Hairspray

John Waters' 1988 film Hairspray was campy, perverse, and tongue in cheek. His casting of Divine—the famous obese transsexual—as the Edna Turnblad character made clear that he was working new territory. The original Hairspray—set in the 1950s--was a silly film that gave itself some degree of respectability by using the Civil Rights movement as a faint backdrop. The main character Edna Turnblad campaigns for the right of African Americans to appear on the Corny Collins television show. The Corny Collins show is an all-white show, except for one month a day, "Negro Day," when blacks are permitted to appear. The stereotypical assumption in the film is that African Americans have life and vigor and rhythm that whites lack. Their appearance on the show becomes a blow for civil rights and a step towards redeeming a bland white culture.

The 2007 film Hairspray, based on the Broadway musical based on the Waters film, is not campy and is not perverse. Sometimes is veers towards blandness, but for the most part it is thoroughly entertaining. It is, admittedly, slightly off the beaten path as musicals go, but not too far off. Waters doesn't direct the remake, though his 1988 screenplay is the basis for the new one, and he makes a brief appearance as a flasher. The film's plot is basically the same as the original. The lead role of Tracy Turnblad is played by Nikki Blonsky, a diminutive and rotund girl who had never appeared in a film before. She is great in the film. Every time she sings she brings the film to life. This means that the film's first half, where Blonsky appears often, is livelier than the second half, where she sings and dances less frequently.

The musical Hairspray uses the Civil Rights movement in Baltimore, MD, late 1950s, as a backdrop. Tracy Turnblad is sent to detention one morning for some minor offense in the classroom. Detention is a room filled mostly by African American students. They are dancing and singing and full of life, and Tracy is immediately attracted to them. She feels that her excessive weight places her in a similarly oppressed group—she feels a natural affinity. The fact that the film mines this racial stereotype for all it is worth—the idea that African Americans have a life force that whites don't—doesn't undermine the racial message of the film—although the racial message is not especially earth breaking or revolutionary. In general, the civil rights themes make it easier for the audience to identify the good characters from the bad in this film—just in case there is any doubt. The bad guys are white and often blonde, wealthy and affluent, contemptuous of those who are not. The good guys are outsiders or African Americans or ethnics of some other sort or, like Tracy, divergent from the physical ideal.

John Travolta plays the Divine role as Edna Turnblad. He gives himself up to the role and is amusing if never quite convincing—the makeup and the fat suit never quite persuaded me. The film gives Edna much more of a role than she had in the original. Christopher Walken is his usually creepy and engaging self as Wilbur, Edna's husband.

The Corny Collins show is a fictional version of American Bandstand and other similar shows that proliferated on television during the 1950s—shows that made temporary stars out of teen-age dancers and that gave rising musical groups an opportunity to perform. One of the points of the original Waters film and of the musical remake is that these shows showed a cross-section of American youth that often wasn't representative and that was idealized for commercial purposes.

The main attribute of the film is the music, the dancing, and Nikki Blonsky. Hairspray is satisfying entertainment.