Googling Netflix turns up 700+ ghits for “camp classic” and 13000+ ghits for “cult classic”. I am not sure I can tell the difference between a camp classic and a cult classic.
Do you know when to use “camp classic” and “cult classic”?
I’m not sure if this is how it is always used, but in my opinion:
‘Cult classic’ means that there is a small, vocal core of fans who earnestly, sincerely believe that the movie (or whatever) is one of the best ever.
‘Camp classic’ often suggests there are more fans, but their opinion is more characterized by one of the following phrases: “It’s so bad it’s great”, “It’s silly but makes me laugh”, or “It’s a guilty pleasure.”
A cult movie can be legitimately great; a campy one usually has something (or everything) wrong with it, but that’s what makes it so lovable.
Cult movies are those which were never all that popular initially, but over time have accreted a following of very enthusiastic fans. Like Barton Fink.
Camp classics… well, they’re campy and silly, like Rocky Horror Picture Show. They may have been fairly successful at the time of release, like Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Their camp might be somewhat unintentional, like Spartacus. But whatever they do, they do it till its over the top.
A cult classic turns up 13000 hits. On the other hand, a camp classic actually does turn up 700 ghits.
My idea of camp is taking the worst idea you can image and giving it the best treatment. Cult is an idea that appeals to a selected group, and can be done medicore or badly.
They’re not mutually exclusive, first of all. Rocky Horror is both a camp classic and a cult classic.
A camp classic is usually very self-consciously over-the-top. It’s reaching for the grand gesture, it knows it, and most importantly, it lets you know that it knows it. The Billy Wilder Sunset Boulevard doesn’t have that last bit, so it’s not a camp classic…Norma’s breakdown is played straight. Every single allusion to Sunset Boulevard on a TV show, or another movie, or whatever, seems to feel the need to camp it up to completely unbelievable levels, so most people who haven’t seen the original SB think that the movie itself is camp.
They don’t mean the same thing at all, though it’s possible to be both.
A “cult classic” is something (a movie, or whatever) that has a “cult following”: it’s not particularly popular or well-known among the general public, but there’s a relatively small group of fans among whom it is very popular and highly regarded. It may be an acquired taste or have niche appeal, or it may just be undeservedly obscure.
A “camp classic” is a classic of camp.
Or, alternately, taking the best idea you can imagine and giving it the worst treatment, as in Glen or Glenda.
To me, that is cheesy.
An interesting case would be (the original) The Evil Dead. On the one hand, it was a low budget horror flick with lashings of black humour and horrible special effects - a camp classic.
On the other hand, it was a low budget horror flick that managed to be scary as hell, and had the interesting facet that the hero, Ash, wasn’t stupid. Unlike almost every other horror flick ever, Ash constantly reacts as a non-moron. Girlfriend back from the dead, and all horny and lovey? behead her with a shovel, don’t be stupid. As a result, there was a hardcore group of fans who liked the film for its virtues, as well as its faults, making it - a cult classic.
Ignorance fought – I was going to go with the way I’ve always heard them used (granted, not in film journals, but just among friends and such at parties). I always thought camp or “campy” was not specifically (roughly) “kitschy,” but more specifically with gay sub-culture. Rocky Horror Picture Show, Priscilla Queen of Desert, AbFab, and cult was a superset of camp film/fiction.
I guess I was wrong. That’s the way I always heard it, though.
ETA and Glen or Glenda is not a terriblemovie – hey, it’s awful, it’s sinful, it’s shocking and corrupting, but look what the man had to work with? That lead actor? Just awful! 
G or G is a very odd film, for many reasons: to date, it is the *only *movie that accurately (and sympathetically) differentiates between being gay, being a transvestite, and being transgender. And it is also unintentionally hi-larious. “Pool da string!”
As I understand it cult identifies and resists the taste of the mass audience, by investing and glorifying the obscure. While camp revels in transforming or (re)appropriating (mass audience) movies [it’s more process oriented].
Huh. For me, cheesy is a sign of trying too hard and being inauthentic. And it’s never intentional. In contrast, camp is almost always intentional, and, while also inauthentic, the only trying going on is someone trying to be funny.
For example, someone singing a sappy ballad is being cheesy, but not campy. Someone who is intentionally making a bad film is campy, but not cheesy (unless that’s how they are making the film bad). And an unintentional bad film is only campy because there’s a cult following for watching it “ironically.”
Plus, you can’t be campy without being funny. You definitely can with cheesiness.
Same here. I think the distinction blurred in the 1980s.
“Camp” is usually centered around a beautiful woman (possibly with one masculine physical characteristic) whom gay men will want to dress like (See: Cher, Julie Newmar, Barbra Streisand, Joan Crawford,et al), or it will have an overtly homoerotic male relationship at its center. The appeal to gay sensibilities is its defining factor.
“Cult” has built-in snob appeal: It’s unpopular to the general public, because only the chosen few can truly appreciate it.
A movie can certainly be both, but they are qualities distinct from one another.
That might have been true when Susan Sontag first made the concept public in the '60s, but even then it was being appropriated to mainstream entertainment (eg: Adam West’s Batman, which was a bit sissy at times but mostly relied on over-the-top melo-comic cliffhangers).
Has there been any move in academia to reclaim camp (as there has been with other creative forms) as intrinsically gay territory?
I’m too far on the fringes of academia to say. Still, when anything is described as “campy,” it invariably suggests a Charles Nelson Reilly silliness or a drag queen sensibility (like Lady Gaga). It’s not JUST gay; Brokeback Mountain wasn’t campy, for instance. It’s more like a gay comedic sensibility, like Brenda Starr in its heyday, or the first season of Desperate Housewives.