It seems fitting to speak about camp in depth this week, after a screening of Pink Flamingos (1972) and a Sontag reading. Generally, camp is a certain mode of aestheticism. Camp is seeing beauty in the banal, like an inflatable chair. It’s the combination of popularity, vilgarity and innocence. The essence of camp is it’s love of the unnatural, it’s the idea of, “It’s good because it’s awful.” I think that this video does a great job at explaining what exactly camp is:

The note which stood out the most to me in our reading of Sontag’s “Notes on ‘Camp'” was note #10:

Camp sees everything in quotation marks. It’s not a lamp, but a “lamp”; not a woman, but a “woman.” To perceive Camp in objects and persons is to understand Being-as-Playing-a-Role. It is the farthest extension, in sensibility, of the metaphor of life as theater.

Susan Sontag in “Notes on ‘Camp'”

Because camp is so naïve in nature, it is incredibly difficult to produce something which is “campy,” and have it be as satisfying as naïve camp. The best examples of camp are unintentional. A big part of what makes things camp is that they are unintentionally camp. Sontag describes this beautifully in her 19th note:

The pure examples of Camp are unintentional; they are dead serious. The Art Nouveau craftsman who makes a lamp with a snake coiled around it is not kidding, nor is he trying to be charming. He is saying, in all earnestness: Voilà! the Orient! Genuine Camp does not mean to be funny. Camping–say the plays of Noel Coward–does.

Susan Sontag in “Notes on ‘Camp'”

This week’s screening–Pink Flamingos–was the film that established John Waters’s name as a master of camp. This was my first time watching Pink Flamingos and, while Pink Flamingos was not exactly what I expected (I thought that the ‘flith’ of it all would be more toned down) I loved it and had a wonderful time watching it. It was hilarious, original–still in 2020–and kept me engaged throughout the entire thing. It’s not every day that you see a singing asshole, and it was hard not to love Divine.

The film’s trash-aesthetic was great, it’s hard to believe that John Waters didn’t really know what he was doing at the time, nor that it was all done on such a small budget. In fact, according to production designer Vincent Peranio, the art department’s budget was about $200. Half went to purchasing the trailer, half to decorating it. “And then after that, we would just steal things.”

We finished the week off well with two great presentations–Emma and Spencer–who both presented on films I have not seen but am now dying to see, Troll 2 (1990) and The Black Cauldron (1985). It was so clear in both of the presentations that they really love the films that they chose to present on. Troll 2 sounded hilarious, and it was really interesting to learn that it was only named Troll 2 in an attempt to piggy-back off of another film’s success. It was also really interesting to learn about Disney’s dark secret and big failure.