In comparison to the other films we watched, I found that John Waters’ Desperate Living (1977) was arguably the least “road trip” and most “queer” film of the semester. While the road trip itself is only a couple of minutes, with the bulk of the film taking place in Mortville, Desperate Living was one of the most explicitly queer films of the semester, and certainly the most anti-assimilationist queer film that we saw, painting a picture of a filthy, anarchic world that grants anyone who lives on the margins of society a lawless utopia in which one can exist as the truest version of themselves, for better or for worse.
In terms of the road trip aspect, Desperate Living’s road trip is most comparable to the road trip in Happy Together, in the sense that, despite the respective road trips being short, the unintentional residences of Mortville and Argentina respectively are depicted as in-between places, as though the road trip never ended. The difference, however, is that while in Happy Together Argentina is truly an in-between place that they leave in the end, Mortville in Desperate Living eventually becomes home, turning from an in-between place that Peggy is resistant to and repulsed by into a place of liberation. This difference is also very notable in the vastly different approaches to queerness of the directors, with John Waters fully embracing queerness and Wong Kar-wai explicitly stating that despite the main characters of Happy Together being a gay couple, the film is not queer in of itself. These differing approaches to queer storytelling make the differences in the endings of the films in terms of whether or not the road trip destination becomes a home or remains a place for leaving very understandable, as a film like Happy Together demands that the relationship ends and, by extension, the relationship with the destination ends, meanwhile a film like Desperate Living demands that the fish-out-of-water characters embrace the filth and hedonism of their destination. While Happy Together illustrates a more utopian desire related to starting over in a new place and finding a future in that respect, Desperate Living turns this utopian desire into a reality, in which the characters are able to find absolute freedom and the ability to be their true selves in this new place in which societal norms and heteronormative expectations are completely absent. (Rojas, 515)
The film stands in stark contrast to many of the films we watched and is far more reminiscent of Satyricon and The Living End in the willingness to push boundaries and not shy away from portraying whatever they choose. While watching Desperate Living, you can clearly see the rejection of mainstream Hollywood and society as a whole, with each character subverting the expectations of the archetypes that they fulfill, from the Black maid archetype to the housewife archetype to the bombshell blonde. This subversion also extends to the portrayal of queerness in of itself, with the portrayal of the transmasculine character Mole being far more blatantly grotesque and disturbing than any of the other portrayals of trans people that we have seen over the course of the semester. While this portrayal of transness is intentionally shocking, it is also liberating at the same time, creating a trans character that is inherently uncomfortable to watch for cis people rather than being one of the woeful, suffering trans characters that are more comfortable to watch than liberated, immoral trans characters like Mole. This ability for queer characters like Mole to be as nasty and horrible as they want to be is rooted in the anti-assimilationist essence of Mortville. The way in which Mortville accepts anyone, no matter how depraved they may be in the eyes of “normal” people, extends to queer people as a whole, creating an isolated world that allows for free expression of anything, including gender and sexuality. In turn, this free expression also allows for queer people to not have to act as palatable as possible in order to be accepted into straight society, as there is no straight society to be accepted into. This lack of a society to assimilate to is one of the major aspects of what makes Mortville a utopia, as there is no need to fight to liberate oneself in a society in which you are already liberated.
Additionally, I felt that the movie was so explicitly queer that it made the queerness of the characters into what is essentially a nonissue, existing as just another part of their lives. While in many of the films we watched the gay sex that the characters had with one another was a major part of the film and the meaning behind it, the gay sex in Desperate Living simply is. In the extended lesbian sex scene in the film, the fact that the characters are having gay sex is portrayed as merely being one of many of the liberating acts, and doesn’t even come close to being one of the more shocking scenes in the film. In many ways, the queerness of the characters’ sexualities and genders are secondary to the queerness of their lifestyles, which makes sense in the context of the queer community and culture of the time that John Waters was living and creating in, with queerness being rooted significantly in the lifestyles themselves and not just sexuality and gender. However, it is not as though queerness is not related to liberation at all. For instance, in the case of Peggy, her exploration of her attraction to women, especially with her relationship with Grizelda, plays into the idea of lesbianism as being a utopian existence in of itself, as the very act of embracing one’s lesbianism liberates you from a large aspect of patriarchy: being in relationships with and having sex with men. (Jagose, 2) The moment that Grizelda killed Peggy’s husband, her liberation from the constraints of the suppressive norms of white middle class Baltimore began, and her decision to embrace the queerness of Mortville was a crucial nail in that coffin.
The setting of Mortville is so absurd and out of the bounds of societal norms that it would be stranger to not have queer characters than to have them, which plays into its existence as something of a queer utopia, not in spite of the filth and depravity, but because of it. In the world of John Waters, filth and depravity are power and liberation, and inherently prevent assimilation into the status quo, creating a world for queerness to be embraced and celebrated. In order for a place to be considered a proper utopia, it must be free from the restraints and expectations of society, allowing for those within that utopia to be the people that they are, regardless of past actions, proclivities, or identity. While Baltimore is, as Mole says, a “town without pity,” Mortville is a town without judgment, where one can find happiness while existing as their true, unfiltered self, which is the most fundamental trait of a utopian society.
Bibliography
Jagose, Annamarie. “Lesbians are Elsewhere.” Lesbian Utopics, Routledge, 1994, p. 1-24.
Rojas, Carlos. “Queer Utopias in Wong Kar-Wai’s Happy Together.” A Companion to Wong Kar-Wai, 25 Dec. 2015, pp. 508–521, https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118425589.ch23.
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