Female Trouble: Troubling Beauty and Fame

Hunter Bardin

Professor Wisniewski 

ENGL 280

October 30, 2020

    Female Trouble directed by John Waters is a film that can put many people off when they watch it. The themes and the images that are portraying themes are enough to make some members of the audience stop watching before the movie is complete. The main themes behind this film are the idea of how people can perceive celebrity, fame and beauty. While some say it is just trying to push the envelope for what was acceptable at the time, the film doesn't stop at just that. The themes is shows off, while satirical, even satire can be the basis for a critique. 

    The main character Dawn Davenport only strives for very few things in her life: fame and beauty. She is a person who sees it as something that should come easy to her and doesn't actively push herself to achieve her goal. It could also be said she is misguided in how she is supposed to achieve this goal. While she is a teenager she runs away from home and becomes a stripper, prostitute, and a thief to make ends meet and raise her daughter. All while she is doing this she doesn't forget that, to herself, that she is beautiful and that everyone thinks so as well. She surrounds herself with likeminded people that just feed her delusions and push her further into the hole she dug herself. 

    These other characters tell her things that seem to be poking fun of how celebrities live their lives. Everything is about sex and appearance and nothing else matters. Dawn refuses to let her daughter go to school, spends her money on expensive hair salon visits, and is always in full makeup. When she is attacked with acid and her face is disfigured, her "friends" tell her that she is even more beautiful than before and make up will only make it better. This could be making fun of how celebrities "see" things differently than the common folk and what the common person may think is ugly, a celebrity would say it is gorgeous. The film also points out the idea that celebrities can get away with any crime they want to. Dawn is photographed while doing evil acts like killing and cutting off a hand with an axe. At the end when she is being convicted those who she thought were allies were happy to throw her under the bus to give themselves a free ticket. While Dawn does actually become famous in her small circle, it only shows how subjective fame really is.

    Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and that statement rings true for every character in this film. Their one track minds lead them down rails that lead to their doom. For Dawn this is the electric chair, but even to the moment of her death she still boasted about her fame and how those her love her will keep her alive. In the end Female Trouble seeks to criticize the people that brought its medium fame and, while exaggerated, it does succeed in that fact.