the hairspray movie would have been good if it was about black people speaking for themselves and dancing for themselves because rn it looks like a bunch of white people giving each other shoulder pats for being more inclusive or thinking more inclusive when it should have been the default in the first place omg
thank you.
aha i’m glad someone put this so succinctly. full disclosure, that movie is A HUGE INDULGENT PLEASURE OF MINE and “you can’t stop the beat” never fails to brighten my day. but this is definitely completely true.
although, i do kind of dig that the movie changed the ending — in the musical (i didn’t know this until i looked it up) tracy wins miss hairspray, which is bullshit and made me really mad at the musical (which i have never seen), little inez winning = 100% better. BUT that is obvs not enough to mitigate its other sins.
Agreed, but I think the 2008 Hairspray movie was garbage. (I did like Little Inez winning). But I WILL SAY that in the original John Waters movie there was more ironic self-consciousness about the way blackness/black music/black liberation was a route for Tracy finding popular acceptance. (My pet theory is that it was kind of a response to Dirty Dancing - which came out the year before - that didn’t erase the people of colour who actually made the music and dance styles. I gave a paper on this once.)
