Please explain Camp to me.

[Ilsa_Lund]

@lissener

Camp, IMHO, was the first inkling of postmodernism, long before postmodernism. It’s an acknowledgment of the context, and not just of the content, of a piece of art (“art” defined as broadly as possible here). Camp is an acknowledgment that HOW you say something is just as significant as WHAT you’re saying; that one can have good intentions, and even good content, but shoddy presentation. Camp is those instances when the content and the context are at odds, or when the artistic intention and the artistic result are at odds. Specifically, when those odds create a dissonance that lends itself to ironic interpretation.

Pure camp (making this up as I go along) is Ed Wood: he doesn’t know he’s camp. Pure camp, i.e., is in the eye of the beholder: when you watch Ed Wood you supply your own palimpsest of irony, as Wood had no ironic intentions while he was creating his art.

Applied camp (still making this up) is Lypsinka or Peewee Herman or Verhoeven’s Showgirls: camp intentionally lent an ironic tone by the artist. The audience receives rather than supplies the irony: the artist examines the artistic dissonance of other artists, and shares that external perspective with the audience.

Any value in any of that? Anyone?

Yeah, that was kinda what I was looking for. How about examples to discuss?

What I want to know is, and this will help me immensely, why Elinor Glyn is “High Camp” in It and not just plain sucky?

Is An American Werewolf In London camp?

[Ilsa_Lund]

What is the difference between “camp” and “suck?”

[lissener]

what’s the difference between good art and bad art? eye of the beholder.

Or, just ask me: if everybody says it’s bad, but I say it’s good if you get it, then I’m probly right and everyone else is probly wrong. (Cf. Showgirls.)

[Ilsa_Lund]

@lissener

what’s the difference between good art and bad art? eye of the beholder.

Or, just ask me: if everybody says it’s bad, but I say it’s good if you get it, then I’m probly right and everyone else is probly wrong. (Cf. Showgirls.)

Ahhh.

I guess I’ll rent that next week. About a year ago, it was in the $5.88 bin at Wal-Mart.

[lissener]

Dude, if you’re sixteen, you’ll have to get someone else to rent it for you: it’s NC17.

[Ilsa_Lund]

@lissener

Dude, if you’re sixteen, you’ll have to get someone else to rent it for you: it’s NC17.

Well, I don’t live alone. Actually, a year ago I bought the NC-17 rated director’s cut of Requiem For A Dream from Sam Goody (Not something I’d normally admit to owning, but hey, I was young and didn’t know any better.:)) Then last week, Wal-Mart wouldn’t sell me Psycho. :rolleyes:

It isn’t an issue.
Anyone interested in threads on the following films? (I’m getting them next week, I’ll start threads as I watch them):
The Crowd – King Vidor, 1928
Broken Blossoms – D.W. Griffith, 1919
Intolerance – D.W. Griffith, 1916
The Scarlet Empress – Josef von Sternberg, 1934
The Battleship Potemkin – Sergei Eisenstein, 1925
The Squaw Man – D.W. Griffith, 1914
Orphans Of The Storm – D.W. Griffith, 1921
Ben-Hur – Sidney Alcott, 1907
Ben-Hur – J.J. Cohn, 1925
Greed – Erich von Stroheim, 1924
The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari – Robert Wiene, 1919
Nanook Of The North – Robert J. Flaherty, 1922
The Thief Of Baghdad – Raul Walsh, 1924
The Big Parade – King Vidor, 1925

[Dr.Rieux]

So, what’s the difference between Camp and Kitsch?

[Ilsa_Lund]

If I interpret Sontag correctly, they are pretty much the same.

[lissener]

These are some of my favorite films of all time:

The Crowd – King Vidor, 1928
Broken Blossoms – D.W. Griffith, 1919
The Scarlet Empress – Josef von Sternberg, 1934
The Battleship Potemkin – Sergei Eisenstein, 1925
Greed – Erich von Stroheim, 1924
Nanook Of The North – Robert J. Flaherty, 1922
The Big Parade – King Vidor, 1925

[Ilsa_Lund]

@lissener

These are some of my favorite films of all time:

The Crowd – King Vidor, 1928
Broken Blossoms – D.W. Griffith, 1919
The Scarlet Empress – Josef von Sternberg, 1934
The Battleship Potemkin – Sergei Eisenstein, 1925
Greed – Erich von Stroheim, 1924
Nanook Of The North – Robert J. Flaherty, 1922
The Big Parade – King Vidor, 1925

Well, I’ll start threads on them, as weel as Starship Troopers and Showgirls when I get them.

