A Dirty Shame (John Waters, 2004)

John Waters is one of the chief Oedipal fathers I have to kill. And with A Dirty Shame, he's finally given me guilt-free motivation. You'd think such a voracious reader as Waters would have come across the first volume of The History of Sexuality to discover Foucault's theory of the "implantation of perversions," the notion that the obsessive cataloging of sexualities consolidates power over them. With his storytelling abilities at the lowest they'd been since Mondo Trasho 35 years prior, Waters transforms A Dirty Shame into a perversion implantation machine as he notes every kink and taboo exhibited by Sylvia Stickles' (Tracey Ullman) Baltimore neighbors. And this is no abstract threat. The implantation of perversions encompasses practices ranging from moral censure to punishment and death. You can certainly glean the former from the director's commentary in which Waters confesses that infantilism goes too far for him. And the gleeful cataloging doesn't even ensure the vanguard spirit that made Waters famous. How is it possible that our Filth Elder has never heard of feltching?  It all makes for an oppressive, profoundly conservative film. Even worse, it forces you to reassess the liberating power of his previous work, most immediately the Cavalcade of Perversions from Multiple Maniacs (1970).

Grade: D