Hairspray: Musical Masterpiece or Musical Mess?
Hairspray offers the hilarious tale of 1960s teenagers pursuing fame on a local Baltimore television show while exposing the racist attitudes of the media industry during the civil rights movement. Tracy Turnblad and Penny Pingleton dance their way through the film's sixties’ inspired soundtrack, evading their parents and finding love along the way. So what’s not to like about dancing teenagers in an aestheticized 1960s world, with subplots of understanding racism? Well, that would be an oversimplified account of the complexities of the portrayal of the civil rights movement in both the original 1988 adaptation of Hairspray and more recent 2007 adaptation. The films offer an unrealistically utopian ending to a time period marked by hate and segregation.
For all the musical lovers out there- the 2007 adaptation is the film for you. The musical aspect in the later adaptation is integral to the plotline and plays a much bigger role in the storytelling aspect than that of the 1988 film. We even get to see Zac Efron perform not one but two solos. If watching a heartthrob sing and dance doesn’t already have your attention- some of the big names in the film include Queen Latifah, Amanda Bynes, and last but not least John Travolta- as a middle aged housewife.
It is safe to say no one expected to see Danny Zuko play a musical housewife at any point during his career. The choice to cast a male actor in the role of Tracy’s mother, Edna Turnblad, is not unique to the more recent version of Hairspray. In the 1988 film, drag performer Divine portrays Mrs. Turnblad. These casting decisions proved to be a consistent source of humor in the films due to their ridiculousness and unexpectedness.
Everything about Edna’s character is camp. Travolta and Divine alter their voices, wear unbelievably large wigs, and have extreme costuming and makeup done to create a hyperbolic depiction of what is expected. Susan Sontag’s Notes on Camp is a must read for any pop culture lover who is seeking a deeper understanding of the extremes of the industry. Sontag (1964) provides endless definitions of camp but the most central definition is camp as the lack of sensibility (p. 1). It feels unsensible to select John Travolta for a role as a woman. This is camp.
Further, Edna Turnblad is camp for her eccentricities and oddities; the theatricality of achieving drag is inherently campy for its extreme nature (Sontag, 1964, p.7). Sontag (1964) may argue that Divine’s portrayal of Mrs. Turnblad is campier. She quotes, “Probably, intending to be campy is always harmful” (Sontag, 1964, p.7). Travolta as an inexperienced drag performer has to try harder to achieve camp, which makes it less successful in doing so.
Hairspray’s inclusion of drag performers and its utopian solution to racism in the Civil Rights era make it seem deceivingly progressive. Aspects of the 1988 adaptation of the film- beyond the issues of race which I will touch more on later- certainly did not age well in the category of political correctness. The offensive content includes but is not limited to using ‘queer’ as an insult, physcial punishment from parents towards children, and weaponizing adoption as form of bullying. It is evident that the historical context of the film production is responsible for these PC shortcomings- they did not make the cut into the 2007 adaptation. In 1988 homophobia and physically disciplining your children were less widely frowned upon. While the film is set in the even less progressive 1960s, the 2007 version provides a more filtered portrayal of these themes, which I found more digestible as a contemporary viewer.
To elaborate on the controversial themes in Hairspray, each adaptation struggles to appropriately and adequately address discrimination and segregation against black people in Baltimore in the 1960s. The 1988 film is a particularly distasteful representation of racism. I found one scene particularly difficult to watch. Tracy and Penny visit their friends in a predominantly black neighborhood and Penny Pingleton’s horribly racist mother takes it upon herself to ‘rescue’ her daughter. She is seen walking down the street screaming and running from local black families. When she goes to seek aid from a police officer and he is black, she flees from his car in terror. Mrs. Pingleton says, “Don’t you try any of your spells on me you native woman,” in reference to a woman who crosses her path. Now that you have an idea of the extreme racism present in the film, it’s important to understand why this is such an issue.
Hairspray provides an incomplete representation of black people. Scholar Stuart Hall writes about representation in media and the disservice incomplete or stereotypical representation is to racial minorities. When understood through Hall’s take, it is evident that in both adaptations Tracey is portrayed as the white savior rather than giving a full account of black struggle. Simply put, black people in the film are only seen as victims with no agency over their own liberation. Black people in Hairspray are represented as a means to a white savior end. Why aren’t black people their own liberators in the film? Hall (1997) would assess this as inauthentic representation to benefit the white viewer (p. 243).
Next time you watch Hairspray, whether it be the 1988 version, 2007 version, or a double feature, take a minute amidst the music to take a closer look at the imperfections of the film. It’s not to say you can’t enjoy the musical fun and overall aesthetic, but it’s never a bad idea to be a critical viewer.
Works Cited
Hall, S., & Nixon, S. (2013). Spectacle of Other. In Representation: Culture representation and signifying practice (pp. 225–249). essay, Open University.
Sontag, S. (1964). Notes on Camp.
Comments
Post a Comment