Post-Queer Desires: A Contemporary Queer Discourse in Pink Flamingos

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Post-Queer Desires:

A Contemporary Queer Discourse in Pink Flamingos

MA Thesis

Media Studies: Film Studies

Department of Humanities

Author: Sidney Adelaar Supervisor: Abe Geil

June 26, 2017 Word count: 13566

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Introduction

Queer cinema is a fairly recent category in cinema history. Starting around 30 years ago, during the same time in the 1980’s that queer theory became a

prominent academic discipline, queer cinema seems to encompass all films that deal with gay and lesbian themes, or ‘LGBT’ to use a recent term. As these themes focus mainly on the sexuality of the characters and their struggles in a ‘straight’ world because of it, there appears to be a major centring around desires, be it sexual or something else. If a desire is not desirable in heteronormative society, ‘queer’ is the right word for it. This thesis’ main focus is this notion of queer desires. By focusing on this aspect of the queer, I will show just how these desires can shape queer cinema and provide a unique framework for the analysis of the modern queer film.

Before I can get further into the material that will be used throughout the thesis however, a clear definition of ‘queer’ needs to be provided. Not just to understand the category of queer cinema, but also to be able to get a good grip on the desires that will be identified. Following Aaron’s introduction to her New Queer Cinema: A Critical Reader (2004), the most basic function of queer can be posed as: “an umbrella term or catch-all for uniting various forms of non-straight sexual identity” (5). However, queer is not just this umbrella ‘dictionary’ term, as it also encompasses all forms of resistance to norms of gender and sexuality,

extending in turn towards the “non-fixity of gender expression and the non-fixity of both straight and gay sexuality”. In addition, further extending the term, ‘queer’ can be used to describe something that is non-conformative, a theoretical oppositional stance, taking a position that is not associated with gender and sexuality any more. For example in Blue, the refusal of a clear visual image can be seen as queer in the realm of cinema, refusing to conform to the regular cinematic conventions.

Queer was used as a derogatory term before being appropriated by activists in the 1980’s. This way it “represented a re-appropriation of the power of the antagonistic, homophobic society, through reclaiming the term of abuse but also through a new approach to ‘gay’ politics: a taking on of the institution, rather

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than a fearful, assimilated, complicity” (6). After this appropriation it provided an attractive self-label for oppositional politics, as it acknowledges these marginalized groups who in turn came to identify themselves as ‘queer’. So what we have here is a term which is elusive, without a clear definition, but what is clear is the fact that it is overall oppositional and non-conformative to the dominant structures in

society, be that heteronormativity or simply formal conventions. As this thesis is

mostly about queer desires, I am able to define them as non-comformative desires; desires that do not fit in the dominant heteronormative structured society.

In the early 1990’s a wave of queer films took over the festival circuit, films directed by queer film makers with queer themes, including Todd Haynes’ Poison (1991), Derek Jarman’s Blue (1993), and Jennie Livingston’s Paris Is Burning (1990). B. Ruby Rich was the one journalist who noticed a shared attitude and dubbed it New Queer Cinema. New Queer Cinema, as described by Rich in her famous 1992 Screen article (reprint: Aaron, 2004), is not so much a wave, more a movement. Rich describes this as a trend in the film festival circuit of Sundance, Toronto and Amsterdam in 1991 and 1992 and identifies it by a certain attitude that the films possess, rather than categorizing them by a particular aesthetic: she dubs this attitude or style as “‘Homo Pomo’: there are traces in all of them of appropriation and pastiche, irony, as well as a reworking of history with social constructionism very much in mind” (16). Still, Rich is very vague and indecisive whatever this

‘Homo Pomo’ exactly entails. We need to keep in mind that she had written this as a journalist, not as an academic, so naturally there is no precise analysis going on here. The article was nevertheless picked up by other, actual academics, and they in turn tried to be bring a form of definition into the New Queer Cinema frame. Michelle Aaron provides in her critical reader among an introduction and the

original reprinted article by Rich, several other essays by a number of these scholars who each add their own thoughts and more precise definitions to the New Queer Cinema spectrum.

A part that most academics can agree upon is the involvement of the 1980’s AIDS crisis in the dawn of New Queer Cinema. The degree of involvement and influence differs however. Where Arroyo (1993) asserts that AIDS gave rise to an epistemic shift in gay culture and caused the trend, Pearl argues that “New

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Queer Cinema is AIDS cinema: not only because the films, as I will argue, emerge out of the time of and the preoccupations with AIDS, but because their narratives and also their formal discontinuities and disruptions, are AIDS-related” (23). As an example of AIDS creating the formal incoherences and disturbances she turns among other films to Blue (Derek Jarman, 1993), which disrupts visual and narrative expectations of the audience by refusing to show a conventional narrative on screen. There is no variation in the image, as all one will see is a blue screen. Going blind from an AIDS-related infection, cytomegalovirus, Jarman turned the image into AIDS itself to let the audience experience the virus in a direct matter, by taking away sight. Blue is not just a film about AIDS, it is AIDS. Pearl’s argument that AIDS is the embodiment of NQC is perhaps too absolute or deterministic to justify, but we can agree that the AIDS crisis was the spark that ignited the trend. I will come back later to this aspect in the introduction.

As stated, the definition of queer is arbitrary. After all, the nature of the word itself is that it has no true meaning. What is queer and what is not queer is thus a very prominent question in the academic work about queer cinema. Nick Davis takes this to a next level in the sense that he takes a classical cinema philosopher, ‘queers’ his theories, and in turn adds films that are not typically seen as queer films to the New Queer Cinema wave. In his book The Desiring-Image: Gilles Deleuze

and Contemporary Queer Cinema (2013) he extends the two cinema images as

theorized by Deleuze with the next phase in cinema history, more specifically queer cinema history: the desiring-image. A combination of the

Deleuzo/Guattarian concept of the desiring-machine and the two cinema books,

Cinema 1: The Movement-Image (1986) and Cinema 2: The Time-Image (1989),

Davis recognises a new aesthetic in the New Queer Cinema movement and Homo-Pomo style and uses this classical theorist’s work in tandem with queer theory to construct “new frameworks for understanding what is “queer” about recent queer cinema, including films rarely classified this way” (3). And indeed, a major part of his book are films by David Cronenberg, a film maker who’s films are rarely seen as queer. Davis sees queer desire in his films Dead Ringers (1988) and

Naked Lunch (1991), and posits them in the same category of queer cinema as

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In any case, Davis argues that the Homo-Pomo aesthetics of this (queer) cinema historical era was a necessity and inevitability after the AIDS crisis. He parallels this argument from the categorization of Deleuze’s cinema books. In his

Cinema books Deleuze describes that the transference from the period of the

movement-image, cinema focusing on reproducing movement, to the time-image, cinema with the intent of going outside the classical narrative-time, was instigated by the Second World War (C1, 1). The propaganda machine of the Nazi-regime became such a powerful movement-image, that there was a

necessity to make the audience restart their cognitive processes and regain their ability for critical thinking, and thus the time-image was born. No more mindless reproduction of movements, but cinema that forces you to think. So very much in the same way that the Nazi propaganda ‘created’ the time-image, Davis

articulates the AIDS crisis as the inciter for the desiring-image (Davis, 9). The

articulation and depiction of queer desires was needed to face and process the horrors that AIDS wrought among the queer population.

