an accomplishment to make you a commencement speaker. But once people figured out your formula, the bar lowered pretty far pretty fast, and rather than get ahead of it you let 'em make Hairspray.
- sprafa 7y ago
  Meh. Why so negative? A man makes money after doing some transgressive things in the past that are considered iconic. Sell out? Really?
  - pessimizer 7y ago
    Yes, really. You should assume that people mean what they said. He should have sold out, though. He's old and he did a bunch of wonderful things. If he had waited any longer, the cash-out would have passed him by. Should everyone work forever? Attending exhibitions of his work as the guest of honor, giving talks at film festivals, doing lecture/stand-up tours every once and a while for a bit of travel and excitement; that's the life and a well-deserved victory lap. He didn't have to sell out, but it wasn't like he was a activist or something, he was a grotesque Douglas Sirk having a little fun.
  - jfengel 7y ago
    I don't mind him making money. I mind the "Oh, poor me, I used to be so outre" tone of his article. I'm glad he got rich. That's cool. Bawlmer kid makes good. But the article feels like flaunting it, without providing either insight or introspection.
bitwize 7y ago
Hipsters, that's what happened. John Waters has become something of a hipster schlock icon, a way for millennials weaned on easily available hardcore porn and rotten.com to connect with a time when things like what John Waters does were actually shocking and transgressive.
- rhizome 7y ago
  Yeah. Hipsters. Totally non-existent 40 years ago.
sp332 7y ago
Alice Cooper said years ago that he couldn't shock audiences anymore. Shock just seems not to be a thing audiences do now.
- acollins1331 7y ago
  I'm sure if you bit the head off a bat it would shock a few souls
  - saiya-jin 7y ago
    that would be Ozzy... who did it by mistake (thought it was a plastic prop)
- mruts 7y ago
  Alice Cooper could say he supports immigration controls. Or he could argue that we shouldn't have breastfeeding rooms in airports. I've personally found that people are getting more and more intolerant, and more and more shocked, especially liberals (conservatives have always been shocked and offended). Which is funny, because it's pretty illiberal of liberals to be shocked by people disagreeing with them.
  - ticmasta 7y ago
    IMO there's a big difference between shock and intolerance. Shock may usually (but not always) lead to a negative reaction, but intolerance seems more like a default position. To put it another way, shock is someone who jumps when you scare them; intolerance is someone standing with their arms crossed who's already made up their mind.
    - nyolfen 7y ago
      they're just taboos for different sets of values. nothing in a john waters movie ever 'scared' anybody.
  - 420codebro 7y ago
    The immigration angle I understand (it does hurt/compete with our working/labor class). The breastfeeding thing has me scratching my head. I've seen plenty of women breastfeeding and it has never bothered me or even caught my attention beyond "oh she is feeding her kid". I suppose some people do get caught up on dumb shit.
4ntonius8lock 7y ago
"First the establishment will ignore you; then they laugh at you; then they crack down on you and then you become part of the establishment." Someone I'm glad everything he represents is now accepted. I remember watching Pink Flamingos in the early 2000s when I was discovering cinematography and understanding the industry and it's evolution. It has shock value, but it was deeper than that. When I saw his film, it reminded me a little of Warhol in a way. I'm actually glad the acceptance is so quick, just 13 years ago the United States federal government arrested someone for 'obscenity-related charges' in film production, though admittedly it was considerably more disturbing footage than what John Walters ever produced. * I truly wonder what's the next set of values to go through this process. By definition we can't know what they are and speculation has a terrible history of accuracy, especially if it is what we know as the truth (as defined by the majority, i.e. the establishment) Also wonder if as technology accelerates the rate of social change, so will the typically generational cycle speeds of acceptance of new ideas. * Danilo Croce https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2007/June/07_crm_410.html https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2007/June/07_crm_410....
- paganel 7y ago
  > I truly wonder what's the next set of values to go through this process. One still cannot do a funny movie/work of art about the Holocaust, as far as I can tell that’s one of the most taboo things to work with as an artist. Benigni’s movie was not a 100% comedy and maybe that’s why it eventually worked the way it did, but as far as I know Jerry Lewis’s movie was much more on the comedy side of things. And if the King of Comedy himself cannot pull this off I think nobody else can. I also find it interesting that nobody else seems to be even trying nowadays, it has become too much of a taboo.
  - fortran77 7y ago
    Not true! "The Producers"
    - paganel 7y ago
