The late muse of director John Waters, Divine delighted in inspiring outrage and disgust on and off display screen. Nevertheless from The Little Mermaid to Chappell Roan, he has left a giant impression on well-liked tradition
Divine was a drag queen like no different. Within the Seventies and Eighties, lengthy earlier than RuPaul’s Drag Race introduced the artwork kind into the mainstream, this outrageous actor, singer and cultural disruptor was blazing a path that is still extremely influential as we speak. “We have seen Divine’s work bleed into style, music and movie, significantly by the trashy aesthetic he pioneered with director John Waters,” says Jake Corridor, writer of Shoulder to Shoulder: A Queer Historical past of Solidarity, Coalition and Chaos. This 12 months, Divine’s signature drag make-up – pencil-thin eyebrows painted in a wickedly excessive arch – has been referenced by Rihanna and breakout pop star Chappell Roan. Sharing photographs of her Divine-inspired look, Roan quoted a well-known line from the star’s 1972 movie Pink Flamingos: “Filth is my politics! Filth is my life!”
When Divine and Waters met as youngsters in suburban Baltimore, the fledgling director embraced him as a muse. Divine, who was born Harris Glenn Milstead, was already dabbling in drag – on one event, he arrived at his girlfriend’s home for a date dressed as Elizabeth Taylor, his idol. However Waters gave him the drag title Divine, and inspired his pal to turn into braver and extra provocative in how he offered himself. They went on to make six cult movies collectively, together with 1974’s wickedly entertaining Feminine Bother, which was launched 50 years in the past as we speak.
On this hilarious and transgressive romp, Divine provides what many followers take into account to be his most interesting efficiency because the morally bankrupt and totally horrifying Daybreak Davenport. She begins the movie as a teenage tearaway and ends it as a low-rent movie star who acquires notoriety by killing a number of viewers members throughout a nightclub efficiency. It is a daring swing pulled off with aplomb by Divine, who referred to himself as “he” even when he was in drag – a pronoun alternative that might be deemed uncommon on the queer scene as we speak.
On the film’s denouement, Davenport tells us from her electrical chair: “I would prefer to thank all these great individuals who have been variety sufficient to examine me within the newspaper and watch me on the tv information reveals. With out all of you, my profession would have by no means gotten this far.” Waters was satirising the general public’s rising urge for food for true crime tales and, in a approach, anticipating the tawdry debasement of movie star that might comply with within the actuality TV period. Waters had a deliciously twisted thoughts from the beginning, however Divine was the right co-conspirator: a real performing expertise who was recreation for something. Of their earlier film, 1972’s Pink Flamingos, Divine made every of them infamous for all times by consuming precise canine faeces on digicam. It is probably the most stunning and nauseating scenes in cinema historical past.
Waters usually wryly described Divine as “probably the most lovely girl on the earth… virtually”. Nothing about his aggressive drag persona and outlandish picture was speculated to be fairly or palatable. “Divine all the time delighted in disgusting his viewers, and he was really unafraid of ugliness,” says Corridor, who factors to the stunning “shaved again hairline” he wore in Pink Flamingos as a major instance of the way in which he flouted the principles of “polished, high-femme drag”. Corridor additionally notes that Divine was “one of many first drag superstars to not simply embrace their fatness, however actually put on it as a badge of honour with a snarl on their face”.
Juanita MORE!, a drag queen who has been performing in San Francisco for 3 a long time, says Divine was a “trailblazer” within the Seventies as a result of he supplied a raucous different to the extra staid “feminine impersonators” – as they have been then recognized – who appeared on community tv. “Divine stood out as a result of he [personified] loud, trashy glamour and did issues his approach,” MORE says. Jacob Broomfield, writer of Drag: A British Historical past, argues that “Divine’s fashion of drag would nonetheless be thought-about contemporary as we speak [because] it is a bargain-bin riposte” to the extra “polished” appears to be like offered by many, although not all, contestants on RuPaul’s Drag Race.
