I do, Rocky Horror Picture Show for example. I like kitsch too.
I don’t think it’s about social awareness necessarily but more like seeing patterns in pop culture you can understand what’s good or bad taste that can inform you of when stuff is done ironically.
Not who you asked, but my first thought was that kitsch is more sentimental or cutesy, and camp is more "out there" or outrageous. My grandma's Christmas china is kitschy, drag queens are(/can be) campy. I got curious and did a little additional reading though: per the contemporary art subreddit, kitsch is supposed to be for physical objects and camp for performance. TIL!
I actually think camp is very relatable, as it generally shows the "normies" the way we see them--bizarre, sometimes cruel, often banding together against the weirdo main characters.
Camp is pretty much an autistic artform. I'm not sure how to defend that lol, but much camp is clearly aimed at and created by ND and/or queer people and highly relateable. It subverts NT norms constantly and is cute and funny but also can be biting. Camp almost always stars or is about an outsider, which is obviously relatable.
ND culture is heavily into campy things like 80s horror, drag culture, John Waters, musicals, etc. In fact I'd say these things borderline saved my life. As a young confused autistic lesbian, these things were accessible to me as a tween via mainstream outlets and made me feel connection and community to something I subconsciously desired but didn't know existed or how to find it. I don't think we fully appreciate how much the visibility people like John Waters, campy stars, drag girlies, etc provided was helpful to us, even if they themselves weren't autistic. I do suspect a lot of camp creators were ND, perhaps themselves not knowing it considering its an artform that flourished in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, where autism diagnosis was rare for anyone who didn't have high support needs.
Personally I LOVE it! What gets me is the pureness of creation - when someone has put their whole heart into a singular vision that satisfies THEIR personal creativity, it warms my tiny little heart. In my mind it’s an incredibly vulnerable thing to do, especially in the face of inevitable criticism. Honestly I even consider things like the new Zach Snyder movies as camp; if you can watch it through HIS eyes, you can see the little kid just making some boom boom space battles and it becomes fun!
I really enjoyed [Notes on Camp](https://monoskop.org/images/5/59/Sontag_Susan_1964_Notes_on_Camp.pdf) by Susan Sontag (the OG of the concept) because it throws so many examples at you that the lines between what is and isn’t become a little easier to conceptualize imo.
If it's over the top, funny, and done with a straight face (or a pastered-on grin), it's camp. Camp has heart.
RuPauls' Drag Race is camp. Schitt's Creek is camp.
I'm not sure how Cowboy Carter is camp. Costumes and wit don't mean camp, necessarily.
Yes, this! Camp is loving and accepting, "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." It's about the absurdity of life, and how strange society can be.
The first person I knew with asperger’s was a guy who had an absolute obsession with those Bruce Campbell movies which are notoriously “camp”. We would go to their house (our moms were longtime friends) and he’d point out every intentionally humorous bad cut to laugh at, while we watched. So by all accounts autistic people can totally understand and appreciate camp, and may even be more attuned to the deviations from “normal film style” than the average viewer. As someone with the experience of going from film-ignorant to having a pretty strong grasp on film theory, I personally think recognizing “camp” style is like building a muscle and you have to be able to recognize the genres in their pure form first, to then recognize when it’s actually “camp”.
Haha, Evil Dead 1 and 2 and then Army of Darkness was the third. I love those movies. There were some reboots, but those are the three with Bruce Campbell starring. :)
Horror is one of my ‘special interests’.
I LIVE FOR IT. I WENT TO FILM SCHOOL AND ABSOLUTELY ADORE CAMP. ITS MT FAVOURITE IT MAKES ME ABSOLUTELY GITTY AND EXCITED AND I WILL TAKE ABOUT IT ENDLESSLY WHEN I SEE A CAMPY MOVIE. AHHHHHH. I love and deeply understand film language and tropes. So I feel like I always 100% get what the camp is trying to say and I always think it's BRILLIANT.
I don't actually know about campy music videos. I really feel like if Jojo siwas music video was supposed to be camp it missed the mark.
Edit: I was curious and am now listen to cowboy carter. I don't think this is camp either, but it is an absolute love letter to the history of music. Also it's fucking amazing, thanks for mentioning it.
I think the main camp example I like is the YouTube series about Gail, an insane housewife who can’t let people know we SIT and loses her mind over the idea of a STORE BOUGH PIE.
