Citizens Against Decency
The above is a fabulous clip of John Waters telling theatergoers not to smoke during the movie. I have a deep, unshakable love of John Waters. This is in part because in high school, a time when many people turn to musical subgenres whose practitioners have become critical successes and get called “seminal” all the time, I turned to cult film. I didn’t hear Bikini Kill until I was 19 or so, and I was a lot less angsty by then. Instead, I spent my full-throttle emo years watching Hairspray and Serial Mom over and over. Since my parents let me watch more or less anything I wanted on the cable for most of my childhood, I grew up on a steady diet of late-night horror films, MTV, and Saturday morning cartoons. I was ready-made for Waters fandom — I was numb to violence and enamored of vivid colors.
This being that hallowed reprieve known as spring break, I spent the last several days binging on videos. I watched Hairspray, Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, and A Dirty Shame.
I also, somewhat appropriately, watched This Film is Not Yet Rated, an investigation of the MPAA board, which I highly recommend to anyone with an interest in art, film, free speech, popular culture or the media. It’s a very important documentary. The director makes a point of talking about how the MPAA says that keeping its employees’ identities secret will protect them from influence, while at the same time exposing them to a lot of industry heavies and bending, at an organizational level, to pressure from various interest groups. This got me to thinking about interest groups, and how I think there should be an articulate, intelligent, conservative-looking interest group dedicated to trash and smut.