Female Trouble: Trashhouse

 Cormac Clune

Female trouble exists as an example of Waters's talent to translate trash into something entertaining and poignant. The film doesn’t express this pretentiously, it uses comedy and extravagance in order to drill home its point. It’s vile but dangerously entertaining. I watched it with a group of people and we all having a great time despite the terrible subject matter. It can come off as a bit jarring to transition from a rape scene to a woman getting slapped in the face with a fish. But Waters's directorial style firmly places it within camp throughout its entire runtime. At first, the film feels tonally inconsistent, but as it goes on everything clicks into place. It’s consistently balanced between being a farce and genuinely shocking. It makes sense in the world that it creates.  This is all helped by a breakneck pace with little to no filler. People are constantly saying the wildest shit, and within the film, nobody bats an eye. All of this quirkiness it treated as being regular. Things just start happening and don’t really stop until the last act of the movie. It’s here when we get a little more time to breathe, and the film slows and gets a little more serious. After watching this and pink flamingos I understand why people care about Waters films. I’ve never really seen anything like it, and it's incredibly entertaining. 

As a film, It’s a reaction to the Manson murder and the media's glorification of serial criminals. The connection explains the film being dedicated to Charles “Tex” Watson. While doing research I learned that Waters was friends with Tex and often visited him in prison. He even made a call for Tex to be released in 2009 on NPR. I still feel that the film is a rebuttal towards the media's handling of mass killers. Waters condemns Dawn Davenport's actions, but also condemn the people that create and form these psychopaths. Very few people react to Dawn as they would in the real world. They love the criminal act and go to see her in droves. They worship a terrible part of a society, and for this, they’re all complacent. This is a comparison to how the Mansons were depicted in the media. They were seen as celebrities despite the terrible things that they committed.

 Dawn isn’t a “morally” good character to begin with but becomes much worse with outside influence. Namely, the rich couple that owns the hair salon, Donna and Donald Dasher. These two characters exist as a means to further corrupt Dawn, but also to lampoon ‘high society’ artists. They secretly look down upon her and exploit her poverty in order to produce their own art. It's with this that Dawn is enabled to act on her worst impulses. In the end, they plead innocence, not out of any remorse for what they’ve done, but because they need to save themselves. They use their wealth to pay off the anti-hero aunt, she lies in order to further implicate aunt. In Female Trouble, the rich avoid consequences for their actions by using their wealth. 

This film a trash-house masterpiece and I’m sad to say I enjoyed every second of it.