Thoughts on: Pink Flamingos (1972)

 the repressed queer underground manifests itself as an supreme depraved lunacy.

Filth is their politics, filth is their life;
Divine is abhorrent, taboo, deviant..
yet never outwardly malicious, the terrible acts committed are reactionary rather than from a desire to provoke.

Waters queercodes the idea of filth and depravity and posits Divine as the patron saint of degeneracy, a figure representative of an extreme that must exist in order to usher in the new age of queer liberation against the binary norm.

Conversely, the Marbles act as a commentary of those that seek to emulate these attitudes and lifestyles. The acts of cruelty that they commit are but borne of a pallid imitation, they are able to retreat from true filth and back into their white walled mansions as they please, treating the image of queerness as a suit that can be put on and taken off as and when they choose to, all to disguise a crueler, more malicious intent. (This bastardized version of queerness does only harm towards those that are actually queer, as seen in Channing's narrative arc)

In the eyes of people back then, to be queer was to be filth. Waters' film is a response: To be filth is to be Divine.

Mr. Vader: Do you believe in God?
Divine: I *am* God!
Cotton: [to Crackers] You are God!
Crackers: [to Cotton] You are God.

all that being said, I cannot condone the very real acts of animal cruelty within the film, completely sickening and vile. Pink Flamingos works (in my opinion) because Divine and her associates are caricatures of the taboo extremes, entirely fictional in nature. In the scenes referenced, they are committing real acts of cruelty at another living creature's expense, and detracts in some part from what I thought was the main message of the film.

Originally posted on Letterboxd on 5th July 2024