Shocking impacts
This enduring relevance is particularly exceptional provided that Divine died of coronary heart failure in March 1988, aged simply 42. In an obituary, Individuals journal hailed him as “the drag queen of the century”, however it could have been unattainable then to foretell a few of the shocking methods through which Divine would proceed to permeate the mainstream. A 12 months after his dying, Disney launched an animated movie adaptation of The Little Mermaid that featured a voluptuous, garishly glamorous sea witch known as Ursula. Animator Rob Minkoff confirmed that Divine was a direct affect on the character when he instructed Vogue final 12 months that he disregarded a script word that described Ursula as a slim, Joan Collins-like determine.
Minkoff defined that as a result of “Divine appeared like such a terrific, larger-than-life character”, it appeared “like a humorous and quirky thought” to attract Ursula “extra like a drag queen”. When Disney remade The Little Mermaid as a 2023 live-action film Ursula was portrayed by Melissa McCarthy, who stated she “completely introduced” Divine’s “humour” to the function – in addition to his assertion eye make-up.
Sadly, Divine’s first actual style of mainstream movie success got here simply three weeks earlier than his dying. Launched in February 1988, John Waters’ breakout hit Hairspray was his most accessible movie but at this level: a sweetly subversive comedy a few Nineteen Sixties teenager, Tracy Turnblad (Ricki Lake), who rallies towards racial segregation. Writing in The Spectator journal on the time, Hilary Mantel praised Divine’s “very humorous” efficiency as Tracy’s supportive mom Edna. Divine’s witty however empathetic flip is such an integral a part of Hairspray’s daffy alchemy that subsequent diversifications have invariably solid a male actor within the function. In 2003, Harvey Fierstein received a Tony Award for portraying Edna within the authentic Broadway manufacturing of Hairspray the stage musical, whereas John Travolta performed her in 2007’s film model of that present.
Divine additionally influenced one other hit Broadway musical, 2013’s Kinky Boots, which was tailored by Fierstein and Cyndi Lauper from a 2005 British movie of the identical title. Each comply with Charlie, the proprietor of a struggling English shoe manufacturing unit who recruits Lola, a sharp-tongued drag queen, to assist him attain a distinct segment market – male drag performers in want of outsize high-heeled footwear. The movie’s script was co-written by Geoff Deane, a screenwriter and musician whose earlier credit included penning Divine’s 1984 single You Suppose You are a Man.
Deane tells the BBC that “nobody has actually noticed this connection earlier than”, however says one “undoubtedly” knowledgeable the opposite. “The producers wished a movie a few manufacturing unit, however I knew it additionally wanted a personality from that [drag] world,” Deane remembers. “I all of the sudden considered Divine and different folks I would met on the scene, and tried to invent a personality that rolled all of it into one – you realize, sassy with a wise mouth. That grew to become Lola.”
His musical legacy
Although Divine made his greatest splash as an actor, he additionally carved out a noteworthy music profession. He wasn’t precisely a pure singer, however his sassy sprechgesang (converse singing) vocal fashion proved match for Hello-NRG music, an uptempo offshoot of disco that grew to become well-liked on the homosexual scene within the early Eighties.
After Divine got here to worldwide prominence because of his John Waters movies and an acclaimed stage function in 1976’s Ladies Behind Bars, a camp jail comedy that crammed theatres in New York and London, he started moonlighting as a nightclub act. His intentionally combative act concerned hurling insults at an adoring, primarily homosexual viewers, however Divine’s pal and supervisor Bernard Jay realised this could possibly be fleshed out with disco numbers. In 1982, Divine launched two Hello-NRG singles that made the US Dance Membership Songs chart, Native Love (Step by Step) and Shoot Your Shot, each produced by one of many style’s innovators, Bobby Orlando.
Two years later, he scored an excellent better success with You Suppose You are a Man, a Hello-NRG stomper written by Deane and produced by Inventory Aitken Waterman. On the time, this bold songwriting and manufacturing trio – Mike Inventory, Matt Aitken and Pete Waterman – have been comparatively unknown, however they went on to turn into the UK’s foremost hitmakers of the late Eighties and early Nineties, crafting smashes for Bananarama, Donna Summer season, Kylie Minogue and lots of extra.
