How is it that “campy” became a synonym for “gay?” Think about it: John Waters’ movies are referred to as “campy.” Freddie Mercury’s stage act was “campy.” The Village People were a “campy disco novelty.”
I have two questions: one, who decided that camp=gayness; and two, where did they go to camp? :eek:
(Short version: It’s always meant that. News to me. I just thought it meant 'exaggerated." Like how Army of Darkness is funny.)
I always took it to mean something more along the lines of cultish (ie RHCP) of course that dosen’t make sense when you watch a making of/behind the scenes and the director/actors talk about how campy the film is. If it meant cultish, well, you really don’t strive for cult status, it just sort of happens.
But that still what I understood it to mean.
Campy means gay? New to me. I always thought it meant so lame that it is good. Like the original Batman movies with the shark repellant. Now THAT’S campy!
As a former Boy Scout I am a little taken aback that you associate being gay with it . Neither group deserves the disrespect . I learned some of the most important lessons of my life while in that institution such as being prepared , wilderness survival , sailing , rowing, canoing , I could go on ad infinitum. Please don’t take offense but please respect both parties involved. It’s the right thing to do.
It’s not so much that “campy” means “gay”, as it is that the generally known classic “gay” sensibility is camp. You’re reversing the influence here.
You’re kidding, right? Am I being whooshed?
I don’t think you’re being wooshed, but I got wooshed by the OP. Telling a Boy Scout joke = being gay? Boy Scout’s camp so should automatically assume that the phrase, “Boy Scout” is a synonym for “campy?” WTF?
You want a Boy Scout joke, I’ll give you a Boy Scout joke:
What’s the difference between the people in my work divison and the Boy Scouts?
The Boy Scouts have adult leadership.
(edited for better punctuation)
Camp: the tragically ludicrous; the ludicrously tragic. Like when a clown dies. But more like inflatable furniture or Last Supper TV trays.
This part I agree with. The rest, no, and don’t get.
Anyway, I think there’s a sense of obviousness to camp. So a camp person would be seen as being obvious about their homosexuality (though of course one doesn’t mean the other), while the Bat-Shark Repellant is obvious in that it’s a total plot device.
Bat-Shark bashing is a hate crime, you know.
It’s not that camp is obvious, per se, but that camp is wildly and obviously ironic (in the real sense, not the Alanis sense). People who are doing camp are playing it ostensibly straight, but are obviously intending it to be ridiculous (but not necessarily funny, though there is an inherent humor in that juxtaposition). The old Batman TV show was camp. The Brady Bunch movies were camp. John Waters films are camp. Girls Will Be Girls and Die, Mommie, Die! are (brilliant) camp (and, despite the fact that all three of the latter mentions feature drag queens, those drag queens are playing straight women (“straight” in the sense of “real”, as well as of orientation)). There is really nothing in most of John Waters’s works or in GWBG or D,M,D! that makes any of them an explicitly “gay” movie, but they’re all camp.
That was an excellent joke ! I don’t have a work division but it’s because I do most of the work . I’m glad you edited . That punctuation thing is soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo annoying.
I said please don’t take offense , right ? Always there will be someone. :dubious:
A character in The Italian Job was called ‘Camp Freddy’.