Hairspray tells the story of a “pleasantly plump” young girl named Tracy Turnblad who rebels against the social norm by joining the cast of dancers on her favorite TV show—despite being heavier than the rest of the dancers—and using her celebrity status to advocate integration on television. It is based on the true story of the 1960s television show The Buddy Deane Show and the day it became the first integrated show on television, though the film is actually a parody.The plot is not the only device Waters uses to get his point across; the entirety of this film is a commentary on the issue of segregation/integration. For example, most of the film is presented in color, except for the instances of the characters watching The Corny Collins Show on television; their television sets are black and white, so we see the images as they are broadcast to the television. According to the Curry article “Hairspray: The Revolutionary Way to Restructure and Hold your History,” the sequences shown in color indicate a fantasy world, “a longing perhaps of Waters himself for a redesigned history.” Essentially, the black and white world that we see on television represents the reality; everything we see is restricted (i.e. whatever the camera in the TV studio is pointed at, that’s what we’re forced to look at), and everything is seen in terms of black and white. The irony comes in when the television is showing Tracy; she is the metaphorical shade of grey and the reason that the people in her world begin viewing the world differently.
Another device Waters employs in Hairspray is the metamorphosis of hairstyles. At the beginning of the film, Tracy sports a hairstyle “in imitation of Jackie Kennedy.” Once she becomes an icon for political and social change, she teases her hair higher and colors it half blonde, half brunette—blatant symbolism in support of integration, especially when her hair color appears black and white on television. At the end of the film, after she is told that she can’t cause change by using her hairstyle, she irons it out into the signature “black” look Waters uses in the film. Curry points out that in addition to the racial symbolism, Waters uses the changing of hairstyles to indicate “the passing away of time and the passing away of issues.”
One other element Waters uses is dance styles. On The Corny Collins Show, the white kids do “white dances,” dances that have very controlled, specific steps that the kids must memorize and practice, as is evident in the scene between beauty queen Amber and her overbearing mother; Velma forces Amber to rehearse her dances while they are having a conversation, and she tells Amber that if she doesn’t practice, she won’t get more close-ups on the show, and they send her to Catholic school. The “black dances” are looser, more relaxed, and allow more freedom of movement, which in turn allows more freedom of expression. The African American dancers dance because they love it; the dancers on The Corny Collins show dance to be famous, to be popular, and to please their parents.
John Waters has very specific tastes when it comes to making his films. Most of his films garner an NC-17 rating, though this does not bother Waters; in an interview with Greg Varner, he says, “People don’t even know what NC-17 means!...There isn’t anything the matter with NC-17.” (He does go on to voice his displeasure with the phrases “slapped with” and “branded with” in reference to getting an NC-17 rating, instead of simply saying “rated with.”) However, Hairspray earned a PG rating, making it his tamest, most family-friendly film. I personally am very impressed by this fact; it shows that Waters is more concerned with the message of his films than with attempting to bate the MPAA by packing his films with things the ratings board will see as inappropriate. It shows that the content of his other films actually means something to him, even if it is questionable and even if it means nothing to everyone else. He is also very aware that his films are satirical. Pauline Kael says in the article “The Current Cinema: God’s Pickpockets” that “the movie makes no claim to realism -- or to absurdism either.” Waters is aware that he is not telling a completely factual story (the film is based on the true story of The Buddy Deane Show, which was canceled after it aired black and white dancers integrated on the air), or even a completely realistic story. Waters said in an interview with Dennis Cooper that his films “are about real people who would never win in real life. They always win in my movies.” Hairspray tells the humorous and entertaining story of “How History Should Have Played Out: Life According to John Waters.”
New Terminology:
Coprophagous: [coprophagia] the eating of feces or dung
Zaftig: (of a woman) having a full, rounded figure; plump
Bouffant: (of a person’s hair) styled so as to puff out in a rounded shape
Miscegenated: [miscegenation] the interbreeding of people considered to be of different racial types
Dadaism: [Dada] an early 20th-century international movement in art, literature, music, and film, repudiating and mocking artistic and social conventions and emphasizing the illogical and absurd
Portends: be a signal of
Erudite: having or showing great knowledge or learning
Tchotchke: a small object that is decorative rather than strictly functional; a trinket
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