Fair Spray

I was very reluctant to accept John Waters as a director because I'm not certain I jive with his films. Indeed, Hairspray does have this campiness to it that makes it easy to reject. However, I found John Waters to be one of the more fascinating filmmakers to read about. He appears to be a very honorable, thoughtful man, which wins him my respect. Be that as it may, I will admit that my immediate prejudice against him took a while to tread through. The more I read about him, the more horrified I became. I was beginning to realize he reminded me a lot of myself, and this seemed difficult to come to terms with.

Nevertheless, because the intent of this blog is to focus on how Hairspray impacted society, I must evade my digression on John Waters.

The bare essentials of Hairspray revolve around a 1960s teen, Tracy Turnblad, and her best friend Penny Pingleton who fulfill their dream to be on the Corny Collins Show. Despite being chastised for her plump figure and weighing in on newfound trends, Tracy wades through her racist culture and befriends blacks in her high school special education course. With her growing fame and increasing passion, Tacey battles for racial integration on the Corny Collins Show.

The story plays out as one might expect, which was why it came as no surprise to learn that it did not do well in the box office. In fact, it was much more successful as a Broadway musical, only to be remade into a movie in 2007.

Waters based the Corny Collins show off the Baltimore native Buddy Dean Show. When interviewed, Buddy claimed:


“The kids said they didn't care if we let black
youngsters on the show. Hell, they were going to school
together. But they said their parents didn't want it.”

This seems to be prevalent problem: people trying to control others. Is it not the duty of a parent to guide, not govern their child? There appears to be a pattern surfacing in almost any major issue that involves things turning rotten when someone places unnecessary authority over another. Thankfully, Tracey Turnblad had enough confidence and rationale to realize that unequal treatment regarding race was unjust. My only thought is that we should encourage others to be free thinkers, not people pleasers.

Words of Interest:

Jettisoned - throw or drop from an aircraft or ship

Vaudeville - a type of entertainment popular chiefly in the U.S. in the early 20th century, featuring a mixture of specialty acts such as burlesque comedy and song and dance.

Coprophagous – eating of feces or dung