Waters is the least subtle of directors, and the meaning of his movie rang out loud and clear enough to dissolve the ozone layer: In Baltimore of the early 1960s, integration had to happen, obviously for humanitarian reasons, but also to save white kids from being doomed to eternal squareness. Waters' optimism, his faith in human beings, is rooted in a sturdy practicality: He suggests that our motivation for changing the world can begin with a single dance step.

You’ve got to be kidding. What made Hairspray so great, so much fun, was that it could trivalize and get laughs out of the integration movement. It wasn’t inspirational in the sense you describe. It was inspirational in taking a somber political development off its pedastal, in saying "Yes, even this we can laugh at." And really that meant we could laugh at the whole 60's experience, and drop the sanctimonious crap that had come to surround it, that "Pipe down kid, you're in church" intonation whenever Kennedy or King, or John Lennon for that matter, was mentioned. And boy were those of us just graduating high school ready for it.

Waters’s camp sensibility reduced one of the most important events in American history to a brightly colored kitschy surface. It wasn’t about changing the world. It was about reducing everything to a joke. “I have a dream” Seaweed’s sister intones. And she was funny as hell saying it, reducing a major political statement to a cheesey sound byte. An act somewhat echoed by the shot of Penny standing in line reading Black Like Me.

I’m not saying Waters doesn’t believe in integration, or that he wants to put it down. Christopher Isherwood has written that you can only camp things that you feel inherently serious about. But it was Waters's marvellous wit, and his willingness to have fun where people aren't supposed to find fun (he's the king of bad taste, remember?) that made the movie so special. And that was the way in which it was inspirational.

You're right, Little Nell died in The Old Curiosity Shop. My bad (kind of funny to think of her slipping into various Dickens books, like Cosmia Wagner seemed to keep channelling into various Ken Russell movies).

I get the distinction between critics and reviewers, but the lines are blurry. Pauline Kael was a critic, but worked as a reviewer. That is, she reviewed new releases more than she mulled over well-known works for analysis. And she regularly gave away the plots to movies in her reviews. I think the first time she stopped was Nashville. Where, in fact, she was working as a reviewer, in the sense of really trying to drum up an audience for a particular movie, buiding up excitement and trying to create a demand (and I'll admit it: Nashville is the rare movie it would have bothered me to know the ending to).

There was a very similar movie in the late 60's called The Gay Deceivers, about two young men dodging the draft by playing gay. And the recruiting officer who didn't believe them tried to out them, so they had to move into a gay apartment house, etc.

This new movie sounds inspired by it, but with a sickly heart.

Later, in a "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" moment, Chuck addresses a crowded courtroom, explaining to the gathered yobbos that the word "faggot" is an insult. He admits he's used it himself way too often in the past, but he knows better now, and he wants them to see the light, too. "It's like 'kike' for me," he explains, and the bluntness of that particular word hits surprisingly hard.

This is the trouble with most uplift and message movies: they are inherantly false. You don't have to explain the offensiveness of "faggot" to straights. They know it's offensive. That's why they use it. Is the assumption of this movie that they don't know this is an offensive word? That somehow they've made the mistaken assumption that it's a compliment? That they use it out of some fear that if they fail to, they would somehow cause offense?

On the other hand, gays use "faggot" often enough, though in a more joking manner than the word "queer" (a gay may seriously identify himself as queer, he won't identify himself as a faggot). It isn't always a bad word, it's a bad word in context. But addressing context would confuse the point blank message, would upset the uplift. Adam Sandler being the good little boy who's not going to use the word again, and who addresses the courtroom (i.e., America) on what our standards should be, is just too saccharine for me.

For the record, I think there is absolutely nothing with a man checking out other women (or other men, case depending). I think verbal comments unasked for, like "Check out that ass!" can be crass, especially if the man's partner doesn't feel secure in the relationship. But all men look. It's part of being a man that you want to look. Wanting to look does not mean needing to touch.

My own response would probably have been a very nice form of "get over it." But I love yours. It prevents the LW from feeling helpless, and might very well help her to not feel inferior to the many women flitting past her husband's eye. I think most guys dig it when their girlfriends play along with their enjoyment of the scenery. I think it solidifies both of them in the relationship. They both know he does it. They both know they are a couple and that being a couple is valued above nailing the babe with the rack (or the dude with the package).

I suspect the ones who won't acknowledge they look are the one's to watch out for.

I think this is one of your best responses in a while, Cary.