MovieChat Forums > Female Trouble (1976) Discussion > So wholesome

So wholesome

posted 19 years ago by tgemberl
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This afternoon I was watching a rerun of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood on PBS and thinking about watching some of Female Trouble, and it occurred to me that both shows were very wholesome, at least for me, and that I should post an explanation of why I think they are. Of course the two shows are a lot different, but here's my explanation of why they're both so good and wholesome.

Mr. Rogers is wholesome because of the support he gives to children. I remember hearing an interview of his widow, who talked about how after his death, she'd heard from a woman who said he probably saved her life when she was a child. She was abused, but every day she'd watch Mr. Rogers on TV, and he'd tell her she was good. That enabled her to move on and not become a hater, drug addict, and such like. So one way to put that is to say that this show enabled children to deal with traumas they had experienced or might be in danger of experiencing. Mr. Rogers was a real friend to children whom he never met because of the gentle way he talked about life and the various things children would see and deal with.

For me, Female Trouble's wholesomeness is different. I say "for me," because I don't know if it's necessarily wholesome for everybody. Not everybody can profit from every movie. Movies are too diverse for that. But I think it's wholesome for me in a way that's quite different from Mr. Rogers. Of course I'm an adult, and this is a thing that's specifically for adults, as I understand it. We have experienced a lot of pain in our lives by the time we reach adulthood, and Female Trouble provides a sort of relief from it. Maybe especially if we aren't the "winners" in the world. Not the people who got the girls, were the football stars in high school, and such like. Maybe because on some level, a person who hasn't been a "winner" identifies with Dawn. She's definitely a loser who thinks of herself as a winner, and we can laugh at that, but it also means laughing at the "shams" of the world at the same time. At the same time we laugh at her delusions, we laugh at the ridiculousness of anyone trying to get famous.

I do think Dawn is the "hero" of the movie in a odd way, because at least she's always true to her ideals. She always tells the truth, however twisted it may be. And actually, I find the scene in the prison strangely dramatic and sad. Especially at the beginning. You expect it to be silly like most of the rest of the film, but I think Waters wanted to project a real sense of pathos there. It's not just funny. It's true that the scene where Dawn gives her speech on the electric chair is funny, but the one where she's in the cell with the other two inmates has a strangely dramatic quality to it, even while Dawn acts silly. It brings me to tears sometimes.

Another reason the movie is a relief from the pain of the real world is that while lots of awful things happen in it, they're so exaggerated, so "over the top," that they don't seem real. When Dawn strangles Taffy you can laugh at it, because it doesn't seem real. The very idea that she'd be upset because Taffy joined the Hare Krishnas doesn't make a lot of sense, like a number of other things in the film. So the violence in the movie doesn't "desensitize" you to real violence, because it doesn't seem real.

So to summarize my point, Mr. Rogers is wholesome for people who are just beginning to deal with the world, and Female Trouble is wholesome for us adults who have lived in it and need relief from its pain. Now, in saying these things, I'm not implying that Waters was trying to make an "edifying" film when he made Female Trouble. He was trying to make one that is fun. Fortunately, what was fun for him and the actors is also a lot of fun for us, and "wholesome" in the way I explained.

Tomorrow I'll post some comments from a writer on Female Trouble who made some other good points.

"Extremism in the pursuit of moderation is no vice."

[–] tgemberl 19 years ago

Here's that review I promised some time ago. It is by Guy Mariner Tucker and appeared in Cult movies no. 30 (1999). This is an excerpt from his description of Female Trouble. I should make it clear that he doesn't necessarily agree with what I said above. In fact, I'm pretty sure he'd disagree pretty strongly. But there's a lot I like about this review.

"For the most part, John Waters' movies can play to all kinds of people, from college students to convicts and even children--Waters wrote about playing Multiple Maniacs for a friend's daughter's birthday party. I think this is because most of the films have humor, and real warmth underneath all the oddity and freakish sex and violence. In fact, the very overplayed nature of the sex and violence probably helps to make it less than threatening to all but the very most uptight. Waters himself has a good insight: "If you don't love your own material, it always shows--and the audience never likes it." Whatever he thinks of his movies in retrospect, they all embody whatever his obsessions were at the time. They have remained extremely consistent.

"Waters' characters, no matter how adult their concerns, really behave as children in a lot of ways--bratty, selfish ones who can't see beyond their own desires. We can watch these characters and laugh at their excesses because although we recognize what they want--it's not much different from how we want things--they go about it in such outlandish ways. Most comedy is like that, of course; it's just that Waters' humor was so unlike anything seen before in American film. Pink Flamingos having got him noticed, Waters had less trouble raising the money he needed for another film, and proceeded to follow it with his first real masterpiece, Female Trouble ..."

[–] tgemberl 19 years ago

I thought it might be worthwhile also to post a bit of his review of Pink Flamingos. Like me, he doesn't like the movie. This is from the immediately previous page of Cult movies.

"John Waters' most famous film, most notorious and most grisly, all in one. The popularity of his other most famous film, Hairspray, has hilariously sent many unwitting customers in the direction of this one. He set out to really make a name for himself, by any means possible--which included, legendarily, Divine eating fresh dog sh*t off the street. But in so doing, he also made his coldest film--after Mondo Trasho, his most forbidding and inaccessible.

"Pink Flamingos is noticeably devoid of the textures that characterize most of Waters' previous and subsequent movies. There is virtually no character development of any kind; all the action takes place in a series of actions and reactions between Divine's family ("the filthiest people alive") and the Marbles, who covet the same title. There's almost no nuance, just a series of increasingly filthier, meaner exchanges.

"Some of these are present in the dialogue, which is less interesting than in most of Waters' other pictures. Most of it doesn't make me laugh ...

"There is the "singing a*hole" sequence, which speaks for itself (although Waters insists it is a celebratory, party-type moment, which I guess in context it is); a shot of an actual turkey baster going into an actual woman's vagina (this is a forced insemination sequence); and finally, the one moment that Waters himself wishes he could cut today: Divine (a man in drag, remember) going down on her only son Crackers (Danny Mills, who doesn't seem to be into it at all). Waters recalled that this was supposed to be partly a joke on the famed release of Deep Throat, but that the joke doesn't hold up today, and that he wishes he could remove it 'for Divine's dignity' ...

"It remained to be seen if Waters could top himself. In terms of determined filthiness, no, he never has. But his next two pictures, in particular, would represent giant leaps forward in story and style. To my mind, at least, he has repeatedly proven himself to be better than the callous shockmeister who made Pink Flamingos. He began his rehabilitation with his very next film" [Female Trouble].