The Marvel film Guardians of the Galaxy exemplifies camp in its unusual cast of characters and zany world
Upon the publication of my first book Black Flowers I anxiously awaited the reviews as well as the reactions of my friends and family. With a short story collection that covered such a wide variety of genres and topics I was curious to see which stories really connected with people all the while fully expecting to ruffle some folk’s feathers. To my genuine surprise, the story that received the most polarizing reaction was not the one dealing with systemic racism or the one dealing with gender fluidity, but instead it was my nostalgic ode to the campy blockbuster films of my childhood titled “Pulp Mythology.”
The story is an outlandish noir/sci-fi romp contrasted within the setting of a small, Mississippi town during the Reagan Era. The entire story’s events take place over a single night as a punk rocker named Leaf searches for her missing friend, Bennie, who’s gotten in way over his head with the theft of a historical artifact involving a shadowy, ancient cult.
The story’s humorous tone and elevated action scenes are like nothing else in the collection, which most likely played a part in the polarizing response it received. Initially, several people told me it was the low point of my book (which was disappointing since it was by far the most fun for me to write), but in the time since then I’ve had some people tell me that “Pulp Mythology” was their favorite story, leading me to believe it’s more of a matter of taste rather than poor writing.
So using this story and experience as a starting point, what exactly is meant when something is called “campy” and is this style still relevant in a time where every film and novel is being praised for its commitment to “gritty realism”?
Camp: Definition and Origins
In Susan Sontag’s book of essays entitled Notes on “Camp” she says, “The essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration.” There is a “spirit of extravagance” and a bold willingness to be over-the-top, often pushing the boundaries of what’s considered good taste. She continues, “The whole point of Camp is to dethrone the serious. Camp is playful, anti-serious . . . One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious.”
In an effort to trace the origins of the camp style or aesthetic one will find a strong historical association (especially in its early years) with queerness and the gay community. Many believe the word “camp” comes from the term “se camper” used among the French gay community meaning “to pose in an exaggerated fashion.”
The 19th century writer Oscar Wilde is most often considered to be the forefather of camp. Wilde is known for his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, which caused an uproar among the prudish Victorians for its homo-eroticism, as well as for his flamboyant lifestyle, controversial opinions, and bristling sense of humor. Wilde famously commented on Charles Dickens’s novel The Old Curiosity Shop concerning the overly-sentimental and melodramatic death of a child character by saying, “one must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.” Wilde considered Dickens’s book to be an unintentional comedic masterpiece specifically because it was meant to be taken so seriously, laying the groundwork for the genre of “accidental camp comedies” of the future.
Ernest Thesiger as Dr. Pretorius in The Bride of Frankenstein
Another important link in the history of camp and gay culture is James Whales’s 1935 film The Bride of Frankenstein due to the director’s sexual orientation and the exaggerated, eccentric performance of the film’s antagonist Dr. Pretorius, portrayed by the openly bisexual actor Ernest Thesiger. Whales reportedly instructed Thesiger to play Pretorius as an “over-the-top caricature of a bitchy and aging homosexual” setting the stage for the (somewhat controversial) ‘sissy villain/queer antagonist’ trope used in innumerable films in the decades that followed.
Another, arguably the most influential, connection that camp has with the gay community is that of drag queen culture. Drag queens are (typically) gay men impersonating females in an exaggerated or caricatured manner. Drag queens rose in popularity due in large part to the campy/trashy films of writer/director John Waters. Waters’s early films, most notably Pink Flamingos, starred the drag queen icon known as Divine and were full of boundary-pushing, gross-out humor, and intentionally over-the-top acting.
John Waters and Divine at the New York premiere of Female Trouble
Camp Goes Mainstream
In the 1960s camp, both as an idea and a style, really began to take off and reach larger audiences far beyond the gay community with its most mainstream exposure being the Batman television series starring Adam West and Burt Ward. The Batman series was massively successful and influential despite what one might expect due to its cheap costumes, eccentric performances, outrageous scenarios, and hammy narration. The public’s growing awareness of tongue-in-cheek humor and irony (both important elements in intentional camp) allowed the tv series to become a hit. Camp had now become the expression of the ‘hip kids,’ thanks in part to the subversive antics of Andy Warhol in the art world and Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay “Notes on ‘Camp’” which defined the word in an academic sense for the first time.
In her essay Sontag separated camp into two general categories, “Camp is either completely naive or else wholly conscious (when one plays at being campy). In naive, or pure, Camp, the essential element is seriousness, a seriousness that fails.”
In the writing world, the acceptance of camp style into the mainstream allowed genre fiction, typically considered a “low art” and relegated to the cheap, pulp magazines of the past, to break down the barriers of the “high art” world and intermingle with the lofty concepts of literature.
