The Distinguished Lecture Series and the LGBT Campus Center presented “This Filthy World: An Evening with John Waters” Thursday, a 90-minute stand-up comedy routine by the famous director.
The event was held at Mills Hall, due to homecoming events being held in the usual DLS location, Shannon Hall. Waters was introduced by Matt Connolly, a UW-Madison student writing his dissertation on the director’s earlier films.
Waters took the stage and welcomed the audience to what he called “the John Waters Massacre.” The label fit the performance, as Waters taunted every topic that he could in the hour-and-a-half routine. He began his speech with a trigger warning about how much he hated trigger warnings and followed it by mocking the Pope’s fake approval of gay people.
The comedic speech dealt with a myriad of topics, from racial issues in America to listing the different types of gay men, but focused on how to be “happy and filthy” from childhood to 70 years old.
In between different pop-culture references, Waters also reflected on his career in Hollywood, talking at length about Divine, a drag-queen he often worked with. Waters said that Divine was a “gentleman” off camera, and then invited the audience to “come and have sex on our grave” when he passed away.
Waters advised audience members to know and test their limits in life. Throughout his film career, he regularly tested the limits of the MPAA, battling over the ratings he received for his films. His most recent film, “A Dirty Shame,” received what Waters said is the dreaded NC-17 rating in 2004. He pushed the limits in his speech, too, by making fun of Caitlyn Jenner—but only for being a Republican reality TV star who is against gay marriage.
Hari Jost, a UW-Madison student who grew up watching Waters’ “Hairspray,” said that she liked the performance because of its uncensored nature.
“He’s not afraid to push the boundaries, to be vulgar because he is John Waters,” Jost said.
DLS director Mohan Mandali said that they were able to land such a large name for this event because they collaborated with the LGBT Campus Center. Moving forward, Mandali said that the DLS will focus on “how to bring diversity to the campus, how to bring it to the lecture series.”