[Fang]

@Ilsa_Lund

masturbatory and overprosaic … pseudo-semi-intellectual explication

Well that’s what you get for reading Susan Sontag.

[Bryan_Ekers]

“You know, I’ve attempted to enjoy your family on a personal level, on an ironic level, as a novelty, as camp, as kitsch, as cautionary example…nothing works.”

-Hugh St. John Alastair Parkfield, Lisa Simpson’s future fiancé.

[AnnaLivia]

Susan Sontag should be sealed in a heavy-duty postal sack with a rabid Early-Modern period lecturer. Or subjected to the death of a one-million very deep paper cuts. After someone colours in the damn skunk-stripe with a Sharpie.

(sorry, she’s on my “people who have been really, really unpleasant to me” list)

On the other hand, I would just kill for a Schiaparelli embroidered with a Jean Cocteau sketch…
AL

[Eve]

@AnnaLivia

Susan Sontag should be sealed in a heavy-duty postal sack with a rabid Early-Modern period lecturer. Or subjected to the death of a one-million very deep paper cuts. After someone colours in the damn skunk-stripe with a Sharpie.

. . . Oh, let’s just beat her to death with Camille Paglia.

[AnnaLivia]

@Eve

. . . Oh, let’s just beat her to death with Camille Paglia.

That doesn’t involve nearly enough suffering…she’d just keep screetching about how she’s not a novelist, but a journalist…and moan about how few copies of her novel have sold…

Maybe I’ll force her to clean the bathroom in my flat and then whip her with the wire hanger she hung that four hundred dollar dress on…
AL

[jahsonic]

@Dr. Rieux

So, what’s the difference between Camp and Kitsch?

Hi,

This is Jan Geerinck, I posted the Sontag article on jahsonic.com

Dr. Rieux, good question

Susan Sontag goest to great lengths to explain camp

Many things in the world have not been named; and many things, even if they have been named, have never been described. One of these is the sensibility -[…] - that goes by the cult name of “Camp.”
Then she mentions kitsch twice (but does not describe it) and cult once (see above), but never explains it.

I have two definitions:

http://www.jahsonic.com/Kitsch.html
http://www.jahsonic.com/Cult.html

Yours
thanks for the link and good to meet you all.

Jan

[Kalhoun]

Ilsa Lund said,

Actually, a year ago I bought the NC-17 rated director’s cut of Requiem For A Dream from Sam Goody (Not something I’d normally admit to owning, but hey, I was young and didn’t know any better.)

Why wouldn’t you admit to owning this movie? It’s a great, great movie.
.
.
.
Camp. I’ll give you an example of Camp. Busby Berkeley’s "Golddiggers of 1934 (I could be wrong on the year). It’s the one with all the baby grand pianos in the big dance number. The pianos were dancing, thanks to men under each one, pushing them around the stage. Oh. My. Gawd. It was just sooooo over the top.

[Ilsa_Lund]

@jahsonic

Hi,

This is Jan Geerinck, I posted the Sontag article on jahsonic.com

Dr. Rieux, good question

Susan Sontag goest to great lengths to explain camp

Many things in the world have not been named; and many things, even if they have been named, have never been described. One of these is the sensibility -[…] - that goes by the cult name of “Camp.”
Then she mentions kitsch twice (but does not describe it) and cult once (see above), but never explains it.

I have two definitions:

http://www.jahsonic.com/Kitsch.html
http://www.jahsonic.com/Cult.html

Yours
thanks for the link and good to meet you all.

Jan

How on earth did you find this?

Why wouldn’t you admit to owning this movie? It’s a great, great movie.

Well, it’s too slick. It just leaves you with a hollow feeling. It doesn’t break my top 75.