      Sure, The Producers is a great comedy but it doesn’t take place in the actual camps themselves, that’s what I was trying to suggest that it is now taboo, i.e. that doing almost slap-stick comedy having the Holocaust camps as a background has become culturally out of reach.
simonebrunozzi 7y ago
> Somehow I became respectable. I don’t know how—the last film I directed got some terrible reviews and was rated NC-17. Six people in my personal phone book have been sentenced to life in prison. This is one of the most interesting and intriguing "opening" I've read in a long while.
romaaeterna 7y ago
Didn't this man direct the movie with the child rape mattress and the unfeigned consumption of dog feces? He didn't become respectable. His mental illness became mainstream. I wish I knew how this happened. Maybe the mechanism was a combination of internet porn and the destruction of real life social spaces. Maybe it's something else. But people should perhaps spend some small fraction of the time that they spend freaking out about the weather, and use it to freak out just a little about how we are going to survive the next 50 years as a civilization with a functioning social and political system.
- tomlockwood 7y ago
  Did you know in Rome they didn't really have a rigid conception of heterosexuality? There were really only active, and passive partners in the sexual act. That was the distinction that mattered, and Hadrian was just seen as having "Greek taste". Also romans shat in public prolifically, as seen in the many pieces of graffiti warning people against doing it near shopfronts and people's homes. People shouldn't romanticise what they don't understand :)
  - romaaeterna 7y ago
    Where did that comment come from? Greeks and Romans? Is it because of my username? I'm afraid that it was chosen because it's the name of a popular beginner's Latin textbook, not for misplaced Romanticism. However, I will say that reading the classics in their original Greek and Latin has added a lot of sanity to my life, and I would recommend it to anyone. Your own conception of Greek and Roman sexuality is highly romanticized, and would fall away with a course of general reading. This is not to say that I would hold the ancients forward as examples of "sane" societies. Generally the opposite, in fact. General societal sanity is a post-Enlightenment condition.
    - tomlockwood 7y ago
      > Your own conception of Greek and Roman sexuality is highly romanticized, and would fall away with a course of general reading. What do you think I'm romanticising? Can you mention a specific point? Also I didn't mention the actual aspects of Greek sexuality - just how Romans viewed Greeks. If you want to discuss Greek sexuality I'm happy to. You wanna discuss Phaedrus or The Republic, or the Sacred Band, or something else? Would be lovely to revisit postgrad. Waters is indeed a very sane post-Enlightenment thinker, steeped in and derived from the sanity of the civilisation he is a product of.
CptFribble 7y ago
Acceptance is a function of how deep you're reading from the Big Book Of Things Too Radical To Say In Public. The problem is that too far outside the average conception of normality it becomes difficult to judge if your Radical Thing is net-positive or net-negative for society. Gay rights? Yes. Legal incest? No. Some people can tell the difference. Most can't. And that's why "you can't shock anyone anymore" is exactly as true as it's always been. It's just that radical art 40 years ago and radical art in 2019 look different. Too different for John Waters to tell.
- wayneftw 7y ago
  > Gay rights? Yes. Legal incest? No. Honest question: Why not yes to both? I’m fine with it.
- ebiester 7y ago
  He directed a movie where an actor literally ate feces. Literal shit. That's still not acceptable in 2019 last I checked. Hell, nearly nothing in Pink Flamingos wouldn't be shocking today, though much of it (like rape or animal cruelty) hasn't aged well. But you've seen two girls one cup. You've seen people dress in fursuits and fuck, and been fisted, and sounded, and it may not be attractive to you but it's not shocking. That's what he's talking about. I'm guessing that a minority of people on HN haven't seen video of someone dying in a gruesome manner. Perhaps it was ISIS sawing off someone's head. Perhaps it was someone falling from the twin towers. Perhaps it was somebody murdering a homeless man for fun. It's not shocking. It's despicable, but it's not shocking. Nazism and white supremacy and racism and misogyny isn't shocking - it's dismaying, but it's not shocking. It may be socially acceptable, but it's not shocking. If anything, it's hackneyed. What is this radical art? Maybe 4chan shocked people a decade ago, but goatse/gap3 pranks preceded that, at least in my world.
yazboo 7y ago
I knew John Waters as like a camp figure, I saw Hairspray, heard stuff from his books and speaking engagements, all of which is cool but not particularly challenging to the dominant culture. So I understand the respectability. Then I watched Female Trouble which is a completely insane movie and thought, this person is out of his mind, I can’t believe they’re letting him go on the Today Show and that he’s assimilated into square culture, does anyone know what he’s all about? The question of whether his films would “shock” seems besides the point, they feel totally electric whether or not the culture has supposedly acclimated itself to certain things.

