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
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