A prime example is Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five which mixes the historical war novel with dark comedy and science fiction. Slaughterhouse-Five was chosen as one of the Modern Library’s 100 best novels of all time, received a fiftieth anniversary edition from Penguin’s prestigious Vintage Classics imprint, and is taught in high school English classes all while containing time-traveling aliens that resemble upright toilet plungers with a hand on top and a single green eye called Tralfamadorians.
Left: Penguin’s hardcover Vintage Classics edition of Slaughterhouse-Five; Right: an artist’s interpretation of a Tralfamadorian
As the decades passed, camp, of the naive and intentional variety, could be seen everywhere. For those looking retrospectively there were the earnest yet cheap and hastily-made horror and sci-fi films of the ‘50s, such as Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space. The dedicated cult following of “midnight movies” like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which proudly celebrated drag queens and the great B movies of yesteryear, further cemented camp’s cultural status throughout the 1970s and beyond. The term “midnight movie” originates from a time when low-budget, horror films were shown on late-night television because the rights were so cheap and easy to obtain that it could make up for the relatively small viewership and less-coveted time slot for advertisers.
Another element associated with camp and midnight movies is that of the horror host. Horror hosts (beginning with Vampira in the 50s, continuing with Elvira in the 80s, and later Joe Bob Briggs in the 90s with TNT’s MonsterVision) would introduce the films peppering their monologues with horror puns and using their own extravagant personas to help foster a sense of community in the viewership and give them a reason to keep tuning back in week after week. The concept of the horror host was most likely inspired by horror comics such as Tales from the Crypt’s use of a humorous narrator known as the Cryptkeeper.
During the 80s, big-budget, blockbuster films even got in on the fun. Successful film franchises like Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids created a blueprint for many movies of the following decade with their intentionally zany premises, quirky humor, and overall light-hearted tone while delivering large, elaborate action sequences. In the 1990s, there seemed to be a return to many of the concepts that were popular in the Fifties (such as alien invasions, secret government organizations, and monsters terrorizing society) though updated with new technology, better special effects, and modern perspectives. Like any self-respecting kid of that era, I absolutely ate this stuff up so when it came time to write a short story collection I couldn’t resist penning a nostalgic homage to the influential stories of my childhood.
Conclusion: Is Camp Still Relevant?
So, amid the Christopher Nolan-esque landscape in which we currently find ourselves, is there still a place for the silly, tongue-in-cheek antics of the camp style? Well, looking to the resounding success of the colorful and playful Guardians of the Galaxy franchise it appears that a significantly large audience still thinks so. In fact, Guardians was such a big hit that it caused Warner Brothers Studios to hastily re-edit the nearly completed film Suicide Squad in a desperate attempt to reshape its dark tone into a more fun and irreverent one.
One can also look to the popularity of the television show RuPaul’s Drag Race which takes camp humor back to its early roots in the gay community. On a related note, last year the prestigious Met Gala Fashion Show (a fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art) was centered around the theme of camp fashion, which was pioneered by the drag queen community. Just like Slaughterhouse-Five, this is yet another example of the “high art” world embracing something that was once viewed as “low art” for weirdos and degenerates.
The tradition of midnight movies is still going strong as well with Tommy Wiseau’s unintentionally campy film The Room, which many people lovingly refer to as the “best bad movie of all time,” becoming a cult classic. Tommy Wiseau and the making of The Room were later the subject of James Franco’s Oscar-nominated film The Disaster Artist. The Syfy channel has basically built its entire reputation on low-budget schlock such as its surprisingly popular Sharknado film franchise. Looking to online culture, there was also the crowdfunded, short film Kung Fury (a hilarious send-up of 80s police action movies) by David Sandberg that more than tripled its initial Kickstarter goal culminating in a budget of $630,000.
Left to Right: Beni from The Mummy; Aqua-fluorescent alien tech from Independence Day; The tiny yet powerful weapon (The Noisy Cricket) from Men In Black
Pictured above are elements from three campy blockbuster movies I grew up watching that directly inspired my story “Pulp Mythology.” The main character’s best friend is named Bennie, all of the futuristic tech emits an aqua-fluorescent glow, and one character carries a small yet immensely powerful weapon that she wields throughout the story. So, yes, I made my story intentionally and proudly campy because I love camp. It was a hell of a lot of fun to write just as, I imagine, many of its cinematic inspirations were.
The joy of camp, at least for me, is that it allows your sense of humor and imagination to run wild without always having to be concerned with strict realism. There is nothing wrong with grounded, dark and gritty stories, in fact many of my favorite stories have those traits (including many of the ones I write), but let’s not force all stories into those restraints simply because it is the prevailing trend. Artists should have an abundance of paints on their palette that they are permitted to work with, whether they are of the darker variety or the brighter ones.
So in summation:
¡Viva La Camp!