Superstars Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey may be grabbing headlines offering online encouragement to college graduates this season, but John Waters did the job this week, dispensing discordant wisdom to designers and other artists graduating from The School of Visual Arts. The ceremony, usually held at Radio City Music Hall, featured far flung speakers, Waters himself at a podium with curtain backdrop from his home in Baltimore, setting of his most famous satiric films including his underground homage to filth, Pink Flamingos, and his breakout commercial hit, Hairspray. A dapper dresser in brocade jackets, Waters wore a traditional gown, cap, and latex gloves, all in black, his signature pencil thin ‘stache under an artsy mask. Pulling it off, he consoled the graduates who’d been robbed of a “normal” graduation: “If you do die tomorrow, at least you’ll have a college degree.”

No moaning, he said, artists are magicians. Embrace not working. We start over, create new career possibilities, in a new way. We can train the privileged to do without. Who cares about what celebrities do in quarantine? Nurses are the new heroes. You are stars too. Find new ways to be funny. The cutting edge dulls in time. Become a virus. Invade the cells of intolerance, make others sick of sexual misbehavior. Vomit out the racism you learned from ancestors. Bring back the middle class. Climb That Wall Into Mexico!

John Waters has a long history with SVA. Back in 1977, he screened his Pink Flamingos sequel, Desperate Living, at 9 AM in the school’s amphitheater. Celebrating the subversive, one scene features a lesbian couple, one of whom has a penis surgically attached as a surprise to the other, surprised indeed. Reviled, her partner insists the appendage be removed. How far can this gag go? The boner, now tossed out a window, became lunch for a passing by dog. As President David Rhodes conferred upon him a Doctor of Fine Arts, Waters thanked everyone for their support of a lunatic: Just call me Doctor Dirt.