It is in this wake of an epidemic that Davis poses the New Queer Cinema and modern queer cinema. Here is where my interest comes in when it comes to this periodization, as there is one American film maker who’s early work parallels many aspects of Davis’ post-AIDS Deleuzian desiring-image: John Waters.

Especially the films in his self-proclaimed Trash Trilogy, consisting of Pink Flamingos (1972), Female Trouble (1974), and Desperate Living (1977), are in my view

textbook examples of desiring-images, as they depict various queer desires as described by Davis. The many crude images, filthy characters, and sometimes obscene scenes are oozing a sense of misplacement in the time of production however: the American 1970’s. So how do these films achieve this? How is it possible that these films have desiring-images pre-AIDS epidemic, while the need for queer desires as images arises post-AIDS? To answer this question I will take one film that encompasses not just John Water’s trash aesthetic and humour, but is in my view the best example of a Waters-esque desiring-image: Pink Flamingos.

Pink Flamingos’ narrative in the most basic form is about the race to become

the filthiest person alive. Main character Divine (portrayed by drag queen Divine) is the self-proclaimed reigning queen of filth, who lives under the alias of Babs

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Johnson in a trailer in the outskirts of Baltimore together with her infantile mother Edie (Edith Massey), her son Crackers (Danny Mills), and traveling companion Cotton (Mary Vivian Pearce). They live their lives by shocking, shoplifting,

murdering, bathing in eggs, cannibalism, having sex with beheaded chickens, and other unspeakable things. Divine has competition for the title by Connie and

Raymond Marble (Mink Stole and David Lochery), a couple who runs an adoption agency for lesbian couples. Their employee Channing (Channing Wilroy) is

charged with impregnating the imprisoned women in their basement, who’s babies are taken away and given up for adoption. After several intrusions and attempts by one party to overthrow the other, Divine emerges as the winner and executes the Marbles on live television after saying the famous words: “Kill

everyone now, condone first degree murder, advocate cannibalism, eat shit. Filth is my politics, filth is my life.” As a perfect summary of the film, Divine sums up the ‘moral’ of the story: filth.

It is exactly this notion of filth which fuels my fascination with the film. As stated by Divine herself, filth is used as a way of politics, in addition to her way of living. By stating this, the film directly takes a political standpoint: that of disgust and shock, that of filth. In the first chapter I will start by dissecting this given through an analysis of the film done by Anna Breckon in her article “The Erotic Politics of Disgust: Pink Flamingos as Queer Political Cinema” (2013). Through an antisocial reading, she explains that the position of filth in Pink Flamingos accomplishes the abolishment of the humanist notion of empathy, culminating in a position that is equal anti-heteronormativity and anti-homonormativity in society. Furthermore, I will take this analysis and connect it to Davis’ desiring-image to show that the position of filth is an integral part of Pink Flamingos’ depiction of Deleuzian queer desires.

In the second chapter arises a different notion of the contemporary queer film, but one that also follows Davis’ desires nonetheless. In his article “The Post-Queer Dystopia of The Mudge Boy (Michael Burke, 2003)” (2012), Jeff Bush recognises a new aesthetic in the contemporary queer film: the post-queer

dystopia. Bush argues that ‘post-queer’ goes beyond the 19th_{century discourse of}

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post-queer world this alignment does not exist and is post-queer’s definition thus not based on simply sexual desire. I will take this notion of the post-queer dystopia and realign it with Pink Flamingos and the desiring-image. This may seem out of place, as ‘post-queer’ is something else than ‘‘post-queer’ and I will define the desires as queer in the first chapter, but through this analysis in the second chapter it becomes clear that the desires in Pink Flamingos is not just defined in one way. By doing this, I will show how the film opposes everything, as broad as that may sound, encompassing all that is the norm in any western humanistic society. The concept of post-queerness is a perfect tool to emphasize its antagonistic ideals.

The two coming chapters then bring together several concepts of queer cinema theory, each focusing on a different set of queer qualities. Through the coming analyses I will try to show how those concepts for contemporary queer cinema, New Queer Cinema, or post-AIDS queer cinema do not just apply to films from that era. Pink Flamingos is in that regard an exceptional example of a post-AIDS queer film, already voicing against the dominant heteronormative discourses and portraying queer desires in its own way, which exists pre-AIDS.

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1. The Anti-Social Queer Desiring-Machine: Going Beyond Queer

When asked in an interview what his films mean or what he is trying to say with them, John Waters simply responds with: “I’m not trying to say anything. I’m just trying to give people a good time.” (Divine Trash, 1998). In the same way he asserts in his 1981 book Shock Value that he has pride in the fact that his “work has no socially redeeming value” (2). Socially redeeming perhaps not, but as the title of his book suggests, there is shock value in surplus. Waters’ comments on the meaning of his films could be an attempt to distance himself from the gay

liberation movement of the 1970’s, which sought to overthrow hetero ‘privileging’ institutions such as marriage. However, in his comments lies definitely a hint towards a ‘message’, which can be interpreted perhaps as ‘shock’. His films such as Pink

Flamingos, but also Female Trouble and Desperate Living among the crudest of his

oeuvre, are overflown with this notion. The style, humour, and amount of simply shockingly disturbing scenes decidedly seem to seek more than just shock the audience, however. It is this aspect that caught the attention of Anna Breckon. In her article, she states that Pink Flamingos attempts to disrupt the viewer by holding a position of filth and disallowing the humanist notion of empathy to the audience (515). Through a recently made popular paradigm that is the antisocial thesis in queer theory, Breckon shows how Pink Flamingos not only opposes

heteronormativity, but also homonormative ideals by its use of filthy, disturbing, and queer images.

In addition, Anna Breckon suggests that the early work of John Waters “functions not as an exemplification of later queer theorizing but constitutes a richly perverse archive that still offers an enabling resource for contemporary queer thinking” (515). I will take this perverse archive and think it queerly following the desiring-image by Nick Davis, as Pink Flamingos is inherently drenched in the queer desires as described by Davis, as well as the recently in queer theory made popular paradigm of the antisocial thesis. Where Breckon argues that the use of Waters’ poetics of filth in his early films anticipates this paradigm, I will argue in this chapter that this particular part of his oeuvre not only foresees this trend in queer

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theory, but also Davis’ continuation of Deleuze’s images. To start off the chapter, I will explain how Breckon uses the anti-social thesis to strengthen her argument about Pink Flamingos. In the second part I will go deeper into Davis’ concept of the desiring-image and combine it with Waters’ film to assert that the desires depicted are not just queer, but anti-social to boot.

