John Water’s Female Trouble (1974) is a transgressive exploration of queerness. It presents filth as liberation, preying on its audiences’ shock to attack and destroy social norms. I went to watch a re-screening; under the impression it would be slightly more festive…The friend who accompanied me left slightly traumatised, appalled that our fellow cinema-attendees had cackled so openly at scenes of graphic violence. Her reaction, and my own lingering discomfort raised an unsettling question: did Waters go too far?
The film follows Dawn Davenport, played by Divine (the drag performer Harris Glenn Milstead, who later went on to inspire Disney’s portrayal of Ursula). We first meet her with overgrown roots as a mischievous schoolgirl, and we leave her at execution via electric chair. The events that unfold in between twist stomach muscles and play with the hangnail of what disgust and glamour really mean.
Donald and Donna Dasher, a platinum-blonde, fanatical couple run a beauty salon that Dawn becomes a member of (through audition only). The pair espouse the philosophy that “crime is beauty”, and encourage Dawn to commit increasingly heinous acts of violence whilst they photograph her. Vehemently, the Dashers declare that their interest in crime is devoid of any sexual derivation, spitting that they would never be caught in sexual acts. Dawn’s behaviour is hailed as beautiful and fascinating by them, worthy of documentation and celebration. I found myself covering my eyes and whispering to my friend beside me as the violence persisted and the laughter around us erupted.
We find ourselves trapped in a paradox. To criticise the film for being too outlandish and disturbing is to criticise its success in achieving the exact effect it intended. Waters wanted his audience to confront the violence already embedded in mainstream culture’s obsession with beauty, fame, and respectability. Dawn simply makes that violence literal. When she murders for attention, she exposes what celebrity culture already demands: the destruction of authenticity, dignity, and human connection in pursuit of visibility. The Dashers’ pretentious theorising about crime-as-art mocks the gallery world’s tendency to aestheticise suffering while remaining safely distant from it.
Your disgust is the point. Waters forces his audience to confront their own complicity in the systems that create outcasts. The filth on screen, the deliberate crudeness, the transgressive sexuality, the gleeful amorality, functions as a mirror held up to polite society. In 1974, when queer people were told they could exist only if they remained respectable, invisible, and apologetic, Waters made the most unapologetic film imaginable. He gave Divine a stage not as a sympathetic victim seeking tolerance, but as a charismatic monster demanding attention. This wasn’t about positive representation; it was about refusing to ask permission to exist.
The film’s queerness extends beyond Divine’s casting. Everything is queered: gender, family, motherhood, beauty itself. Divine plays both Dawn and Earl, the father of her child, collapsing gender binaries while simultaneously parodying heterosexual dysfunction. Dawn’s pursuit of glamour through violence suggests that conventional femininity is already a kind of violence, one that demands women destroy themselves for male approval and social acceptance. By making this violence explicit and extreme, Waters reveals what’s normally concealed beneath powder and politeness. But does the transgression serve a genuine purpose, or does it tip into exploitation? I found myself wondering if the laughter at the screening constituted genuine enjoyment of cruelty. Or were those sat around me simply playing along? Female Trouble is known for its cult following, and I certainly felt that the rest of the audience were devout fans.
Waters walks a razor’s edge between critique and complicity, between using shock to illuminate and using it to titillate. Ultimately, Female Trouble is not meant to be enjoyed in any conventional sense. It is something to be picked apart days later, when the immediate revulsion fades and you can examine what disturbed you and why. The film succeeds not in spite of going too far, but because it refuses to recognise the boundary of “too far” as legitimate. For viewers in 1974, and even today, that refusal remains both the film’s greatest strength and its most troubling quality. Waters doesn’t offer easy answers or moral clarity. He offers only the uncomfortable question: if this disgusts you, what does that reveal about what you’ve learned to accept?
Image Credits – The MovieDB