170 points by shange 7y ago

I also don't understand how John Waters came to be seen as respectable, but I suppose it might help some people to hear that a lack of respectability, or even acceptance, is not always permanent. Sometimes it is, but not always.

mieseratte 7y ago
At least among the well-heeled and the culture-class that Waters cites as his markers of acceptance. Should you take his films to a Baptist lock-in you will surely be in trouble. Widespread acceptability of formerly fringe-lifestyles and a rejection of socially-conservative values ranging from widespread availability of high-grade marijuana to drag-queens showing off their twerking capabilities at public libraries. It's in, it signals you're not "part of the system." In a way it reminds me of the path that "shock rock" has taken, from Alice Cooper to Marilyn Manson and beyond. There was a good show on the history, I believe "Metal Evolution," which featured an interview with Till Lindemann of Rammstein who remarked, when asked about what he could do to shock at this point, "Suicide on stage." Which I think is a fair statement from a band famous for simulated sodomy on-stage. Perhaps they should try the real thing for sport.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- cgh 7y ago
  When I was a kid, Metallica was widely seen as completely crazy (this is the Kill 'Em All to Master of Puppets era). "Big kids" who listened to Metallica were vaguely threatening and best avoided. Now even those early thrash monsters are considered to be classic rock. Metallica is eminently respectable. There is some extreme metal that will never be mainstream or widely listened to but that mainly comes down to the amount of work that's required to listen to it (Deathspell Omega) or the purely misanthropic production quality (Darkthrone's Panzerfaust, an album I adore). This sort of music is "shocking" in the sense that most people assume bands make music because they actually want people to listen to it.
  - lb1lf 7y ago
    Totally different genre, but German industrial/art/whatever band Einstürzende Neubauten has a song titled 'Hör mit Schmerzen' (Listen with/in pain) - which, as far as titles go, is pretty descriptive. (I love the Neubauten, by the way - but I will admit to preferring their output from Zeichnungen des Patienten O.T. onwards - where at least fragments of melody can be heard... The debut Kollaps is... Well, challenging.)
joncrane 7y ago
Being respectable means finding a kernel of truth (that isn't necessarily widely known) and working diligently to clear the way for it to come out. Hard work and devotion to a cause is, in itself, respectable. Having the courage to stick with something even when it was unpopular is respectable. Heck even Terry A. Davis, late creator of TempleOS, gets some grudging respect on here.
- tictoc 7y ago
  Wow. Didn't know Terry Davis died. Has anyone used TempleOS? What is it like?

whatshisface 7y ago

If you really want to shock everybody, and become a highly respected artist known for redefining the modern gallery in ten to thirty years, you should probably paint some nice landscapes or portraits.

tombert 7y ago
I think you're a bit too late for that; Bob Ross seems to have made a recent resurgence....I don't think you get any more landscape-ey than that.
- zrobotics 7y ago
  I think that resurgence is more due to "happy little trees" memes from his show than his actual paintings... I don't see his finished paintings I'm memes, just pictures of Ross whilst painting.
cm2187 7y ago
Or a pro-Trump statue. That would reliably get you kicked out of every art gallery.
- Cthulhu_ 7y ago
  Nah, remember that a lot of people voted for him not that long ago.
  - esyir 7y ago
    Yes, but fine arts in guessing does not swing right /center
- croon 7y ago
  Shocking can become respectable in the future. Shockingly stupid can't.
  - whatshisface 7y ago

rinchik 7y ago

Ah he's a classic! The bold moves, the rebellion! He's a symbol of LGBT "revolution". The acceptance of what was previously considered unacceptable. There was only one, unique place in history for his genre and he took it.

gaze 7y ago

A true American hero.