1.1 Antisocial Filth

In “Is the rectum a grave” (1987), Leo Bersani first lays the claim that sexuality is inherently antisocial. For Bersani, sex drives people apart, rather than creating a bond between the people involved. Of course we need to keep in mind that this article was written in the years that HIV and AIDS had infiltrated the daily lives of many people and especially homosexual men; that its influence on not just homosexual intimacy, but also heterosexual relations was massive. Bersani states that “AIDS has literalized that potential as the certainty of biological death, and has therefore reinforced the heterosexual association of anal sex with a self-annihilation originally and primarily identified with the fantasmatic mystery of an insatiable, unstoppable female sexuality” (222). There are multiple things to say about this complicated quote. It is this potential of death that reinforces Bersani’s claim of the antisocial nature of sex first of all. However, the focus on anal sex specifically is an interesting aspect of his analysis, as it is mostly associated with intercourse between homosexual men. Bersani takes this type of intercourse and associates it with the heterosexual kind. The “fantasmatic mystery of an insatiable, unstoppable female sexuality” shows how Bersani thinks differently of the female gender in this situation: nymphomania is what he essentially describes. The self-annihilation of heterosexual anal sex is on the female side of the coin. Since then we have learned a lot about AIDS and the way to catch the virus however, and this shows how the almost obsessive association with anal sex was very apparent in society.

In any case, in this analysis of sex as an (anti)social occurrence, Bersani thus opens the door to a new way of thinking about this primal urge, and he continues this in his book Homos (1995), where the focus is solely on the homosexual. Here he not just connects sex in the light of AIDS as anti-social, but furthers his argument by

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asking if homosexuals should be good citizens, bringing the homosexual as a person into the anti-social frame. By analysing the gay-rights politics and in

particular the rage that is being caused by it, he questions if homosexuality is even compatible with civil service, or society as a whole. “Homo-ness…,” he argues, “necessitates a massive redefining of relationality,” that it positions “a potentially revolutionary inaptitude – perhaps inherent to gay desire – for sociality as it is known.” This oppositional relation to heteronormative society is the intrinsic nature of homosexuality: it does not fit, it does not work, it does not go together.

Homosexuality, according to Bersani, is thus in a way antagonistic to society and needs a new form, or perhaps a revolution, in current society.

With this anti-relation of homosexuality theorized, Bersani paved the way for other queer thinkers to continue on his bumpy path. One of those thinkers is Lee Edelman, who in No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (2004) thinks about homosexuality in relation to humanity as a whole, that queerness refuses the future of humanity, as there exist an impossibility of an investment in the figure of a child. Calling himself an advocate of political negativity (821), Edelman certainly

embraces this attitude in all of his work, showing that the current (hetero)sexual political environment is driving on negativity. The academics who promote a practice they themselves call queer utopianism, a practice based on positivity, he dismisses by stating that “neither liberal inclusionism, with its ultimate faith in

rational comprehension, nor the redemptive hope of producing brave new social collectivities can escape the insistence of the antisocial in social organization”. Following Freud’s observations that anxiety strikes only that which is organized, he continues his argument by stating that “organization depends on internal

antagonism”. Of course the organization of the social must induce antagonism in turn, and Edelman does not let it slip by that liberal utopianism fails to recognize this given, calling it out for recreating a puppet of humanism and bringing a false sense of hope and freedom to us. Edelman essentially takes on a controversial standpoint by dismissing and critiquing the basic teachings in the humanities and western universities: humanism.

Now, this controversial standpoint about social negativity and antagonism is, like stated, the essence of queerness and homosexuality according to the

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antisocial thesis. Lee Edelman poses the inability for conceiving a child as the continuation of the social as a staple of queer antagonism. He opposes with this position the movement of gay liberation which seeks to integrate the homosexual into heteronormative society by demanding equal rights. Following the

antagonism and negativity that results from the antisocial thesis, this integration is impossible, since political assertion for a better social order is a futile task no matter what the cause is or how well it is meant. In the end, there can only be one social order that can be sustained, and that is the one that has preference of a certain political sociality over the other. All the others will only disrupt and antagonize the dominant paradigm and will eventually be dismissed in favour of the future: the next generation.

The way of negativity opens many doors and new ways of looking at queer subjects and can result in fascinating analyses. One of these, and one of the inspirations of this thesis, is Anna Breckon’s analysis of John Water’s film Pink Flamingos. In this article she gives a close reading of the cinematic piece, and shows how the film itself, by way of camerawork, acting, editing (or lack thereof), and mise-en-scene enforces the social negativity onto the viewer. The film is a prime example of an antisocial queer work of art as it shows everything that is forbidden in the dominant social order. Its essence of negativity is in the form of ‘filth’. Taking the definition loosely from the Oxford English Dictionary, Breckon describes this notion as “a negative affective relation to what is normatively

defined as the social good” (515). Filth is used as a position of the negative, rather than the descriptive quality of an object. The oeuvre of John Waters is drenched with this position, and especially his early work embraces social negativity, but only Pink Flamingos uses filth as its primary thematic investment as well as its structuring narrative (516).

What follows are close readings of various scenes, including a sex scene that borders on rape featuring a decapitated chicken, a birthday party with a singing anus and the cannibalization of a police officer, and the break down of the character called Edie, the infant-like overweight mother of main character Divine with a fetish for eggs. With these analyses, Breckon shows how Pink Flamingos uses filth to such an extent that the film becomes almost unwatchable for the audience.

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Perhaps the best example of filth representation is the over the top portrayal of Edie as it accomplishes the abolishment of empathy, a quality so important to enjoy our cinematic experience and in humanistic philosophy. This portrayal makes us want to empathize with her, as she is an “aged, over-weight, imbecile woman [who sits] in a playpen all day” (Stevenson, 13). Our leftist (humanist) morality tries to feel sorry for her, but she is so repulsive that it is impossible. Disgust takes over and undermines the empathetic feelings ‘normally’ associated with helpless child-like figures. It is in this way that Edie embodies filth and sets the tone for the rest of the film: as the first character seen you get thrown right into this filthy world and will be immune for any form of empathy. Even the opening voice-over “let’s take a peek inside”, voiced by Waters himself, ensures that the audience will know that what will be seen is more a freak show rather than a mainstream cinematic experience.

What does the film accomplish by being so anti-everything, by portraying a freak show telling the story of a race to be the filthiest person alive? Why is an overweight woman with eggs smeared all over her body at the centre of multiple scenes? Why do we need to experience Divine eating a freshly pressed dog turd in the closing sequence? While John Waters states in multiple interviews that his films do not have any meaning, Breckon has showed in her analysis that it does have some essence of importance to queer cinema, not just in a cult classic type of way, and answers these questions with the theoretical context of the anti-social thesis. In her analysis, Pink Flamingos as queer antagonism shows an oppositional position, not in the least through the depiction of shocking and filthy desires. In the next section of this chapter I will go deeper into the desiring-image and take the desires in Pink Flamingos to rethink them as Deleuzian queer desires.

1.2 The Queer Desiring-Machine

Breckon’s close reading of Pink Flamingos exposes the underlying antisocial

position of the film. However, she does not address the clear theme of queer desire evident in most strange and in-your-face scenes: there is of course Divine’s desire to be the filthiest person alive; Edie’s desire for eggs; Divine’s desire for consuming dog shit; the Marbles’ equal desire for the same title of disgust; the desire of

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Divine’s son Crackers to use chickens as toys during sex. In short: the desire to shock and disgust. Following the stream of negativity as described earlier and the accompanying position of filth, this desire should come as no shock. Breckon does to a certain degree touch upon all of these aspects of the film, but only to show how Pink Flamingos accomplishes what it does best; she does not get deeper into this desiring aspect of the film. It is my understanding that Pink Flamingos is full of queer desire, and Nick Davis’ desiring-image can explain these desires as a preliminary form of this continuation of Deleuze’s cinema books.

