Always a strong defender of those on the fringes of society, John Waters is making the case that no matter who’s in control of the government, they’ll have a pretty difficult time putting the genie back in the bottle when it comes to drag. Waters’ career in cinema was largely made with the support of this community, with one of his frequent collaborators being the famous drag queen Divine. Though President Donald Trump and his administration have not been friends to this small population, in a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, Waters shared that very little can be done to vanish them completely.
“He’ll never get rid of drag,” Waters said. “That’s impossible. RuPaul made it acceptable to middle America.”
To some degree, Waters is downplaying his own involvement in putting drag front and center within our culture. Even in a film like “Hairspray,” which is far less coarse than earlier works “Pink Flamingos” and “Female Trouble,” drag and, by extension, trans identity is snuck in as to be impenetrable to judgement or criticism.
“In the plot, Tracy Turnblad does not think her mother is trans,” said Waters said of Ricki Lake’s young female protagonist, whose mother, Edna Turnblad, is portrayed by Divine. “It’s a secret between the audience and the actors, and they don’t know how to attack that.”
Waters has always felt that if you lead with comedy, even in the form of just jarring audiences, you’re bound to not only grab them, but alter their perception.
“Humor is always the way to win a war,” he said, “to terrorize people, to make them laugh, to change their mind, to scare them and to be friendly.”
At the same time, much has changed since Waters first broke out in the 1970s and ’80s. Even he recognizes that despite his sensibilities, his name now comes with a touch of esteem. This is perhaps the reason he’s choosing to use his voice in opposition of Trump, even though he finds this stature somewhat detestable in and of itself.
“Now I’m so respectable, I could puke,” Waters told the LA Times. “I remember when I was condemned by the Catholic Church — how happy that made me. And when I based whole ad campaigns on terrible reviews.”