acomjean 7y ago

Compared to our current politics, John Waters is kinda respectable. I saw him at a university auditorium a couple years ago. Entertaining. Plus he was great on the Simpsons. Time seems to take the shock out of things. Maybe its the non-stop access to interesting things on the internet and photos and videos of everything taking the rumor and imagination out of things. GWAR's shows were mythic but now we have a nice wikipedia entry explaining it all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwar.

jedberg 7y ago
It's funny that you mention the Simpsons, which itself used to be so counterculture that you were a bad parent if you let your kid watch it. Now it's so mainstream that they can't find a plot that offends people anymore, not so much because they toned it down, but because society caught up to the Simpsons.
- ticmasta 7y ago
  First that job went to Southpark, then Family Guy. Now we show the most offensive plots of all but call it "reality TV"
  - taneq 7y ago
    > Now we show the most offensive plots of all but call it “the news”
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago
  >they can't find a plot that offends people anymore, I doubt that is true. I bet that it is more like the people they offended could not really do much about that offense other than yell about it which just made the sows writers more popular in Hollywood. Now, if they come up with a plot that offends, they are likely to get de-platformed and lose their ability to find a job in Hollywood.
  - merpnderp 7y ago

lifeisstillgood 7y ago

Radical is merely common sense, thirty years early. I still want to turn Serial Mom into a Netflix series

cgh 7y ago
This is one of those "I want to subscribe to your newsletter" comments.
- lifeisstillgood 7y ago
  I have just been planning on setting up a newsletter - just got the "idea" right. So thank you - a nice comment online at just the right time - you've put a smile on a wrinkly old face :-)

Loughla 7y ago

Honestly, inside me it makes me wonder if we're seeing the cultural movement toward more progressive ideals, or if we're just seeing the cumulative generational shift away from what their parents stood for. Meaning - WWII's "the greatest generation" was a relatively conservative generation, and it's gone more liberal in terms of social movements ever since. Are we going to keep seeing this movement toward liberalism, or are we going to see children rebel against their parents and move toward more traditional and conservative values?

bnjms 7y ago
When we see the move back to conservatism we won’t recognize it as traditional. The things that were feared didn’t change society much so there won’t be a movement to return to old norms.
coldtea 7y ago
>Are we going to keep seeing this movement toward liberalism, or are we going to see children rebel against their parents and move toward more traditional and conservative values? We've already had it, remember Family Ties, the Yuppies, that "hippie" had become a dirty word, the "stick it to the Man" type a caricature, and so on? Those were still within the framework of Baby Boomers though. Now we'll see even more backlash. It's a tide, not a line...
rogerkirkness 7y ago
Gen X / early millenials are the last progressive liberal generation for sure. If you really think about what late millenials, etc. are about, it's both conservative and classical liberal, but not particularly 60s esque.
- 420codebro 7y ago
  (Gatekeeping intensifies.)
pjc50 7y ago
Maybe this is where all the young fascists are coming from. To be genuinely outrageous these days you've got to hurt people, or threaten to.

nessunodoro 7y ago

"Personality disorders are a terrible thing to waste." I need a Waters-only fortune module.

contingencies 7y ago
FWIW added to https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup

lacampbell 7y ago

If it helps, based on the first paragraph I don't think the guy is remotely respectable. Maybe he just started hanging out around people with lower standards?

jfengel 7y ago

Honestly, John, you were responsible for a massive hit Broadway musical, one that's entirely acceptable to the out-of-towners after their visit to Times Square. You didn't "become respectable". You sold out. Getting gross stuff shown in a modern art museum is hardly an accomplishment. Manzoni did his "canned poop" thing in 1961. You're gonna have to try a lot harder than clips from porn movies. Pink Flamingos is still gross. You could do that again, if you wanted. Though these days you're competing for attention from everybody on YouTube. You were an attention whore when it took some real effort to get it distributed. Now everybody can do it. They'll censor Pink Flamingos to put it on TV, but I'd be shocked if there weren't a dozen imitators on YouTube. (No, I'm not going to look.) Congrats, you lowered the bar on bad taste, and I guess that's enough of an accomplishment to make you a commencement speaker. But once people figured out your formula, the bar lowered pretty far pretty fast, and rather than get ahead of it you let 'em make Hairspray.