In his book The Desiring-Machine, Davis brings together several aspects of Deleuze’s philosophy and creates his own third cinema image. By starting out with Rich’s description of New Queer Cinema, he in turn extends her notion of the ‘queer’ in queer cinema by diving deep into the Deleuzian (and Guattarian) concept of the desiring-machine. In addition, to be able to achieve a solid

theorization, Davis looks at both Cinema books and takes several crucial points of reference as the basis for his own cinema-image.

To start with, Davis not just begins with the desiring-machine at the outset. No, Davis takes another Deleuzian term and first aligns it with Rich’s New Queer Cinema, the ‘schizo’: “Deleuzian schizos wander and read the world in its differences, joining into its active and erratic currents, rather than projecting

programmatic idealizations from sterilized isolations” (12). He takes this to describe the inconsistencies present in Rich’s account of New Queer Cinema, who, just like the schizos, aligns herself with no single side and describes the cinema

phenomenon from an outside perspective, voices imminent changes from the feature length films, as well as video programs of lesbian artists. Because of her ‘schizo-ness’, there is no coherent theorization of New Queer Cinema, and Davis solves this by joining it with the philosphies of Deleuze. He conceptualizes then this queer cinema phenomenon by applying what Anti-Oedipus calls “schizoanalysis” to Rich’s homo pomo aesthetic. In the broadest sense, schizoanalysis is “a method blending detailed description of a complex assemblage with structural accounts of what that assemblage discloses about desire” (13). The outcome of this analysis are seven points about Deleuzian desire and the queering of it, which he calls the ‘seven pillars of schizo homo pomo’. Although all seven are fundamental to The

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Desiring-Image, I will highlight three of them, as these three points are key to

describing the desires in Pink Flamingos.

In the first and most fundamental pillar Davis suggests that desire in Deleuze’s thinking encompasses everything, it is at the root of all things (14). In cooperation with Felix Guattari, Deleuze describes desire as a machine, a literal machine complete with individual cogs and parts, one that is connected to other desiring-machines, which are at work everywhere (AO, 1). And since it is at the root of everything and is connected throughout space and time, Nick Davis concludes that it must also be affiliated with cinema. If the desiring-machine creates all, it also created cinema (Davis, 14). All the more reason that the lack, or total ignoring, of desire in the Cinema books is a strange phenomenon. Moreover, the lack of connections to sexual desire, unlike Freudian desire, which is intrinsically about sexual drives and desires, invites thinking. Deleuze and Guattari are unclear when it comes to the sexual part and confess that what the desiring-machines “have to do with a properly sexual energy is not immediately clear” (AO 291). In

continuation of this line of thinking, the unclearness and refusal of defining desiring-machines through (sexual or gendered) object-orientations causes Davis to

adhere the notion of queerness to the Deleuzian (and Guattarian) concept. Desiring-machines do not discriminate, they do not fabricate in ways of

preference of one form of desire over the other, and in turn, are ‘queer’ about their workings. As the ‘queer’ defies dominant sexual and gendered norms, and the desiring-machine fails to even address these norms, the conclusion can be made that desiring-machines are indeed queer in their workings.

In the fourth homo pomo pillar, Davis states that desire has no ideal forms. He takes Deleuzes notions that both movement and time are constant changing and thus have no ideal forms, and sees the same in desire (19). In addition to the any-instant-whatever, the any-point-whatever, and the any-space-whatever, “queer cinema yields an any-desire-whatever, refusing to organize itself within an untenable hetero/homo binary or at equidistant, Kinseyan intervals between those poles” (19, original emphasis). This means for Davis that in a Deleuzian sense, desire may appear to be straightforwardly straight or gay, there is always more under the surface, as Deleuzian desires always “bear entropic dimensions bound up with

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temporality, since those operating in a present moment presuppose untapped potentials for past or present variations, and for future transformations” (20).

Furthermore, the any-desire-whatever thus expands the LGBTQI-model without limit, and because it is fluid in the sense that the any-desire-whatever does not settle into any arrangement, it remains impersonal.

The sixth pillar is perhaps on the surface the most paradoxical point Davis makes regarding this thesis. He states that Deleuzian desire has no politics (22). This means that because of the desiring-machine’s encompassing nature, it does not discriminate or chooses a political side. In the previous section I explained

Breckon’s analysis of Pink Flamingos where I stated that the desires of the film are filth, and filth is the political stance it makes. This of course brings the direct

conclusion that desire is political in Pink Flamingos. The desires however may have a political charge, and this is most apparent in queer cinema which politicizes desire in multiple ways, the nature of “desire itself has no inherent political bent” (22, original emphasis). Davis further explains: “Existing only to conjoin and produce, machines do not invite political review, though relations within and between their conjunctions do”.

These three pillars of schizo homo pomo form the foundations of

understanding Davis’ conceptualization of the desiring-machine as a queer form of desire, at least when it comes to Pink Flamingos as a desiring-image. They

explain why Deleuze’s desires are queer, what form they take in cinematic images, and in what way they are political. Davis takes this aspect of the desiring-machines and combines it with the cinema concepts of Deleuze, providing a new way of thinking Deleuzian philosophy in the context of cinema. Although the reason why desire has no place whatsoever in the Cinema books is unclear, the fact that it can be theorized in accordance to these same books makes it seem like Davis is filling up a gap left by Deleuze, perhaps an unintentional gap. In any case, by filling this void with desires, new paths open up that can be traced to rethink

cinematic canons, or New Queer Cinema specifically here. In the next section I will take these three pillars as one theory of queer cinema, and look at Pink Flamingos in depth and how it stands up as a New Queer desiring-image.

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1.3 Desiring...Poop?

From what can be derived from Breckon’s analysis, it is clear that the desires pictured in Pink Flamingos are queer, negative desires. Desires for certain forms of sexuality not fitting in the conventional heteronormative way are the main

attraction, but in addition there are desires portrayed about other aspects of life that can be considered undesirable, like shoplifting, eating dog poop, murder, cannibalism etc. Not directly related to queer sexual desire, these negative aspects are still very much unwanted in dominant capitalist society. In this sense you can say that these could be considered Deleuzian/Guattarian queer desires: the characters seem to get a sexual-fetishist satisfaction by fulfilling their strange desires, however not immediately affiliated to sexual desires. The egg fetish of Edie for example appears to be just that: it is a hunger for eggs, she needs the eggs to survive. However, when she marries the ‘eggman’, the provider of the eggs, this desire obtains a sexual dimension and she finds a constant filler for her fetish, perhaps even something Freudian, in the eggman.

