Waters’s stylish rebellion

The director of “Pink Flamingos” and “Hairspray” learned how to shock people at a young age.

John Waters learned how to shock people at a young age, said John Jurgensen in The Wall Street Journal. “When I was a kid, my parents were a little uptight because the things I was interested in weren’t the proper things for a 6-year-old,” says the director of Pink Flamingos and Hairspray. “It wasn’t, ‘Isn’t that nice that he wants an encyclopedia?’ I wanted to look up heroin addiction. I used to come home from kindergarten and tell my mom there was a weird kid in our class, and he only drew with black crayons. But that kid was me. I was creating my own character, I guess.” He wishes that today’s young bohemians would put a similar level of thought into their acts of rebellion. “When I was young there were beatniks. Hippies. Punks. Gangsters. Now you’re a hacktivist. Which I would probably be if I were 20. Shuttin’ down MasterCard,” says Waters, 65. “But there’s no look to that lifestyle! Besides just wearing a bad outfit with bad posture. Has WikiLeaks caused a look? No! If your kid comes out of the bedroom and says he just shut down the government, it seems to me he should at least have an outfit for that. Get a look!”

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