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As a normal person. Every few years the art crowd creates a term for the new crap they consider art that any normal person considers garbage. Think a banana peel or banana nailed to a frame. Then they convince rich gullible people who have no idea what art is, as defined by the quasi experts. Once they convince rich people to buy crap for millions and take a cut and no one else can be conned into buying it they find a new landfill start convincing new people it is art but call it by a new name.
As an ab normal, I think you are right sometimes.
However things are never that simple, yesterday I was listening to some Wendy Carlos there’s knobs, keyboards and synth crap, but there art and brilliance all swept up in there. All I know is that camp usually involves fire and rain.
Are Marvel Movies camp? Hot Rods are definitely camp.
This discussion and post made me laugh out loud. I love it.
Macron holding a military parade: Camp
Trump holding a military parade: Kitsch
That little north Korean guy having a military parade EN.
So Macron, Trump, Korean guy? Camp kitsch En or Camp Kitchen.
Are fake wood station wagons camp??
At some point with my generation getting into “mid century modern” I think fake wood started to redeem itself a bit.
But damn was it everywhere in the 60’s/70’s. So you wake up and eat breakfast at your oak dinette set, has a formica “oak” pattern on the top. Fire up the Country squire with fake dionic paneling and head to the hardware store. Load up 4×8 sheets of dark oak fske paneling for that basement project. Pull up your brown couch with horses/barns on it(looks like a scene from bonanza) Of course the coffee table has a “wood” formica top, the zenith has more fake wood on the speaker grill. Then you get into a heated game of pong with your son, which of course the atari 2600 has even more FAKE WOOD on it.
I think we had a wood shortage back then. Had to sign a treaty with the beavers up in Alaska and Canada cause all the good NORAD radar sites were on their land. Part of the deal with the beavers was we could not cut down the forrest.
So nothing more ‘Murican than fake wood. If you dont like it, go back to Russia you commie bastard.
I’d say no – fake wood paneling was unironic in intention, everything we loved about wood (the looking at it, apparently) but cheaper and easier to care for. At least that was the intent.
My Focus has a 21st century version of this, fake aluminum paneling (the center console). While campy in execution, Ford was completely serious when it went with it.
As an early genXer, I’d call serious-intent fake aluminum tacky.
crap: adding a third group to an already suspiciously amorphous Venn diagram really muddies the water
It’s funny how amorphous it really is – most (but not all, per the comments) people like the fake wood paneling on the outside old Wagoneers, but very few seem to like fake wood appliques on the dashes of cars from the 70s/80s.
I was basically fine with the appliqués at the time: sorta tacky—but that’s ok. It was the proliferation of cheap fiberboard/wood grain vinyl entertainment centers in the late 80s that pushed my resting state view of appliqué to life is too short for this particular bullshit
You know: the KMart ones that 15 minutes of iced tea condensation left a permanent raised ring
The one thing I’ll say for them was they were less rickety than the IKEA versions that came on the scenes in the mid 90s.
As a young Xer (almost old Millenial), I never got into any nostalgia for the 70s and 80s, especially fake wood on cars, wood paneling in homes, etc. For me they evoke mediocre times, not good ones. The middle class existence in the 80s felt like the working class existence today, but I guess that’s collective progress (which, to be clear, is being undone).
OTOH, my popcorn ceilings don’t bother me one bit. They hide minor damage and provide a little bit of needed texture to otherwise blank sheetrock.
I am ambivalent about Plywood Pleasure Palace station wagons. I don’t hate it, I don’t love it, I would have chosen not to have it if I was buying one back in the day. None of my folk’s giant wagons did, but I suspect that was because they were cheapskate Yankees and didn’t want to pay for it. None of their barges even had air conditioning!
I don’t get the angst over popcorn ceilings. Without them, houses tend to be a lot more echoey. It’s properly called acoustic ceiling treatment for a reason!
Though I HATE textured sheetrock. It’s not really a thing in Maine, but it is everywhere here in FL, and absolutely miserable to try to do anything to and get the pattern to match properly afterwards. I had to deal with it when I renovated my bathrooms. You rarely need to touch a ceiling.
Popcorn spray ceilings are the anti-Christ. Not being bothered by them makes me Concerned about your soul. I recall my dad using the sand infused paint on the stairway walls in our growing up house. Many a bloody scraped arm ensued. Not Camp. Not Kitsch. Bloody painful. But I digress: I am happy with German Sunday Susan’s definition. She is pretty much smarter than us and was in tune with the times. Something we at Autopian are def not, as we wait another year for more depreciation on the car we really wanted 3 years ago. Wait for it: we are camp
Why sand on walls?