It is this Freudian aspect that can be confusing and raises the question: are these desires in Pink Flamingos not just desires based on a Freudian lack? Does it fit into this prescription model that Anti-Oedipus describes as a theatre where the same desires gets ‘played’ over and over again (AO 5)? To stay with Edie the egg lady, you could say that there is certainly a lack in the form of a shortage of eggs. This lack then gets filled by the arrival of the eggman and satisfies her needs. To be more specifically phallic/Freudian, you could even read the eggs as the eggman’s semen that fill her up. However I think that this is too easy and is also precisely the main criticism that Anti-Oedipus offers: it is too simple to say that this desire for eggs exist because of her unconscious sexual lack. Desire is not a theatre with the same binary staging, it is a factory wherein every single machine has a different output. Desire produces rather than re-enacts, and the products are queer in the sense that they are not binary. Deleuze and Guattari replace Freud’s “either/or” binary perception with their own “either...or...or...” metaphysics (AO 12), refusing to think in binary terms of gender and sexuality. This refusal “produces habits of thought that elide such binarisms” (Davis 16). The desiring-machine that is Edie is very much in the same way as queer as can be. Her grotesque appearance alone defies any

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recognisable gender: an obese blob of a body covered in eggs while at the same time confined to a crib for infants. Eating eggs seem to satisfy her sexual needs and in addition, she is a grown person with a child-like mind and behaviour. The figure of Edie does not conform to any binary, be it in gender, sexuality, or even stage of human development (Figure 1).

The ways that the desiring-machines defy binaries thus paves the way for queer thinking in a Deleuzian way, something which Davis does in a grand matter. A key film throughout The Desiring-Image is Dead Ringers by David Cronenberg, where a three-chambered womb is being examined by experts who come to the conclusion that it is hopelessly infertile. Davis considers this womb very fertile

however and also regards it as a metaphor for the three combined fields of research that coalesce in his book: queer theory, film theory, and Deleuzian philosophy. In addition, he states that “the unevenly visible, deterritorializing forms of gender and desire in Dead Ringers push this film...’beyond gay’” (40). The film thus estranges conceptions of sexuality beyond hetero or homo. In short, it defies binaries. This is exactly the same thing is achieved in Pink Flamingos, as shown by the example of Edie. Edie embodies this Deleuzo/Guattarian desire in such a way that she pushes the boundaries of sexuality beyond hetero or homo. Pink

Flamingos therefore deterritorializes, estranges, and destabilizes our perception of

what is acceptable in a heteronormative society by focusing on desires which are beyond this border. Perhaps you could call this ‘post-queer’, a concept by Jeff Bush which will be the main topic of the next chapter.

Just like Edie’s egg fetish is a Deleuzian queer desire, the object of desire in the following close reading is even more a staple of this cinematic concept and shows how the desiring-image is being portrayed in Pink Flamingos. At this point, we have seen that Pink Flamingos not just extends an antisocial attitude in the form of filth as a political position, but also that it defies binaries as a queer Deleuzian desiring-machine. In the following section I will show, through a close reading of the final scene, that the filthy attitude of the film will come to a high point, while at the same time is a staple of Davis’ desiring-image, depicted in the most disgusting way: the ingestion of dog feces.

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In this epilogue the audience is treated to a disturbing sequence that is being led in by a voice over of John Waters himself saying: “Watch as Divine proves that not only is she the filthiest person in the world, she is also the filthiest actress in the world. What you are about to see is the real thing.” This immediately brings the audience to a halt and snaps them out of the film into an ‘in-between’ space: between fiction and reality, as you see the diegetic Divine being

transformed into the real Divine. The switch disturbs the usual cinematic

conventions that can only be called a queering of the image. The following close-ups show Divine, Cotton, and Crackers smiling and looking at a small dog laying a turd on the pavement. The close up of Divine’s lip-licking is being alternated with her rubbing her belly, showing her desire for the stool. In the next continuous medium shot Divine sets herself right beside the turd-laying dog and grabs the small dung pile. The camera zooms in into a close up, forcing the audience to watch the spectacle unfold in more detail. She smells it quickly and puts in in her mouth, trying to show her enjoyment by smiling straight into the camera (Figure 2). However, the real Divine does come through as we also see her gagging and spitting out the poop. To stay in character, Divine keeps on smiling with shit stuck between her teeth making us believe that she truly is the filthiest actress in the world.

This infamous scene is as ambiguous and disruptive as it is disgusting. The clear loathsome image of Divine eating dog shit accomplishes what the voice over says it wants to accomplish: to show that she is the filthiest actress. The facts that she is smiling all the while and the song How Much Is That Doggie In The

Window playing throughout however, add a positive dimension to it: she really

seems to enjoy it. The song even suggests a desire for more dogs to eat the excrements off. This is disruptive in two ways. Firstly, the meal is supposed to be something that human beings do not like to eat. Waste of mammals do not make for a good meal due to the smell and (admittedly speculative) taste of it. The second reason is the ambiguity that is clear on Divine’s face: her smiling and gagging. These two human expressions are perhaps the most paradoxical, since no person smiles while having the biological need to throw up. Smiling suggests enjoyment, and throwing up is not enjoyable. What this accomplishes is the

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dismissal of human empathy, as there is no clear way for the audience to connect with the character. Breckon would say that this refusal of empathy adds to the anti-social nature of the film, or in this particular theoretical setting, to the queer desires. By not cutting away and showing it in a close up however, you as a member of the audience are forced to keep looking, making it into an almost traumatic experience.

Now, the effects that this scene has on the viewer and the filth it exudes should come as no surprise given the analysis of Anna Breckon. The avoidance of empathic feelings towards the characters contributes to the political stance of filth that Pink Flamingos takes. But what is the point of the desires that are present in this scene? Here, the desire for dog poop functions in the same way that the desire for the eggs do in relation to Edie. The desire for the shit cannot be classified as sexual, or hunger, or any other biological need. It is the desire to shock and appal the viewer. This desire does not look at binaries or any other gender or sexuality related elements. It just does not care. Therefore you could say that this desire for eating a freshly laid dog turd is in essence an any-desire-whatever, a Deleuzian desire, a product of the desiring-machine. The image acts as a desiring-image that conveys this queer desire to the audience. The close ups and editing bring not just attention to the act of eating and gagging, and in consequence disrupts and

deterritorializes the image, but also dehumanizes Divine by shocking the viewers through this act. Divine goes beyond gender or sexuality, or even further, she goes beyond human. Or to put in another way, the image itself goes beyond a

humanization of the on-screen characters.

Although desire is therefore the essence of the film, the queerness of it in the most basic meaning of the word can be seen as disputable. As explained in the introduction, queer as an academic concept is the defiance of dominant norms. In queer cinema, it is the defiance of the dominant heteronormative discourse.

Pink Flamingos and its characters do more than just defy the dominant discourses

in society however. They exist outside of the discourse as it is nowhere clearly visible as a dominant norm. In the next chapter I will continue this argument through the analysis of Jeff Bush, who identifies a world where these discourses are no longer

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present, and calls it ‘post-queer’. Going beyond queer, Pink Flamingos is exemplary of this concept of modern, 21st_{century queer cinema.}

As a final thought for this chapter I have to add that although the desiring-image may have been defined as a concept for queer cinema, the inherent nature of Deleuzian desires causes the construction to be able to ‘queerify’ many different films. Davis makes use of this with his analysis of Dead Ringers and Naked

Lunch for example. This why I will add the aforementioned notion of the

‘post-queer’ to this cinema concept in the next chapter, as this idea’s definition is based on the dismissal or disregarding of the hetero/homo spectrum in society. Deleuzian desires function basically in the same manner because of their ignoring of notions of sexuality and gender. Therefore I will add my own thoughts and theorization to this major idea of Nick Davis in the next chapter, and show how it is embodied in

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2. Celebrating a Post-Queer Utopia or Dystopia?

