What is Camp?

[colinr0380]

Sorry, but I couldn't resist posting it!

From The Ghost In The Invisible Bikini!

[aox]

Would people consider the original Star Trek series (1966-69) camp?

I have always maintained it was until I read this definition:

Camp is an aesthetic sensibility wherein something is appealing because of its bad taste and ironic value. Camp was a part of the anti-academic defense of popular culture in the 1960s.

I am a little taken aback about this. I feel that Star Trek was not anti-intellectual; it actually enjoyed quite an intellectual economy. Any thoughts?

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

You may want to define it by comparison to Batman with Adam West. In that show, the camp element seems rather deliberate whereas in Star Trek it comes off as unintentional at the time. Besides, isn't Shatner his own definition of camp? Or is he just a paragon of postmodernism as a recent fan novella about him asserted?

[aox]

After rereading this thread, it seems that the definition of camp itself is the problem and not its application.

Additionally, I never thought of camp as being something you can intentionally obtain. I always thought of camp as Zen-like.

[Miss Farrow's Hair]

...

[Vic Pardo]

Would people consider the original Star Trek series (1966-69) camp?

I have always maintained it was until I read this definition:

Camp is an aesthetic sensibility wherein something is appealing because of its bad taste and ironic value. Camp was a part of the anti-academic defense of popular culture in the 1960s.

I am a little taken aback about this. I feel that Star Trek was not anti-intellectual; it actually enjoyed quite an intellectual economy. Any thoughts?

"Batman" was considered "camp" right from the start. The first time I ever heard the word used in this way was in reviews of "Batman" right at the time of its premiere on television. I never heard the word "camp" used in connection with "Star Trek" until I read your post.

[HerrSchreck]

Good god, yesterday I saw COBRA WOMAN for the first time... this just might be the silliest movie I have ever, ever seen! My god, my jaw was in my lap (with my jaw rising up every time Montez appeared in one of those tissue thin halters... and also her attendant with the large.. lips) in awe of the rampant silliness of the thing. Sheeeesh!

"Give me dat Cobra yool."

[Napier]

I saw Cobra Woman at the Brattle during a Siodmak double feature. They paired it with The Killers, (of course). There was laughter the whole time. It has to be one of the best theater experiences I've ever had. Did you see it on the big screen Schreck? Or is there a competent DVD version. I would love to add this to my collection.

[HerrSchreck]

Not on the big screen-- off the disc in the R2 Carlotta Siodmak set.

[George Kaplan]

"It's some wild dream of her decaying brain!"

Pardon my being pedantic, but, it is Maria after all. "I am jur seester. Can ju look at me and deny it?"

[HerrSchreck]

You were a Cobra Woman virgin?? You'd never seen Maria's dance routine fingering the Virgins for sacrifice? Tom Peeping and I spent an entire lunch reliving this film in Paris to the shock and awe of the other patrons at the otherwise unshockable Cafe Select.

You have been reborn my son.

"You spicca de words of a diseentegrating Brain!"

Altogether differently. Further Dita Parlo nipple alert. There's one briefly in Duviv's Au Bonheur (nearly wrote boneheur) des Dames. Move quickly while the action is hot!

Well we all have our important virginities to be cracked that were taken care of over the past 24 hrs I guess-- me for Cobra Woman, and you for Au Bonheur des Dames (I'd seen an early TV rip of this a couple yrs ago thanks to our illustrious nephew-- or rather your nephew and my little brother).

(Right now people are wondering-- are they really related?)

[HerrSchreck]

You're right again, this time about Lon Jr damn you. You intercepted my brain circuits just like this a few months ago talking about Ulmer and more particularly Warren William in Strange Illusion. I was just launching a phase where I was suddenly watching that film almost every night before i went to sleep for some unclear reason. The whole reason I bumped into Cobra Woman was I was noodling around some nameless destination looking for more Lon Jr, who I had decided that I like very much and realized that I didn't have anywhere near enough of his work, only having almost every horror film he ever did. His sad mug and wound up alkie disposition it gives me a warm country fuzzy feeling like lemonade with naked Sylvia Sidney in flower chains-- more of her and less Dita Parlo I'd say, if I had my druthers.

I mentioned westerns and there is Lon Jr, examples of him in pattycake braids (or is that pigtails with a severe part inna middle?) playing le redskin sauvage... of course another cherry to be popped is seeing him in Of Mice and Men. And here it is, Herr Telepathique: just an hour ago I woke up from a nap, into which I was lulled three hours earlier by a spin of Son of Dracula... dinner jackets and capes and lake-gliding and the sublime and ever-accurate Madame Zimba.. most upright woman ever nailed flowers and sweet post-its along the four corners of my mind's eye. She died proudly for the truth.

[HarryLong]

another cherry to be popped is seeing him in Of Mice and Men

On TCM tonight, in case you weren't aware.

[HerrSchreck]

ahem.

[Michael]

ahem.

Aww thanks for posting that. That wiped out the dreariness of this morning for me. I've loved Mitzi Gaynor since I was conceived.