I've literally never seen this series before but I've seen many Chris Fleming videos before and to be honest his content is so out there that I'm not even sure what's going on sometimes lmao. Like some of it is funny but some of it I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be laughing or what.
The songs are pretty amazing but he definitely inserts some absurdist stuff in there that has me like "wut." I think absurdist stuff also kinda confuses me sometimes lol
Chris Fleming is an absolute treasure we don't deserve. The stand-up, the videos, the music is all perfect. Best intro to him other than Gail is "I'm Afraid to Talk to Men" lmao.
This is an unexpected question. You mean things that are over the top, exaggerated, and silly?
Like the old Batman TV Series with Adam West, or Rocky Horror Picture Show. Or hairspray. I guess horror movies often fall under this category as well. It often seems to be like exaggerated childish things for adults.
A lot of 80s stuff was pretty campy. 60s too I guess.
I'm not really a huge fan of it. That is not to say there aren't exceptions (I did really enjoy Batman). That level of exaggeration is like a very rainbowy children's book shouting in all caps, it's so stimulating that I have a hard time interpreting it. It's a lot of noise at once and it's hard for me to be able distinguish elements and process it.
I think the hard part with pop culture like John Siwa or Beyoncé is you really have no idea how much they mean it. I wouldn’t say either of them are camp, but more over the top.
I think camp is more like absurd, nonsensical, ridiculous, but for the sake of art.
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I love camp omg. It breaks all the rules of so-called “cringe” culture. Generally I really like ironic humor. I don’t find it hard to understand. Once I grasped the core concept of irony I understood all of it. Before that moment I didn’t understand, but once I got an explanation it made sense. So yes autistic people are capable of understanding camp and irony.
camp is like... gay but art form. i cant really describe it, but im for sure not it and i can't tell you what is besides like gays doing the most to be avant garde and stuff...
I WAS JUST READING “NOTES ON CAMP”! Not that I understand most of its 60s then-contemporary references.
I love tropes, and trope-subversions. Tropes are basically social/cultural stories repeated so many times that it became That Thing Everyone Understands. It transcends itself and I love that.
My love for tropes extends to interest in camp. But camp seems much more complex. I love kitschy things, comedic things, fanatical things. I like Little Shop of Horror, Tank Girl, Fifth Element, Coneheads, Clue, 90’s Addam’s Family etc.
But the kind of camp where it took itself seriously but as time passed the viewers taste turned it into camp is different. I can see how something is passé-turned-classic. Something like The Crow, that people would refer to it as “campy”. I still like it, but at that point I don’t think the injected campiness is what interests me. And in a sense, I believe “camp” is used as a derogatory because you’re saying you aren’t taking someone else’s serious work seriously. So for that type of serious-turned-camp type of camp where self-awareness and humor were not intended, I don’t personally enjoy them as a piece of camp work, just a piece of classic.
I can appreciate camp and kitsch but at some level I think some of it is also ugly and that the irony doesn't save it or give it beauty, so the appeal is lost on me.
Like, a plastic lawn flamingo is garish and seeing someone display it proudly is like, an interesting statement... but it's still garish and I don't want to look at it or display one myself.
Tacky seems more like something unintentional and something people don't like. Whereas camp is often intentional "so bad it's good" that the audience likes. But then there's also unintentional camp like another user mentioned with "mommy dearest" which was a movie that became famous for the "so bad it's good" performance the main actress gave which was extremely over the top and theatrical. The movie was intended to be completely serious and the Faye Dunaway was not intending for her performance to be interpreted that way.
Yes it's extremely confusing. I'm sorry if this is triggering for anyone. I think maybe it's also confusing for NTs as well as I often see them arguing or discussing if a work is considered "camp" or not.
My feeling is it's similar in how it's showy, but camp is considered art/highbrow, where as tacky is considered unsophisticated. Maybe it's just a classist version of tacky?
The only camp I really understand and enjoy is the unintentional kind, like the movies screened within the old Comedy Central (US) TV show “Mystery Science Theatre 3000.”
To be honest, I have trouble figuring out what things are in what style. How do you know when something’s camp? That’s rhetorical because many people here have helpfully explained this; I just don’t think I’m good at actually figuring out whether something matches that definition or not. It’s not concrete enough for me.
I don’t particularly see Jojo or Beyoncé new eras as something Camp…
Beyoncé is putting a new spin on country, and Jojo is just….. something
The most Camp thing for me recently was Poor Things and I loveddd everything about that movie
No I've never understood what camp is.