In the previous chapter I have analysed Pink Flamingos through the anti-social queer desires that it brings and deduced that it is not just queer in the traditional sense of the word. The desires represented are not non-comformative or anti-heteronormative, they are more than that: beyond queer. In this chapter I will bring a new concept to the table: the post-queer dystopia. As the term suggests, it is an unpleasant world where the desires represented are more than queer, or beyond queer. Just like Pink Flamingos and its desire to shock and disgust, the desires in the post-queer dystopia do not just picture non-heterosexual desires. These desires let loose of the hetero-homo spectrum to imagine a new cinematic aesthetic in queer cinema. Jeff Bush (like I have mentioned several times)

recognises this post-queer dystopia in the film The Mudge Boy. To be able to understand the post-queer dystopia fully, we need to break it down in two parts: the ‘post-queer’ part and the ‘dystopia’ part, which will happen in the next section of the chapter. After this, I will look at Pink Flamingos as a post-queer film, and try to identify if it can even be seen as a dystopian world.

2.1 A Mudgey Dystopia

The Mudge Boy is a film about Duncan Mudge who tries to find his way in life after the death of his mother. He befriends a chicken, resents his father, and has a sadomasochist relationship with another boy. Bush reads this film in a

psychoanalytical fashion and makes quick connections between Duncan’s father, the death of his mother, and the idea that death in psychoanalysis “promises a utopia, but delivers dystopia” (187). Duncan and his father are symbolically castrated by the death of the mother, and they both have to live with negative feelings like guilt and resentment. It is because of this that they both “live in a dystopia that is haunted by utopian possibilities” (187). In addition to this psychoanalysis, for Bush, The Mudge Boy “says something” about both queer theory and queer cinema: unlike the ‘gay new wave’ films of the 1980’s or the New Queer Cinema films of the early 1990’s, this on first sight non-queer film “does

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not contain a proactively queer character that is the vessel for the transmission of queer theory. Instead, we have a passive and idiosyncratic boy whose life appears untouched by the philosophy and ideas of queer theory” (188).

There are several things to say that are important for this thesis about this idea of a ‘non-queer’ queer film. It seems that without recognising a clear queer theme, Bush does not seem to identify a film as part of the ‘queer wave’ or New Queer Cinema movements. Apparently only films that fit within this mold can be seen as queer films. With this line of thinking we can say that most Cronenberg films, as analysed by Nick Davis, are indeed not queer films. However, through his

Deleuzian analysis, we have seen that a queer film is more than just a

manifestation of queer theory. Bush does not identify these films as queer, rather as post-queer. Therefore we can conclude that a post-queer film is not the same as a queer film: escaped from the confinements of queer theory, post-queer films are thus those films that go beyond queer.

Furthermore, Bush makes the distinction between ‘queer’ and ‘post-queer’ by putting Foucaultian and Lacanian philosophy on opposite sides. On the

Foucault side is the utopian idea of queer, where the distinction between hetero- and homosexuality in the 19th_{century resulted in the appropriation of the word}

‘queer’ by the marginalised homosexual groups at the end of the 20th_century

(188). This discourse is utopian in the sense that these groups came to be formed by people who share the same sexual identity, resulting in a social utopia. The resulting negativity and discrimination of the queer was thus transformed into a positive image in the form of a shared identity. On the other side is the Lacanian post-queer, where these groups of shared sexual identities are formed not

because of a shared sexuality, but because of a shared sense of lack. They exist outside of the discourse, outside of the hetero-homo spectrum, resulting in wanting that which they lack to be able to fit in. “His [Lacan’s] theory shows how

communities bind themselves together in relation to that which they do not have or misrecognize in the Other, and this finds expression in envy, resentment, racism, homophobia and misogyny” (189). The resulting desires thus get expressed in

various negative emotions and practices, which is a dystopian view of the world to live in. Not sitting around a campfire with the ones who share the same sexual

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needs and views, but rather to be repressed and getting no recognition of your sexual identity results in a dystopia.

An important Lacanian aspect which Bush addresses as a theme of The Mudge Boy, but also of the post-queer dystopia, is jouissance, or “painful pleasure, the pleasure found in suffering” (189). Since the main character exists outside of the clear cut queer discourse, in the post-queer dystopia, he does not know how to express himself, and his desires are being misrecognised which leads to

jouissance. Here I want to address the main (and perhaps thesis-breaking) problem regarding my analysis, and that is the psychoanalytical nature of the post-queer dystopia. As we have established in the previous chapter, Deleuzian and Freudian desires are vastly different and do not overlap in their inner workings. Jouissance works on the same level as the Freudian desires in the sense that it is a theatre, a general cookie-cutter performance which works in the same way in every situation. The painful pleasure, or the pleasure being received when

misrecognised, is also based on a lack and the desire to complete this lack. It is my perception that jouissance is not a vital part of the post-queer dystopia however.

The way the post-queer dystopia seems to work is that there is no recognition of the queer because it exists outside of the hetero-homo discourse established in the 19th_{century, essentially going beyond the queer. The main desire of the queer}

in this dystopia is then the desire to be recognised. However, if you replace the Freudian (or Lacanian) desires with the Deleuzian desiring-machine, there is no lack and therefore no need to get recognition. The misrecognition will not be happening, which means in essence that the dystopian vision of Bush is not able to lift off. Does this mean that the post-queer dystopia is in extension a misrecognition on my part when it comes to the importance of this thesis? If the jouissance is such an essential part of the dystopia, then how does Davis’ desiring-image fit into this queer concept regarding Pink Flamingos?

To answer the first question, I will say that no, it is not a misrecognition on my part. Even though the post-queer dystopia is set within psychoanalysis and

Lacanian theory, his concept can be taken out of this discourse into the Deleuzian discourse. Taking away the jouissance and in extension the misrecognition that happens, we have a world where there is no hetero/homo distinction without any

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lack and thus no desire to fill this lack. Adding the Deleuzian perspective on desire, you can say that, as the desiring-machines do not have any preference and because it produces everything, the way Duncan could be handling it can go either way: the utopian, or the dystopian. He could accept his queerness and go live a happy life by embracing it, or he could double down on the negativity and the lack of perspective on any form of identification. Duncan resists the negativity and in turn becomes enthralled by more negative emotions that will be projected onto his father, resulting in a dystopian world where the negative emotions rule. The second question (taking away the jouissance), I will address in the next section. There the desiring-image has a more central role and will result in a less negative view on the world than in The Mudge Boy. By completely embracing negativity and filth, the characters in Pink Flamingos seem to be living in a much happier state.

2.2 A Divine Utopia

I believe that when it comes to Pink Flamingos as a desiring-image, it is not explicitly a post-queer dystopia or a queer utopia; it is a mixture of the two. The world of Divine and her consorts cannot be easily defined as a utopia or a

dystopia as the desires represented are antagonistic/negative in itself, while at the same time provide a sense of positivity to the characters. There is no feeling of not ‘fitting in’ the discourse like Duncan in The Mudge Boy has, where actually no discourse of queerness exists at all. In Pink Flamingos, the hetero-homo discourse is also far from clear, but that does not matter to the characters, because they do not need the discourse to be able to have a sense of self. Duncan on the other hand is lost in this post-queer world without a clear distinction and lives in a dystopia in consequence.

