Camp style: Encyclopedia II - Camp style - Examples of Camp

Camp style - Examples of Camp

Camp is best explained to those unfamiliar with the concept of camp through the use of examples. Television shows such as The Brady Bunch, Leave It to Beaver, Dragnet, The Lawrence Welk Show, Hee Haw, Sing Along with Mitch, Get Smart,, Laugh-In, Gilligan's Island, Batman, The Love Boat, Saved by the Bell, The Monkees, and The Dukes of Hazzard are often cited as examples of camp.

TV soap operas, especially those that air in primetime, are also considered camp. The excess of Dynasty and Dallas in the 1980's to Desperate Housewives in the 2000's, soaps became "chic" . In the 1990's, dramas reached a new height with shows that included Melrose Place, Beverly Hills 90210, Charmed, Felicity, and Dawson's Creek.

Mentos television commercials during the 1990s developed a cult following due to their intentionally camp Eurotrash humour.

Movie versions of camp TV shows have made the camp nature of these shows a running joke throughout the movies. Examples include Dragnet, The Brady Bunch Movie and The Dukes of Hazzard.

Filmmaker John Waters has made a lucrative career directing intentionally camp films, such as Pink Flamingos, Hairspray, Female Trouble, Polyester, Desperate Living, A Dirty Shame and Cecil B. Demented. Film maker Todd Solondz uses camp music to illustrate the absurdity and banality of bourgeois, suburban existence. In Solondz's cult-film Welcome to the Doll House, the 11-year-old female protagonist kisses a boy while Debbie Gibson's Lost in Your Eyes is played on a Fisher Price tape recorder.

The film Glitter by singer Mariah Carey was considered "true camp" by some film critics. Its lightheartedness and poor quality helped Americans, according to some and even hinted at by Carey herself, to deal with the serious tragedy of the 9/11 terrorist attack that happened within a week before the film's release.

Other examples of camp films include low-budget 1950s Japanese science fiction movies, such as the Godzilla franchise, German sexploitation films of the 1960s and 1970s such as Bavarian porn exemplified by the Schulmädchen-Report (Schoolgirl Report) series, 1960s teen-oriented films such as Beach Blanket Bingo, and low-budget Hong Kong-produced martial arts films of the same era, many of them starring famed martial artist Bruce Lee. Two science fiction films of the 1970s, The Omega Man and Soylent Green, both starring American actor Charlton Heston have been considered by many critics as unintentionally campy.

Camp hairstyles include the beehive, afro and the mullet. In recent years, tacky (also called cheesy) clothing styles popular in the 1970s (such as the leisure suit) have made a camp fashion comeback of sorts as have 1950s style bowling shirts.

Certain games and sports, such as bowling, badminton and lawn darts have a camp following also.

Tacky yard decorations, popular in some parts of suburban and rural America, are examples of kitsch, and are by extension, camp. The classic camp yard ornament is the pink plastic flamingo or plastic spinning pinwheel shaped like a yellow sunflower. The yard globe, garden gnome, wooden cut-out of a fat lady bending over, the statue of a small black man holding a lantern (called a lawn jockey) and ceramic statues of whitetail deer are also prevalent camp lawn decorations.

Airbrushed custom-made license plates, which often feature the names of the couple who own the car, along with dolphins, hearts or unicorns are kitsch, and, therefore, by extension, camp.

The ESPN Classic show Cheap Seats features two Generation-X, hipster, real-life brothers making humourous observations while watching televised campy sporting events, ones often featured on ABC's Wide World of Sports during the 1970s. Examples include a 1970s "sport," which attempted to combine ballet with skiing, the Harlem Globetrotters putting on a show in the gym of a maximum security prison, small-time professional wrestling and roller derby. In the 1990s, a similar television show titled Mystery Science Theater 3000 originally broadcast from Minneapolis, featured a young man trapped aboard a 1950s-style spacecraft accompanied by two robots made from common household artifacts, all of whom sat in front of a giant movie screen and made running sarcastic comments about low-budget educational, science fiction and horror films they watched.

American educational, training and industrial films form a whole sub-genre of camp films. The "duck and cover films" of 1950s vintage, in which an anthropomorphic turtle tells school children that they can survive a Soviet nuclear attack by hiding under their desks is considered a classic of high camp. ABC After School Specials of the 1970s and 1980s addressing teen drug abuse, sex, and issues like divorce and homosexuality are often considered camp. The Comedy Central show Strangers with Candy was an intentionally camp spoof of such after school specials.

Examples of camp music include The Village People, ABBA, The Bee Gees, The New Kids on the Block, Menudo, The Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys, Peggy March, Michael Bolton, Bette Midler, Wayne Newton, Pat Boone, The Carpenters, Richard Clayderman, David Hasselhoff, N'Sync (and solo efforts by members JC Chasez and Justin Timberlake), Olivia Newton-John, Alice Cooper, Debbie Gibson, Tiffany, Twisted Sister, Barbra Streisand, Air Supply, Barry Manilow, Placebo, Poison, New Edition, Stryper, Zamfir, Yanni, Prince, Vanilla Ice, Boxcar Willie and Cher. Entire genres of music, such as disco, polka, show tunes and German Schlager music are considered camp. Intentionally camp musical acts include The B-52's, Queen, Arling and Cameron and Pinkard & Bowden. It should be noted that camp music is not necessarily "bad." For example, many people like bands such as Queen and ABBA in large part because they are camp. Enjoying music which one also considers camp is especially prevalent in the gay community.

South of the Border is a road side attraction on the North Carolina-South Carolina border with a camp theme and is also known for its campy billboards stretching along Interstate 95 from Washington DC to Florida. Branson, Missouri is a tourist attraction, which features campy entertainment. The gamblings meccas of Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada, are famous for the camp architecture of the casinos and hotels.

Many celebrities have camp personas and a good test as to whether a particular celebrity has a camp persona is whether the mere mention of the person's name causes people to laugh or smile. Some celebrities even capitalise on their camp appeal through commercials and in TV and movie cameo appearances. Celebrities with intentionally camp personas include John Waters, Pee Wee Herman, Elton John, Dame Edna, Divine (Glen Milstead), RuPaul, Man Parrish, Boy George, Liberace, Bette Midler, Klaus Nomi, Graham Norton and Brian Molko. Celebrities with unintentionally camp personas include Richard Simmons, Wink Martindale, Paul Lynde, Paris Hilton, Don Knotts, Diana Ross, Phyllis Diller, Ricardo Montalbán, Mr. T, Gary Coleman, Tina Yothers, Fabio, Marilyn Monroe, Martha Stewart, Michael Jackson, David Hasselhoff, Flavor Flav, William Shatner, Jayne Mansfield, Charlton Heston, David Lee Roth, Ed Wood, Prince, Charo, Judy Garland, Joan Rivers, Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown, Betty Grable, Lil' Kim, Barbra Streisand, Cher, Carmen Miranda, Brooke Shields, Elizabeth Taylor, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Jerry Lewis, Tammy Faye Bakker, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Britney Spears, Liza Minnelli, Brian "Kato" Kaelin, Anna Nicole Smith, Slim Whitman, Tonya Harding, Gene Kelly, Madonna, Sophia Loren, and Verne Troyer.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Examples of Camp", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki