Trash Comes Home
Trash Comes Home
Gender/Genre Subversion in the Films of John Waters
This chapter demonstrates the structural link between gender and genre in John Waters' work by examining three of the director's films: Pink Flamingos (1972), representing his early career; Polyester (1981), which marks his transition to Hollywood; and Serial Mom (1994), a movie from what has been called Waters' “safe and formulaic” period. Despite their stylistic and thematic differences, these three movies each expose the inconsistencies inherent in gendered and generic representation. The theory of disidentification offers an explanatory link between the director's resistance to the rules of both gender and genre. Disidentification is defined as a response to the failure of dominant forms of representation to include unconventional perspective.
Keywords: John Waters, gender, genre, Polyester, Pink Flamingos, Serial Mom, disidentification
Illinois Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.