illusionofjoy | A Dirty Shame; we are not clean people

There is something about seeing a movie on it's opening night or buying an album or DVD as soon as it comes out in stores. Thee's that rush of, "I was there when it first happened," despite the fact that movies and music tend not to be world-changing events. That said, when you're a media freak such as myself, they can feel like world-changing events. Furthermore, there's nothing quite like having the bragging rights of being able to tell people whether or not a new contribution to the world of popular or artistic culture is worth their time.

Sadly, I don't have such bragging rights - not as much I could have. Last night, joi_division and I went out to The Oaks to catch the new John Waters flick, A Dirty Shame. My bragging rights to being "the first" were usurped by a review in City Paper and, unexpectedly, a review in the Post-Gazette. So, will this stop me from writing a review? Of course not! Let's go sexing...

The Pope of Puke has once again proven himself to be a delightfully sick fuck. The plotline revolves around Sylvia Stickles (Tracy Ullman), as a repressed suburban mother whose morning routine revolves around warding off her amorous husband's (Chris Isaak) advances and tending to enormaboobied stripper daughter (Selma Blair), who is under house arrest for acts of indecent exposure. This lasts for about ten minutes before John Water's decides that the time has come to whack Sylvia over the head in a freak accident and turn her world upside-down. Enter Ray-Ray Perkins (Johnny Knoxville, of "Jackass" infamy), a tow trucker driver and "sexual healer" who witnesses the accident and rushes to the aid of poor, concussed Sylvia, revealing to her that she is now a sex addict. Soon our female protagonist finds herself in a world full of fetishes, racing libidos and low inhibitions. In the meantime, her mother (Suzanne Shepherd) is on the "decency warpath" (a theme played in many of John Waters' films), with a mission to make the world safe for neuters and be rid of the perverts who have taken over the neighbourhood.

Waters has made a genuinely funny film that once again, skewers social boundaries and leaves one to ask the question, "just where is the line?" One one scene from the film, as Ray-Ray is showing selma about his garage, a refuge for the concusively perverted, he states, "there's someone for everyone here; an example of every perversion." No greater truth is spoken as A Dirty Shame has taken fetishes straight from the pages of Devient Desires. In the mix are adult babies, dirt-eaters, sloshies, bears - the whole nine, long, hard yards. In particular, I give Waters kudos for putting a chubby woman completely nude on screen for more than enough time for your's truly to get a good optical thrice-over. In that vien, jeers to the Post-Gazette, who are quoted in their review as saying, "...a couple of people...are shown naked. The shame of it is, they definitely should have kept their clothes on." Then again, the Post-Gazette has writers who seem to be rabid weight-loss surgery fans, so this negative view of a voluptuous female form (who was actually quite attractive) is not entirely unexpected.

In fact, Waters pretty much shows all of the perverts in this film in a fairly positive light, reveling in the humour of the situation. These are people who just want to be free to do what they please in their own bedrooms (or cars) and mean no harm. They just want to party, so to speak. That the sexual revolution spills out into the streets toward the end of the film is not so much a consequence of perversion but of repression.

This is an NC-17 rated film, proving that the MPAA still stands in the repressed circle with the FCC. Even with the constant sex talk, the nudity in this film is pretty low, considering. The content of this film would be more consistent with that of an R rating, in my opion. However, I think that the MPAA gives special "liberal points" to films, which is probably why Fahrenheit 9/11 was rated R instead of PG-13. Overall, this is a film worth seeing. It may even be a film you'd want to bring a date to - though not a first date. The dirty shame is that there are plenty of people out there who would rather be offended than laugh at this jolly circus of ridiculous and funny perverts.