Johnny Knoxville and Tracey Ullman in A Dirty Shame
Photo © Copyright Fine Line Features
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"Let's Go Sexin'!"
+ an interview with director, John Waters
+ another review by Cynthia Fuchs
Not since 1981's Polyester has a new film by John Waters garnered an adult restricted rating from the MPAA. Following a series of "mainstream" films over the past two decades, many fans will undoubtedly hail A Dirty Shame's NC-17 rating as a return to Waters' trashy, confrontational, and vulgar roots. The film is, Waters claims, his first "sex comedy," though fetishes and sex radicalism have been an integral part of all of his work, as has comedy. Even the most "benign" of his works, Hairspray (1988), made us face the sexual "taboo' of interracial romance in the 1950s (and the 1980s, when the film was released).
What may be most shocking about A Dirty Shame is that it received the dreaded NC-17 rating. Other than some brief full frontal male and female nudity, there is very little that is visually graphic about the film. Most of what we see is tame by Fox or WB standards -- lots of what might be termed foreplay, with the sexual deal sealed off screen. The bulk of A Dirty Shame's vulgarity is verbal: it includes detailed and often-crass explications of sexual desires and practices, hardly warranting the adult restriction.
As Waters points out in an interview with PopMatters, though, in a different time or different America (with a different administration), the film would have been rated R. Even though filming was finished in Fall 2003, it's difficult while watching A Dirty Shame not to read it in the context of (and perhaps as Waters' response to) "wardrobe malfunctions," Howard Stern, and the FCC crackdowns of the past nine months. Perhaps Waters was ahead of the curve, and A Dirty Shame identifies the apotheosis of (and return to) sexual conservatism in the U.S. In this case, the film is a manifesto of sorts for a (new) sexual revolution.
A Dirty Shame follows the chain of events that befall "neuter" housewife Sylvia Stickles (Tracey Ullman) and her working-class Baltimore family after she suffers a concussion during a car accident. Earlier, we see Sylvia's morning routine: rebuffing her horny husband Vaughn's (Chris Isaak) advances, cooking scrapple for daughter Caprice (Selma Blair). Our introduction to Caprice hints at what's to come: she is a "performer" who has adopted the stage name Ursula Udders (a nod to Russ Meyer regular Chesty Morgan) and is now under house arrest for exposing too much of her enormously enlarged breasts.
It is on her way to work at the family business, the Parkway Pick and Pay, that Sylvia is involved in that car accident. She knocks her head but good and comes to horny as hell. This forms the film's scientific impetus, as there are documented cases of head traumas resulting in extremely heightened sexual arousal. Sylvia is rescued by Ray Ray (Johnny Knoxville), a passing "mechanic," who nurses her back to health by giving her mind-blowing head right there in the car in the middle of the street.
As he leaves her, Ray Ray hands Sylvia a card with the location of his "body shop" and tells her to meet him there, where she will meet other sex radicals just like her. Ray Ray is the leader of a group of sex cultists (slogan: "Let's go sexin'!") who are searching for one totally new sex act that will revolutionize sex for the world. He believes Sylvia to be The One to discover it. The sex cult is Waters' opportunity to introduce us to this film's roster of sexual "perversions." We meet sploshers (people erotically fixated on food covering their bodies), adult babies, bears, and dirt fetishists (among others).
Outraged by the increasing presence of "perverts" in their "respectable" Harford Road community, Sylvia's mother Big Ethel (Suzanne Shepherd) and neighbor Marge (Mink Stole) have organized the "Neuter" movement. The neuters want to "take back the streets" and reestablish the community on the basis of sexual "normality." Foils for the sex radicals, the neuters also reference "real world" movements ("Pure Love," the Promise Keepers, religious orthodoxies of all sorts), embodying Waters' notion that sexual conservatism is motivated by hatred of the body.
All of this is leading to the inevitable confrontation between the cultists and neuters for control of the community. Waters is, for all his many talents, a rather direct director. Who wins? Well, it's hardly giving anything away to say that the sex radicals do; this is a Waters film after all. But the real questions of A Dirty Shame are: Is Sylvia The One? Will she discover an entirely new sex act? And what could Waters possibly dream up that would constitute one? You'll have check it out for the answers to those questions.
The "message" of A Dirty Shame is a rather obvious one, especially after decades of feminism, the sexual revolution, glbt politicking and AIDS activism: if it's safe, consensual and doesn't hurt anyone (outside of the practice and/or who doesn't consent to it within), what's it to you? It's a message that bears repeating, especially in a United States where federally funded "sex education" has been linked to "abstinence only" programs, and governmental institutions like the FCC directly mandate the standards of "decency" by which we should all conduct our lives. Indeed, the rallying cry of a new social revolution ought to be, "Let's go sexin'!"
— 23 September 2004
