A Dirty Shame

Part of the special series JOHN WATERS: THE RESPECTABLE YEARS

Paige: “Admit to God… you are a whore.”
Sylvia Stickles: “I’m a whore.”
Paige: “Good. Now make a list of all the people you’ve slept with and apologize to their parents.”

In a quiet suburban neighborhood in Baltimore, a bizarre culture war spirals out of control: on one side, the “Neuters,” who view any form of sexuality with suspicion; on the other, the “Sexual Outlaws,” whose fetishes have become uncontrollable after head injuries. The prudish Sylvia Stickles (Tracey Ullman) finds herself thrust onto the side of unrestrained desire after an accident—and the neighborhood is turned upside down.

John Waters stages this conflict as a garish farce about moral panic, body politics, and the fear of other people’s desires. The humor is deliberately crude, the characters exaggerated, and the escalation follows a logic that only makes sense within one of his films.