utopiansky
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- Posted: Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:11:07 +0000
I recently read an article about camp, that it can only be camp if it is genuine or unaware of its camp-iness. So if you are doing a parody of camp, it will come across as something entirely different...?
oh, i found it
"One must distinguish between naïve and deliberate Camp. Pure Camp is always naive. Camp which knows itself to be Camp (camping) is usually less satisfying.
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 -- for instance, the numbers devised for the Warner Brothers musicals of the early thirties (42nd Street; The Golddiggers of 1933; ... of 1935; ... of 1937; etc.) by Busby Berkeley -- does not mean to be funny. Camping -- say, the plays of Noel Coward -- does. It seems unlikely that much of the traditional opera repertoire could be such satisfying Camp if the melodramatic absurdities of most opera plots had not been taken seriously by their composers. One doesn't need to know the artist's private intentions. The work tells all. (Compare a typical 19th century opera with Samuel Barber's Vanessa, a piece of manufactured, calculated Camp, and the difference is clear.)"
full article
http://interglacial.com/~sburke/pub/prose/Susan_Sontag_-_Notes_on_Camp.html
oh, i found it
"One must distinguish between naïve and deliberate Camp. Pure Camp is always naive. Camp which knows itself to be Camp (camping) is usually less satisfying.
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 -- for instance, the numbers devised for the Warner Brothers musicals of the early thirties (42nd Street; The Golddiggers of 1933; ... of 1935; ... of 1937; etc.) by Busby Berkeley -- does not mean to be funny. Camping -- say, the plays of Noel Coward -- does. It seems unlikely that much of the traditional opera repertoire could be such satisfying Camp if the melodramatic absurdities of most opera plots had not been taken seriously by their composers. One doesn't need to know the artist's private intentions. The work tells all. (Compare a typical 19th century opera with Samuel Barber's Vanessa, a piece of manufactured, calculated Camp, and the difference is clear.)"
full article
http://interglacial.com/~sburke/pub/prose/Susan_Sontag_-_Notes_on_Camp.html