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CAMP

posted 16 years ago by HijodelCid
5 replies | jump to latest

I have lived in the USA since 1980, and I have come to fairly understand American idiosyncracies that perplex most foreigners. One American idiosyncracy that does perplex me is CAMP. Women pictures such as THE WOMEN and star vehicles of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford are camp. The musicals of Busby Berkeley are camp. The historical dramas of Cecil Blount De Mille are camp. The BATMAN TV show is camp. The 1976 KING KONG is camp. The TV shows WONDER WOMAN and CHiPS--a very big hit in Erik Estrada's home country, Puerto Rico--are camp. Drag queens such as those of the movie THE ADVENTURES OF PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT are camp. Elvira, Mistress of the Dark and her horror movies are camp.
Damn it all, what the Bloody Hell is this freak thing called CAMP which has been around all my life but whose meaning totally escapes and mystifies me??????????!!!!!!!!!! And what do moviemakers and creators of TV shows have to do in order to spare their movies and shows from being scarlet-letter-branded as camp???!!!???!!!

God is subtle, but He is not malicious. (Albert Einstein)

[–] HijodelCid 16 years ago

As far as I can make it out, camp is a smartass attitude of making fun of a whole bunch of things that are not funny. Being a professional cartoonist, I definitely know better than to be a frivolous airhead who pretends to believe that serious things are good only for witless tasteless mockery.

God is subtle, but He is not malicious. (Albert Einstein)

[–] HijodelCid 12 years ago

Look up BELIANIS at www.deviantart.com for an assortment of my cartoons.

God is subtle, but He is not malicious. (Albert Einstein)

[–] Aulic Exclusiva 12 years ago

Camp—noun

1. something that provides sophisticated, knowing amusement by virtue of its being exaggeratedly mannered or stylized, self-consciously artificial and extravagant, or teasingly vulgar and sentimental.

2. a person who adopts a teasing, theatrical manner, especially for the amusement of others.

verb (used without object)

3. Also, camp it up. to speak or behave in a playfully seductive or extravagantly theatrical manner.

adjective

4. campy: camp Hollywood musicals of the 1940s.

Origin: 1905–10; perhaps dial. camp impetuous, uncouth person; hence, slightly objectionable, effeminate, homosexual; in some senses probably special use of camp 1 brothel, meeting place of male homosexuals

Camp was once an in-joke of gay men: WE understood the humour in some of these silly Holliwood movies, while the hicks just took them seriously, or missed the irony of the exaggerations.

I bet you most teen age boys do not get the gay camp in, say, Batman movies.

Scostatevi profani! Melpomene son io...

[–] verbumctf 12 years ago

The artists you mention from the 40's didn't think they were producing 'camp'.

They were aware of sub-texts and irony, of social criticism by implication (none of which is camp).

'Camp' is a strategy of displacing values. It was practised by homosexuals as a kind of surepticious defence when homosexuality was considered a sin, a crime and/or a disease by the majority: these free thinking homosexuals undercut the judgments of the majority by inverting their values.

[Is this all too butch to take in?]

Read Robert Duncan's 'The Homosexual in Society' (from the 50's, an essay against 'camp' and the homosexual's seeing himself as superior to the majority).

Then read Susan Sontag's famous 60's essay 'On Camp' which endows camp with a particular redeeming value.

Sontag's essay online:http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/theory/Sontag-NotesOnCamp-1 964.html

Nowadays, with the 'threat'(?) of homosexual 'lifestyles' getting accepted in mainstream culture, I notice a homophobe backlash tendancy to use 'camp' and 'gay' to discredit (contact wrestling as an--ugh--'gay' sport', camp 'branded' as you describe...).

Ignis principium omnium rerum

[–] Aulic Exclusiva 12 years ago

The artists you mention from the 40's didn't think they were producing 'camp'.

Sometimes no, sometimes I am not so sure.

That now famous musical scene of Jane Mansfield and a full swimming pool of about 200 gay men in speedoes CANNOT have been fully serious, ever.

Scostatevi profani! Melpomene son io...