I have established in the previous chapter that the desires and the characters of Pink Flamingos go beyond queer: the egg fetish of Edie and the poop eating of Divine are not defined by a hetero-homo distinction. Instead, the queerness is portrayed in two ways: through the non-normative and antagonistic desires, and through the character of Divine. Both ways of queerness exist outside the 19th_{century discourse, albeit each in their own way. We have discussed the}

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queer desires at length already and so can comfortably conclude the

post-queerness in their being. Divine however, is a different case, as she not just exudes post-queerness in her sense of identity, but also in her actions when interacting with other characters.

Divine as a character is a very interesting case, because she is not just a seeker of filth by heart, but also a man in a dress posing as a woman who identifies as a lesbian. At the start of her famous speech in which she calls for mass homicide as part of her politics, a reporter asks: “Divine, are you a lesbian?” To which she replies: “Yes, I have done everything.” With this simple Q and A we get a

complicated genderization and sexualization of Divine, which defies all senses of dominant heteronormality. In the non-diegetic world (or, the real world) Divine was the alter ego of the late Harris Glenn Milstead, a good friend of John Waters,

homosexual man, and famous drag queen. Through Waters’ films and other

performances as a drag queen, singer and actor, Milstead rose to world fame and unfortunately ended up passing away of a heart attack due to him being morbid obese in 1988. As Divine, Milstead broke not just the gender barriers, what all

female impersonators seek to do, but also made sure that she was associated with filth and shock as a lasting legacy.

Then at the basis we have Divine, the female alter ego of a homosexual man, playing him/herself in Pink Flamingos. However, Divine in the film world is different from the real Divine, as she is acting as herself. You can compare this with a different film: Being John Malkovich (1999), where John Malkovich portrays an alternative version of John Malkovich. The fake Divine then identifies herself as a lesbian, and not just that, but also states that she has done “everything”. We as an audience can only imagine what that entails, as we saw her give fellatio to her ‘son’ Crackers as an act of motherly love earlier in the film; not very lesbian-like in the traditional sense of the word. Here we can see that she already goes beyond the queer with her words, actions, and sexuality: she is not just queer (that is: a lesbian), but she is more than queer as she has done everything (including

incestuous oral sex). Also when you regard her real identity as a man, but posing as a woman pretending to be a lesbian, that is not just challenging the dominant heteronormative order, it is the act of completely disregarding it: through this

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complicated identity construction, Divine as a character opposes more than that. She opposes in addition to the dominant hetero norms, the norms of homosexuality. Divine lives outside of the Foucaultian hetero-homo construction and in turn, is a post-queer character at the outset.

Divine’s post-queerness and the elevation of negativity by the characters makes it a very two-sided world to consider. On the one hand, the negative emotions, filth, and crimes are on the top of the social standards, creating a negative and antagonistic environment. In essence this means they are living in a dystopia. On the other hand however, you can argue that it is not a dystopian vision that is being portrayed, but in fact a utopia due to the celebration and elevation of negativity as a social standard. The Pink Flamingos discourse is filth as politics, not the current and existing humanism/capitalism. By turning this around, this fictional Baltimore is at the core a utopia.

So perhaps you could say that the filth-filled world of Pink Flamingos is a post-queer utopia. A world where there is no sense of the post-queer discourse clearly

present, and at the same time does not give rise to the misrecognition of the desires. In fact, rather than being not sure about the nature of their desires, many characters in the film actually express them explicitly, while at the same time share them with a like-minded group of people. Divine shares the desire to become the filthiest person alive for example with the Marbles, so there is no need for

recognition there. In addition, during Divine’s birthday party, she gets to share her filthiness with her family and friends, who enjoy the same level of filth that she does. I will dive further into this sequence in the next section, as it is the perfect setting where all desires for filth, disgust, and shock coalesce.

Before I can get into this however, we need to address the fact that Divine does not represent every character in the diegetic world. She might be filthy, nasty, and plainly criminal, this does not count for other characters. To be able to be filthy and discard the social standard, there must be a social standard. To be able to desire everything criminal, there must be a law to decide what can be seen as criminal. Of course this exists, as made clear by the lesbian adoption agency run by the Marbles. The kidnapping of innocent hitch-hiking women and impregnating them is of course as criminal as can be. The women in question make this very

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clear when confronted by their kidnappers. When the Marbles’ assistant Crackers brings in an unconscious woman and starts to masturbate to inject his sperm, the conscious and pregnant one goes on a vocal rampage. She seems to yell

everything at him what we as an audience are thinking: why? “How can you keep doing this? How vile can you be? I swear I’m gonna puke if you don’t stop doing that!”

Here the pregnant woman seems to represent not just the audience and voices out our thoughts, but also the ‘normal’, heteronormative world which is present outside of the feud between the Marbles and Divine. The fact that there exists a world that acknowledges the hetero/homo alignment and the discourse does not mean that it is the dominant one in the diegesis however. It might be the dominant one in their world, but the diegesis clearly puts the focus on the

antisocial, filthy, and shocking desires voiced by the main characters. The social standard exists, but is disregarded by the cast. In the birthday party sequence, the standard also comes to the array in the figures of some police officers, but this gets pushed away and eliminated fairly quickly. In short: it has no place in Divine’s discourse.

2.3 A Happy Post-Queer Birthday, Divine!

After establishing the post-queer utopia that is the world of Pink Flamingos, in this section I will dissect the birthday scene, as it truly illustrates the nature of this world in a montage wherein happiness, filth, and cannibalism collide. While considering Pink Flamingos as a desiring-image, the plethora of filthy and negative desires depicted in this scene shows how the film perfectly exudes a post-queer utopia. But before I can get into the scene, we need to go back a bit to consider the desiring-image as post-queer. So far we have seen that Davis considers the Deleuzian desires as queer, and calls it as a staple of the desiring-image. In my view the desiring-image does not portrays queer desires, but post-queer desires. Even in his own breakdown of the Deleuzian desires, Davis theorizes them without using the term ‘post-queer’. He states that they go beyond queer, and by using films like Dead Ringers he considerably accentuates this ‘beyond queerness’. And even Deleuze and Guattari themselves do not look at the desiring-machine in any

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specific form, meaning that it does not have the discourse of hetero/homo in its most basic definition. As stated earlier, they do not point any sexual or gendered aspect towards the desiring-machine, because they are not sure about it. To me, this screams ‘post-queer’: no hetero-homo dividing discourse that could limit the workings, or production, of the machines.