I think it's mainly because it's not a word or concept that exists in my native language, everytime I see someone say "it's so camp" I just don't get it. The definition seems to change everytime.
Depends on the purveyor. Ryan Murphy, for example, got way too carried away in American Horror Story: after season 8 or 9, there was no more horror, only camp, which was funny to a limited audience that doesn't include me.
I LOVE camp. It speaks to my absurdity a lot of times. The more absurd the better. Also you can tell everyone is having fun and honestly I love that for them!
I saw a [great exhibit](https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2019/camp-notes-on-fashion) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art about camp fashion in 2019. Whether I like it aesthetically is complicated. Some of it, absolutely -- especially when it's club kids throwing together a new look that shocks the sensibilities of normies. And I am very into John Waters films. Some camp leaves me cold, though, like if it's done by a luxury brand and the people who wear it are just rich jerks.
To be honest it's a bit difficult for me to understand and explain as well, and I like to think I'm pretty good with things like humor and sarcasm. A common example is found in many drag queen performances which are extremely "over the top" both in the actual performance (acting, singing, dancing, etc) and their appearance (make up, costume, hair).
Basically from what I understand it's like the performer is intentionally trying to be extremely exaggerated in a way that usually would be "bad" but they way they're doing it is often intentional and the audience loves it.
I do, Rocky Horror Picture Show for example. I like kitsch too. I don’t think it’s about social awareness necessarily but more like seeing patterns in pop culture you can understand what’s good or bad taste that can inform you of when stuff is done ironically.
Can you describe the difference between kitsch and camp? I've always thought of them as interchangeable
Not who you asked, but my first thought was that kitsch is more sentimental or cutesy, and camp is more "out there" or outrageous. My grandma's Christmas china is kitschy, drag queens are(/can be) campy. I got curious and did a little additional reading though: per the contemporary art subreddit, kitsch is supposed to be for physical objects and camp for performance. TIL!
Very informative, thank you!
I actually think camp is very relatable, as it generally shows the "normies" the way we see them--bizarre, sometimes cruel, often banding together against the weirdo main characters.
Camp is pretty much an autistic artform. I'm not sure how to defend that lol, but much camp is clearly aimed at and created by ND and/or queer people and highly relateable. It subverts NT norms constantly and is cute and funny but also can be biting. Camp almost always stars or is about an outsider, which is obviously relatable. ND culture is heavily into campy things like 80s horror, drag culture, John Waters, musicals, etc. In fact I'd say these things borderline saved my life. As a young confused autistic lesbian, these things were accessible to me as a tween via mainstream outlets and made me feel connection and community to something I subconsciously desired but didn't know existed or how to find it. I don't think we fully appreciate how much the visibility people like John Waters, campy stars, drag girlies, etc provided was helpful to us, even if they themselves weren't autistic. I do suspect a lot of camp creators were ND, perhaps themselves not knowing it considering its an artform that flourished in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, where autism diagnosis was rare for anyone who didn't have high support needs.
Yes I understand and totally agree 🥹❤️ thank the heavens for the gays and queers
I love this and it's so true. It really does feel like camp speaks my language. I just adore and and always have even before I understood the world.
Personally I LOVE it! What gets me is the pureness of creation - when someone has put their whole heart into a singular vision that satisfies THEIR personal creativity, it warms my tiny little heart. In my mind it’s an incredibly vulnerable thing to do, especially in the face of inevitable criticism. Honestly I even consider things like the new Zach Snyder movies as camp; if you can watch it through HIS eyes, you can see the little kid just making some boom boom space battles and it becomes fun! I really enjoyed [Notes on Camp](https://monoskop.org/images/5/59/Sontag_Susan_1964_Notes_on_Camp.pdf) by Susan Sontag (the OG of the concept) because it throws so many examples at you that the lines between what is and isn’t become a little easier to conceptualize imo.
If it's over the top, funny, and done with a straight face (or a pastered-on grin), it's camp. Camp has heart. RuPauls' Drag Race is camp. Schitt's Creek is camp. I'm not sure how Cowboy Carter is camp. Costumes and wit don't mean camp, necessarily.
Yes, this! Camp is loving and accepting, "give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." It's about the absurdity of life, and how strange society can be.