Deane says he wrote the tune “with somebody like Gloria Gaynor in thoughts” however Divine’s rambunctious vocal turned it into one thing “much more authentic” that grew to become a UK High-20 hit. When Divine carried out it on the nation’s main music present, High of the Pops, Deane says it sparked “probably the most public outrage because the Intercourse Pistols have been round” within the late Seventies. Even 40 years on, Corridor says “it is such a wild viewing expertise to see a ballsy, fats drag queen in a skintight gown on one of many nation’s hottest reveals”.
It’s usually reported that Divine was subsequently “banned” from High of the Pops after the BBC obtained “1000’s” of complaints alleging obscenity, one thing the star alluded to in an interview, although nobody related with the present has ever publicly confirmed this. Deane says he “by no means actually understood” why some viewers have been offended by Divine’s efficiency as a result of his shtick wasn’t far faraway from “pantomime”, a British theatrical kind that includes male actors enjoying outré feminine characters. Nonetheless, he additionally notes that the mainstream viewers of the time have been in all probability unaccustomed to seeing a person in drag on a primetime present, particularly one who was “so unashamed about being obese”.
Ian Wade, writer of 1984: The 12 months Pop Went Queer, believes that Divine’s collaboration with Inventory Aitken Waterman was musically important as a result of it was “the right advert” for them. You Suppose You are a Man was the primary UK High-75 hit produced by the trio, and together with Hazell Dean’s No matter I Do (Wherever I Go), a concurrent Hello-NRG single which in addition they produced, it “straight impressed” fast-rising pop band Useless or Alive to hunt them out. In 1985, Inventory Aitken Waterman produced a Useless or Alive providing, You Spin Me Spherical (Like a Document), that grew to become the primary of the staff’s 13 UK quantity ones.
In Broomfield’s eyes, Divine’s Hello-NRG success additionally helped to pave the way in which for “subsequent membership hits by drag artists together with RuPaul’s Supermodel”, which grew to become a Billboard Sizzling 100 hit in 1993. All of the whereas, You Suppose You are a Man has remained a brilliantly kitsch queer anthem. Final 12 months, it was coated in suitably club-ready style by Girl Jezzika, a London-based singer-songwriter who hails Divine as a “main affect” as a result of he was “all the time so outrageous and on the market”.
Nonetheless, on the time of his dying, Divine was specializing in his performing profession with a specific view to enjoying extra male characters. Sadly, he died the day earlier than he was on account of tape a visitor spot as Uncle Otto on the favored US sitcom Married… with Kids. As a result of Divine’s life was so cruelly lower brief, we’ll by no means understand how a lot additional he might have pushed himself into the mainstream. After I interviewed John Waters for AnOther journal in 2022, he opined that if Divine have been alive as we speak, he can be a daily choose on RuPaul’s Drag Race dressed “as a person”.
In the identical interview, Waters argued that “each drag queen now has been influenced by Divine” as a result of “all of them have an perspective” and “a sure rage in them”. In a approach, this could possibly be the important thing to Divine’s continued enchantment. In 2024, 36 years after his dying, he’s nonetheless reminding us that drag is an artwork kind rooted in radical protest. “His drag was inherently political and the ‘filth is my politics’ slogan positively informs a few of the underground drag scene as we speak,” Corridor says.
On the similar time, Divine is able to inspiring all the things from mainstream cinema and pop to high-end style from past the grave. In 2020, luxurious style home Loewe collaborated with the star’s property on an exhibition and capsule assortment that paid “homage to Milstead’s life and artistry as Divine”. All of it provides as much as an interesting, multifaceted legacy that spreads, a bit like Ursula’s tentacles, into many alternative areas of popular culture. Even now, every time life feels beige or boring, we will all be roused by somewhat Divine intervention.
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