sprafa 7y ago
Meh. Why so negative? A man makes money after doing some transgressive things in the past that are considered iconic. Sell out? Really?
- pessimizer 7y ago
  Yes, really. You should assume that people mean what they said. He should have sold out, though. He's old and he did a bunch of wonderful things. If he had waited any longer, the cash-out would have passed him by. Should everyone work forever? Attending exhibitions of his work as the guest of honor, giving talks at film festivals, doing lecture/stand-up tours every once and a while for a bit of travel and excitement; that's the life and a well-deserved victory lap. He didn't have to sell out, but it wasn't like he was a activist or something, he was a grotesque Douglas Sirk having a little fun.
- jfengel 7y ago
  I don't mind him making money. I mind the "Oh, poor me, I used to be so outre" tone of his article. I'm glad he got rich. That's cool. Bawlmer kid makes good. But the article feels like flaunting it, without providing either insight or introspection.

bitwize 7y ago

Hipsters, that's what happened. John Waters has become something of a hipster schlock icon, a way for millennials weaned on easily available hardcore porn and rotten.com to connect with a time when things like what John Waters does were actually shocking and transgressive.

rhizome 7y ago
Yeah. Hipsters. Totally non-existent 40 years ago.

sp332 7y ago

Alice Cooper said years ago that he couldn't shock audiences anymore. Shock just seems not to be a thing audiences do now.

acollins1331 7y ago
I'm sure if you bit the head off a bat it would shock a few souls
- saiya-jin 7y ago
  that would be Ozzy... who did it by mistake (thought it was a plastic prop)
mruts 7y ago
Alice Cooper could say he supports immigration controls. Or he could argue that we shouldn't have breastfeeding rooms in airports. I've personally found that people are getting more and more intolerant, and more and more shocked, especially liberals (conservatives have always been shocked and offended). Which is funny, because it's pretty illiberal of liberals to be shocked by people disagreeing with them.
- ticmasta 7y ago
  IMO there's a big difference between shock and intolerance. Shock may usually (but not always) lead to a negative reaction, but intolerance seems more like a default position. To put it another way, shock is someone who jumps when you scare them; intolerance is someone standing with their arms crossed who's already made up their mind.
  - nyolfen 7y ago
    they're just taboos for different sets of values. nothing in a john waters movie ever 'scared' anybody.
- 420codebro 7y ago
  The immigration angle I understand (it does hurt/compete with our working/labor class). The breastfeeding thing has me scratching my head. I've seen plenty of women breastfeeding and it has never bothered me or even caught my attention beyond "oh she is feeding her kid". I suppose some people do get caught up on dumb shit.

4ntonius8lock 7y ago

"First the establishment will ignore you; then they laugh at you; then they crack down on you and then you become part of the establishment." Someone I'm glad everything he represents is now accepted. I remember watching Pink Flamingos in the early 2000s when I was discovering cinematography and understanding the industry and it's evolution. It has shock value, but it was deeper than that. When I saw his film, it reminded me a little of Warhol in a way. I'm actually glad the acceptance is so quick, just 13 years ago the United States federal government arrested someone for 'obscenity-related charges' in film production, though admittedly it was considerably more disturbing footage than what John Walters ever produced. * I truly wonder what's the next set of values to go through this process. By definition we can't know what they are and speculation has a terrible history of accuracy, especially if it is what we know as the truth (as defined by the majority, i.e. the establishment) Also wonder if as technology accelerates the rate of social change, so will the typically generational cycle speeds of acceptance of new ideas. * Danilo Croce https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2007/June/07_crm_410.html https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2007/June/07_crm_410....

paganel 7y ago
> I truly wonder what's the next set of values to go through this process. One still cannot do a funny movie/work of art about the Holocaust, as far as I can tell that’s one of the most taboo things to work with as an artist. Benigni’s movie was not a 100% comedy and maybe that’s why it eventually worked the way it did, but as far as I know Jerry Lewis’s movie was much more on the comedy side of things. And if the King of Comedy himself cannot pull this off I think nobody else can. I also find it interesting that nobody else seems to be even trying nowadays, it has become too much of a taboo.
- fortran77 7y ago
  Not true! "The Producers"
  - paganel 7y ago
    Sure, The Producers is a great comedy but it doesn’t take place in the actual camps themselves, that’s what I was trying to suggest that it is now taboo, i.e. that doing almost slap-stick comedy having the Holocaust camps as a background has become culturally out of reach.