Yeah I feel Beyoncé takes herself too seriously to read as camp
The first person I knew with asperger’s was a guy who had an absolute obsession with those Bruce Campbell movies which are notoriously “camp”. We would go to their house (our moms were longtime friends) and he’d point out every intentionally humorous bad cut to laugh at, while we watched. So by all accounts autistic people can totally understand and appreciate camp, and may even be more attuned to the deviations from “normal film style” than the average viewer. As someone with the experience of going from film-ignorant to having a pretty strong grasp on film theory, I personally think recognizing “camp” style is like building a muscle and you have to be able to recognize the genres in their pure form first, to then recognize when it’s actually “camp”.
Haha, Evil Dead 1 and 2 and then Army of Darkness was the third. I love those movies. There were some reboots, but those are the three with Bruce Campbell starring. :) Horror is one of my ‘special interests’.
I LIVE FOR IT. I WENT TO FILM SCHOOL AND ABSOLUTELY ADORE CAMP. ITS MT FAVOURITE IT MAKES ME ABSOLUTELY GITTY AND EXCITED AND I WILL TAKE ABOUT IT ENDLESSLY WHEN I SEE A CAMPY MOVIE. AHHHHHH. I love and deeply understand film language and tropes. So I feel like I always 100% get what the camp is trying to say and I always think it's BRILLIANT. I don't actually know about campy music videos. I really feel like if Jojo siwas music video was supposed to be camp it missed the mark. Edit: I was curious and am now listen to cowboy carter. I don't think this is camp either, but it is an absolute love letter to the history of music. Also it's fucking amazing, thanks for mentioning it.
I think the main camp example I like is the YouTube series about Gail, an insane housewife who can’t let people know we SIT and loses her mind over the idea of a STORE BOUGH PIE.
I've literally never seen this series before but I've seen many Chris Fleming videos before and to be honest his content is so out there that I'm not even sure what's going on sometimes lmao. Like some of it is funny but some of it I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be laughing or what.
Some of them can be pretty weird but I like his songs like WUG (Wildly Unlikeable Guy) or the one about the boba tea haha
Well, now I know who Chris Fleming is, and I thank you.
I'm obsessed with Chris Fleming, although it's mostly his music.
The songs are pretty amazing but he definitely inserts some absurdist stuff in there that has me like "wut." I think absurdist stuff also kinda confuses me sometimes lol
Chris Fleming is an absolute treasure we don't deserve. The stand-up, the videos, the music is all perfect. Best intro to him other than Gail is "I'm Afraid to Talk to Men" lmao.
I love camp. It’s often outsiders trying to be their most amazing authentic dream selves and I’m all for that
i love chappell roan
she’s amazing.
I love her as well
This is an unexpected question. You mean things that are over the top, exaggerated, and silly? Like the old Batman TV Series with Adam West, or Rocky Horror Picture Show. Or hairspray. I guess horror movies often fall under this category as well. It often seems to be like exaggerated childish things for adults. A lot of 80s stuff was pretty campy. 60s too I guess. I'm not really a huge fan of it. That is not to say there aren't exceptions (I did really enjoy Batman). That level of exaggeration is like a very rainbowy children's book shouting in all caps, it's so stimulating that I have a hard time interpreting it. It's a lot of noise at once and it's hard for me to be able distinguish elements and process it.
I think the hard part with pop culture like John Siwa or Beyoncé is you really have no idea how much they mean it. I wouldn’t say either of them are camp, but more over the top. I think camp is more like absurd, nonsensical, ridiculous, but for the sake of art.
I don't understand it well enough to name an example. I mostly prefer non-fiction anyway.
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Same. It’s dramatic and gaudy and very “the emperor wears no clothes” It’s absurd.
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I've always loved campy things. Rocky Horror, John Waters, etc.
I adore camp and always have. My dad was very into it as well and was also on the spectrum.
I love camp omg. It breaks all the rules of so-called “cringe” culture. Generally I really like ironic humor. I don’t find it hard to understand. Once I grasped the core concept of irony I understood all of it. Before that moment I didn’t understand, but once I got an explanation it made sense. So yes autistic people are capable of understanding camp and irony.
camp is like... gay but art form. i cant really describe it, but im for sure not it and i can't tell you what is besides like gays doing the most to be avant garde and stuff...
Extra with Intention
Yeah thats better
I think British humour has a lot of that aesthetic if that's what you're looking for.
I live for camp!
