Hairspray (1988)

Saw the 1988 version of Hairspray.  It follows an ebullient, fat girl who auditions for a teen dance show.  It's like soul train, but with white teens.  She is sneered at and insulted for being so fat and self-indulgent, but her winning personality wins the day in the end.  There's also a lot of business with race relations.

The film came out in the 80s but is set in the 60s and tackles racial integration.  I feel that by the 80s this was a pretty tame target to talk about however so it's not exactly a progressive movie (although I don't really know history that well - maybe it was still a raw subject.)

I was kind of thrown by the main character girl reigning supreme in a cockroach-patterned dress.  I feel the film is also mocking her in the end, sarcastically praising her, mean-girl-style.  John Waters has an obsession with kitsch and bad taste, but he's more into subversion than deconstruction.  He's not trying to normalize or include marginalized folks.  He likes to shock and therefore needs something to be other and to be shocking. He's preserving the hierarchy, just flipping it upside down to provoke.  He can't showcase his beloved bad taste without admitting that it's bad, you know?

Anyway, the film is fairly fun to watch.  We get to see Glenn Milstead (Divine) playing a man for once, although his voice still stays in falsetto (perhaps it's stuck like that?)  The rags to riches formula is uplifting to watch, and we get to congratulate ourselves for approving of integration.  It's a fun watch.