Petrified_explosion,
What you said is really interesting. And I think another point to be made about this movie is that it's a sort of "relief from the real world." I'm a very sensitive person, too. For example, I found Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters excruciating to watch because of all the pain and betrayal that I remember in it. But here's what I said about Female Trouble on the "You people need to wake up!" thread. I think it's worth throwing out for discussion here.
"...Female Trouble is the funniest movie ever made, as far as I'm concerned. There's nothing else to equal it. And part of the reason I think it's so funny is that it's a sort of relief from the real world. It's not about the real world in my opinion. It makes fun of it in some ways, including some things we normally think of as sacrosanct, like compassion [the scene where everyone's oohing and ahhing at Dawn's face in the hospital]. As I said when I advertised a screening of it once, "It's an attack on everything decent in the world." But I don't think the story is actually about the real world, because it has some contradictions that are unresolvable. In particular, do the Dashers really believe Dawn is beautiful or not? One scene suggests yes, and another suggests no. And then of course there's that hilarious scene where Taffy is upset that Ida doesn't appreciate the hook she got for her. You can't just go down to the corner drugstore and buy a hook for someone.
"I agree with the person on this thread who said movies are diverse and no one can judge all of them. I believe Roger Ebert more or less said this one was trash, and he completely misunderstood it. I think he said the acting was bad. But what do you need good acting for? To depict the real world. In this film, the acting is bad when it needs to be (the girl who rats on Dawn in the school scene) and good when it needs to be (all of Divine's and David Lochary's performances). And while it's true, I assume, that Edith Massey couldn't play Shakespearean roles, she doesn't need to. In every movie I've seen her in, she played one role: Edith Massey! And that was perfect for this film.
Just so you can see that my sensitivity does set some limits to watching Waters films, this is what I said just before those two paragraphs:
"One thing I will say is that people may misjudge Female Trouble if they see it with Pink Flamingos. Pink Flamingos really is unwatchable for me. I've seen it once and would never want to again. According to one article I read, even John Waters says he'd like to remove a scene from it "for Divine's dignity" if he could, the scene where she performs oral sex on her son. While I suppose it does deserve credit for making Waters famous, I think it's a pretty mean and nasty film."
And actually, one article I read even quoted Waters as saying, "I must have been in a real bad mood when I made Pink Flamingos."
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