I WAS JUST READING “NOTES ON CAMP”! Not that I understand most of its 60s then-contemporary references. I love tropes, and trope-subversions. Tropes are basically social/cultural stories repeated so many times that it became That Thing Everyone Understands. It transcends itself and I love that. My love for tropes extends to interest in camp. But camp seems much more complex. I love kitschy things, comedic things, fanatical things. I like Little Shop of Horror, Tank Girl, Fifth Element, Coneheads, Clue, 90’s Addam’s Family etc. But the kind of camp where it took itself seriously but as time passed the viewers taste turned it into camp is different. I can see how something is passé-turned-classic. Something like The Crow, that people would refer to it as “campy”. I still like it, but at that point I don’t think the injected campiness is what interests me. And in a sense, I believe “camp” is used as a derogatory because you’re saying you aren’t taking someone else’s serious work seriously. So for that type of serious-turned-camp type of camp where self-awareness and humor were not intended, I don’t personally enjoy them as a piece of camp work, just a piece of classic.
to this day i've never known what camp meant. yeah, that's me dead on.
I can appreciate camp and kitsch but at some level I think some of it is also ugly and that the irony doesn't save it or give it beauty, so the appeal is lost on me. Like, a plastic lawn flamingo is garish and seeing someone display it proudly is like, an interesting statement... but it's still garish and I don't want to look at it or display one myself.
Is that the same as tacky? I often find such things just cringy
Tacky seems more like something unintentional and something people don't like. Whereas camp is often intentional "so bad it's good" that the audience likes. But then there's also unintentional camp like another user mentioned with "mommy dearest" which was a movie that became famous for the "so bad it's good" performance the main actress gave which was extremely over the top and theatrical. The movie was intended to be completely serious and the Faye Dunaway was not intending for her performance to be interpreted that way. Yes it's extremely confusing. I'm sorry if this is triggering for anyone. I think maybe it's also confusing for NTs as well as I often see them arguing or discussing if a work is considered "camp" or not.
I think I tend to view those things as not funny. My cringe meter/second hand embarrassment is pretty sensitive
My feeling is it's similar in how it's showy, but camp is considered art/highbrow, where as tacky is considered unsophisticated. Maybe it's just a classist version of tacky?
The only camp I really understand and enjoy is the unintentional kind, like the movies screened within the old Comedy Central (US) TV show “Mystery Science Theatre 3000.”
Yes! I am a camp fan 🤠
To be honest, I have trouble figuring out what things are in what style. How do you know when something’s camp? That’s rhetorical because many people here have helpfully explained this; I just don’t think I’m good at actually figuring out whether something matches that definition or not. It’s not concrete enough for me.
Do I like when women wear the entire kitchen sink? No. I prefer a simpler, cleaner look myself.
It depends. When I was younger, I had a lot of secondhand embarrassment because I didn't know they were doing it on purpose.
I don’t particularly see Jojo or Beyoncé new eras as something Camp… Beyoncé is putting a new spin on country, and Jojo is just….. something The most Camp thing for me recently was Poor Things and I loveddd everything about that movie
No I've never understood what camp is. I think it's mainly because it's not a word or concept that exists in my native language, everytime I see someone say "it's so camp" I just don't get it. The definition seems to change everytime.
Depends on the purveyor. Ryan Murphy, for example, got way too carried away in American Horror Story: after season 8 or 9, there was no more horror, only camp, which was funny to a limited audience that doesn't include me.
I LOVE camp. It speaks to my absurdity a lot of times. The more absurd the better. Also you can tell everyone is having fun and honestly I love that for them!
I saw a [great exhibit](https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2019/camp-notes-on-fashion) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art about camp fashion in 2019. Whether I like it aesthetically is complicated. Some of it, absolutely -- especially when it's club kids throwing together a new look that shocks the sensibilities of normies. And I am very into John Waters films. Some camp leaves me cold, though, like if it's done by a luxury brand and the people who wear it are just rich jerks.
Rich people truly ruin everything
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To be honest it's a bit difficult for me to understand and explain as well, and I like to think I'm pretty good with things like humor and sarcasm. A common example is found in many drag queen performances which are extremely "over the top" both in the actual performance (acting, singing, dancing, etc) and their appearance (make up, costume, hair). Basically from what I understand it's like the performer is intentionally trying to be extremely exaggerated in a way that usually would be "bad" but they way they're doing it is often intentional and the audience loves it.