simonebrunozzi 7y ago

> Somehow I became respectable. I don’t know how—the last film I directed got some terrible reviews and was rated NC-17. Six people in my personal phone book have been sentenced to life in prison. This is one of the most interesting and intriguing "opening" I've read in a long while.

romaaeterna 7y ago

Didn't this man direct the movie with the child rape mattress and the unfeigned consumption of dog feces? He didn't become respectable. His mental illness became mainstream. I wish I knew how this happened. Maybe the mechanism was a combination of internet porn and the destruction of real life social spaces. Maybe it's something else. But people should perhaps spend some small fraction of the time that they spend freaking out about the weather, and use it to freak out just a little about how we are going to survive the next 50 years as a civilization with a functioning social and political system.

tomlockwood 7y ago
Did you know in Rome they didn't really have a rigid conception of heterosexuality? There were really only active, and passive partners in the sexual act. That was the distinction that mattered, and Hadrian was just seen as having "Greek taste". Also romans shat in public prolifically, as seen in the many pieces of graffiti warning people against doing it near shopfronts and people's homes. People shouldn't romanticise what they don't understand :)
- romaaeterna 7y ago
  Where did that comment come from? Greeks and Romans? Is it because of my username? I'm afraid that it was chosen because it's the name of a popular beginner's Latin textbook, not for misplaced Romanticism. However, I will say that reading the classics in their original Greek and Latin has added a lot of sanity to my life, and I would recommend it to anyone. Your own conception of Greek and Roman sexuality is highly romanticized, and would fall away with a course of general reading. This is not to say that I would hold the ancients forward as examples of "sane" societies. Generally the opposite, in fact. General societal sanity is a post-Enlightenment condition.
  - tomlockwood 7y ago
    > Your own conception of Greek and Roman sexuality is highly romanticized, and would fall away with a course of general reading. What do you think I'm romanticising? Can you mention a specific point? Also I didn't mention the actual aspects of Greek sexuality - just how Romans viewed Greeks. If you want to discuss Greek sexuality I'm happy to. You wanna discuss Phaedrus or The Republic, or the Sacred Band, or something else? Would be lovely to revisit postgrad. Waters is indeed a very sane post-Enlightenment thinker, steeped in and derived from the sanity of the civilisation he is a product of.

CptFribble 7y ago

Acceptance is a function of how deep you're reading from the Big Book Of Things Too Radical To Say In Public. The problem is that too far outside the average conception of normality it becomes difficult to judge if your Radical Thing is net-positive or net-negative for society. Gay rights? Yes. Legal incest? No. Some people can tell the difference. Most can't. And that's why "you can't shock anyone anymore" is exactly as true as it's always been. It's just that radical art 40 years ago and radical art in 2019 look different. Too different for John Waters to tell.

wayneftw 7y ago
> Gay rights? Yes. Legal incest? No. Honest question: Why not yes to both? I’m fine with it.
ebiester 7y ago
He directed a movie where an actor literally ate feces. Literal shit. That's still not acceptable in 2019 last I checked. Hell, nearly nothing in Pink Flamingos wouldn't be shocking today, though much of it (like rape or animal cruelty) hasn't aged well. But you've seen two girls one cup. You've seen people dress in fursuits and fuck, and been fisted, and sounded, and it may not be attractive to you but it's not shocking. That's what he's talking about. I'm guessing that a minority of people on HN haven't seen video of someone dying in a gruesome manner. Perhaps it was ISIS sawing off someone's head. Perhaps it was someone falling from the twin towers. Perhaps it was somebody murdering a homeless man for fun. It's not shocking. It's despicable, but it's not shocking. Nazism and white supremacy and racism and misogyny isn't shocking - it's dismaying, but it's not shocking. It may be socially acceptable, but it's not shocking. If anything, it's hackneyed. What is this radical art? Maybe 4chan shocked people a decade ago, but goatse/gap3 pranks preceded that, at least in my world.

yazboo 7y ago

I knew John Waters as like a camp figure, I saw Hairspray, heard stuff from his books and speaking engagements, all of which is cool but not particularly challenging to the dominant culture. So I understand the respectability. Then I watched Female Trouble which is a completely insane movie and thought, this person is out of his mind, I can’t believe they’re letting him go on the Today Show and that he’s assimilated into square culture, does anyone know what he’s all about? The question of whether his films would “shock” seems besides the point, they feel totally electric whether or not the culture has supposedly acclimated itself to certain things.