Where there is definitely no limitation regarding the shape that desires take, is during Divine’s birthday party. In this fairly long sequence, Divine has invited all her friends to come over and celebrate, while enjoying beverages, food, and entertainment on a stage. Sounds like a standard party, but although in reality all these ‘fun’ things might be enjoyable to them, to us as an audience it is shocking, disgusting, and perhaps even denigrating to human beings at some point. The scene starts with a short overview of the party: a close-up of her birthday cake, stating: “Happy Birthday Babe. The Filthiest Person Alive”; a medium long shot of a crowd of guests mingling and drinking champagne directly from the bottle;

another medium long shot showing some of these guests eating food directly from their hands like animals hog up their food. In addition, we can catch a woman with a Nazi-swastika wrapped around her arm going about, and a man with too much lipstick on grabbing food. It sets the tone for the rest of birthday, showing that this is a like-minded group of people who have in common that they do not care about the rules and etiquette of ‘decent folk’. Even the upbeat jazzy tunes playing makes it look like fun times for anyone involved. After a cut to show that the Marbles are coming around to spy on them, with militaristic music suggesting they are up to no good, Divine starts to unwrap her gifts. With the same jazzy music as before, and a smiling and happy Divine, we see various close-ups of her

unwrapped gifts: she gets poison (as far as I can tell), and a napkin with dried up vomit. Divine licks it to assert her filthy dominance, and shows it around as if it is the best gift to ever receive for your birthday. We also see a happy Edie, who enjoys her eggs together with her new fiancé, the eggman. Her son Cracker’s gift is a meat cleaver with a red ribbon on it and Divine swings it around while smiling as to test it if it is working properly. To stay in the same category of butcher-related gifts, Cotton gets her a pig head. In a quick close-up, we see Divine playing with it with an enormous smile on her face (Figure 3). The next gift appears to be some sort of

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drug, as Divine carefully sniffs on a short stick and starts laughing loudly (albeit without sound as the music is still playing), clearly high, and passes it around for everyone to enjoy. The gift section of the scene ends with Edie getting scrambled eggs from her eggman and eating it like a pig in a close-up, with the eggs

dripping all over her smiling and happy face.

What does this exchange of gifts tell us about Divine’s desires? First and foremost you can conclude that the received gifts clearly fulfil some desires that Divine has, as if not, she would not be smiling and laughing so much. Her state of happiness indicates that these (to us) strange and disgusting gifts are indeed of her preference. As the act of giving gifts has the intention of making the receiver happy, they succeeded fully. The way this is shot also indicates a happy bunch of people, not in the least because of the upbeat music playing. A shaky camera with sudden cuts and jumps in time, creates not just a chaotic atmosphere, but also the feeling of a party. Time clearly flies when you are having fun. In addition, the close-ups appear to be only happening when there is something strange or filthy to look at: the poison, the pig head, Edie’s egg covered face. All these things have in common that it confuses the audience as to why they are so happy with these gifts. The sole purpose of these shots is thus to shock and disgust, a returning technique in Pink Flamingos (recall the shit-covered smile of Divine for example).

After this part of the birthday party, the music continues as the image cuts towards a stage. Through the same erratic use of the camera, we see a woman strip down to her underwear while a band plays some music we do not hear. The image cuts to the crowd, who clap and laugh loudly to the stage show that is unfolding. A quick cut shows the Marbles still spying and getting mad about the amount of fun their nemesis is having, in clear contrast to the invitees of Divine’s party. Cut back to the dancing woman, and she is joined by a snake, still half naked and still smiling. Then a few medium shots of the musicians come around, all showing them being happy and enjoying their activity. In the next short medium close-up, we see Divine dancing around and also having a great time.

This sequence exists mainly to show the enjoyment that is happening, and to show the growing dissatisfaction on the Marbles’ faces. The next stage

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Divine and her filthy friends can be shocked by things, taking the amount of filth to the next level. After the last Divine close-up, the film cuts back to the stage and immediately changes the music to a different rock and roll song: Surfin’ Bird by The Trashmen, a fitting erratic song from a group with an equally fitting and filthy name. As we hear the song, we see a man in a g-string flailing about with his shoulder blades before standing up, taking the string off, and showing his ass hole to the audience. Describing this in detail is not the most important aspect of this scene, and not the most tasteful, but it is important to know what is being shown. So what we see next is the man taking his buttocks apart with his hands, and by pure

muscle control opening and closing his sphincter for the crowd to see (Figure 4). The camera then cuts to show the reaction of the audience, which is a mixture of laughter, enjoyment, shock, and disgust, and the Marbles clearly not enjoying it. After a cut back to the singing ass hole, the image shows the Marbles again,

shaking their heads in anger, standing up, and leaving the party as if this spectacle was too much to handle.

This shot/reverse-shot offers according to Breckon “an analogy for the film’s intended overall spectatorial experience” (529), which is of course a spectacle so disgusting and strange that you almost need to look away, but at the same time are forced to keep looking. It underscores the pleasure that is evident with a sequence like this. The party-goers reactions mimics that of the filmic audience, which is forcefully mixed. After the anal performance we see the Marbles walking away, something most audience member probably are willing to do, but we just keep looking. The feeling of disgust creates a bond between the spectacle of the anus and the audience. The resulting bond is thus not created by empathy, but through disgust. As Breckon states it: “...the relation articulated in this scene between a partial object (anus) and a collective… indexes the way in which bonds born of disgust enable alternative social arrangements”. Pink Flamingos then “extends the terrain of sociality to include, without assimilating, domesticating or anthropomorphizing, the inhuman” (529). Breckon here makes an argument about the inhuman, and the extension of sociality. To use the example I have used before, the portrayal of Edie makes her into more than a human being, as there is no way to empathize with her. The enabling of disgust however, serves as a new

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kind of way to form a bond with Edie and include her in this (anti)social space. No need for empathy, because disgust is here.

You could see this emotion of disgust then as a post-queer way of feeling empathy. Not just following the dominant discourse and formal aspects of

storytelling by serving empathy as a way for identification with the characters, but serving disgust as a way to replace empathy and enable a different kind of social arrangement with the characters. As a desiring-image, you could say that Pink Flamingos desires the audience to feel disgust instead of empathy. Through the singing anus and by showing the reactions of the diegetic audience, the film’s desire of shock and disgust results in the inclusion of inhuman emotions and therefore post-queer desires.

After the Marbles leave the party, they drive to a phone booth where they call the police to send them to Divine’s trailer, a part of their plan to triumph over Divine. The words used are exactly the emotions felt by the audience: “...a rude and disorderly party...The sight of such perverts...yes, I believe a woman does live there. If you could call her a woman, she is a whore, officer!” They ooze negative emotions in this short phone call to lure the police to the trailer by saying all that is forbidden, adding to the anti-social discourse of Divine’s lifestyle. When the police eventually arrives, Crackers warns everyone at the party and the company hides inside of the trailer. When the officers sneak around the premise and close in on the trailer, the crowd burst out with weapon and start to assault the policemen. Among all, we see Divine with her newly gifted meat cleaver swinging around, with the ribbon still attached. The policemen are no match for the blood lusted crowd and are being assaulted to death with baseball bats, knives and other weaponry. We even see the aforementioned Nazi guest shooting them with a hunting rifle. When they are down, Divine’s invitees start to eat them with smiles and laughter, clearly enjoying the cannibalized meal (Figure 5). When the meal is finished, Divine and her family says goodbye to her guests with hugs and kisses, indicating a lovely time they must have had.

The way this massacre is shot is again a way to scare off audience members as it throws them right into the feast. The same erratic camera movements and jazzy rock and roll music as during the opening of the presents suggests enjoyment

Post-Queer Desires: A Contemporary Queer Discourse in Pink Flamingos