It’s for potentially slippery floors.
In my 1960’s college Industrial Design class the final project was to redesign a household appliance. The professor showed a wood pattern covered vacuum cleaner as an example. We all went home and went to work. The final presentation was the most hilarious class I ever had. Literally everyone showed their wood pattern appliance. Mine was a bathroom scale with a shag carpet top and a rim of contact paper wood pattern trim.
So this might explain why so many of the industrial designers I have worked with are basically useless for anything but covering your ass for when the boss decides you should have made your white cube a purple cylinder…
Wood and metal usually post modern
1978 Spider had a wood dash!
Country comfort’s in a truck that’s going back home. Elton John.
That’s a good handle, but to me, he should be “Inspector Dick Rodius, Scotland Yard”, a special guest on the Autopian cop show hinted at last week.
Hot rods are very camp. Like maybe the single campiest thing. Just look at Uncertain-T and its paragon status. There’s probably a corner of low-rider culture that’s very camp, but I think more broadly it’s an aesthetic characteristic of a particular community. I would hazard that modern Rolls Royces are also camp. AMG G-wagens, Ferrari Pursangs, Lamborghini Urus: these things are kitsch. There’s a cynical mercantilism to them that prevents them from being camp. There’s an element of camp that is honest, the pursuit of an aesthetic or dream far past the boundaries of taste into ludicrous excess. For David, it’s trying too hard because you refuse to admit that “too hard” is a thing. There is also the implication of a level of actual competence in its pursuit. Hot rod culture is like drag and Swan Lake rolled into one.
I like this – if you knowingly put 10,000 hours into your own hot rod, that you will never get paid for when the car sells it is camp, but if you put something in serial production with huge profit margins it is kitsch
New York Dolls: camp.
David Bowie: camp or art?
Art. His music has depths that can still be appreciated and unpacked today. If anything, it was his transcendence of camp that made it art.
Agreed.
The New York Dolls are interesting though, as they were completely camp in their own time but then so influential on the creation of so much authentic stuff.
Like Hot Hot Hot?
(That’s the lead singer for the New York Dolls)
As a Gen-Xer, I remember how that song was everywhere, but I never knew until way later it was by a guy who pretty much inspired all the 80s punk I liked.
If you are fans of David Johansen, I highly recommend Sofia Coppola’s Netflix Christmas special A Very Murray Christmas where he sings O Tannenbaum in German.
I had no idea about either of these – thank you!
Hot rod woody wagons are camp you can camp in.
Now I want to see a behind the scenes of John Waters directing (and torturing) Richard Rawlings in …. At that point the specifics cease to matter. I want it to exist though. The making of/behind the scenes would be titled Camp vs. Kitch.
Rat rods are camp
Everything made from billet, mostly not camp,
Ed Roth is mostly camp.
George Barris hmm… I think camp has some intentionality required.
Dean Jeffrey not camp.
Imitation Dean Jeffrey, kind of camp.
Lowriders and Porsche 917s high art.
Monster trucks, camp.
Toy monster trucks, kitsch.
Want to start an argument, that goes on for weeks? Ask if Star Wars is camp.
Spaceballs was camp (and I’m glad we’re finally getting a sequel).
The first Star Wars trilogy was pure matinee theater (Ewok Christmas Special not withstanding), with a ton of merchandising. So I guess that makes it kitch?
There was always that element to it, but by the third season they dialed it up to 11. “Turnabout Intruder” (Kirk possessed by his crazy ex), “Spock’s Brain” (remote-control Spock!) and “The Way to Eden” (Jerry Reed the space hippie) are high camp. They had to make the third season on a shoestring budget so a lot of the plots revolved around putting the main cast in silly situations.
C3PO is total camp.
R2D2 was the original protagonist, and C3P0 was the comic sidekick.
sort of like The Yellow Rolls Royce or
Actually R2D2 was a reel of mag stock ( reel 2 dialogue 2 ) for American Graffiti , there is a picture here https://www.lucasfilm.com/news/history-in-objects-reel-2-dialog-2/
I would like to posit that no car is camp. It’s who drives it and how. For that matter, no dress is chic. It’s who wears it and how.
However, the vid of “Tiny Dancer” is quite wonderful.
Some of those 1960s Barris creations are camp no matter who’s driving: the Batmobile, the Munster Koach…
HOLY SHIT, the Renault commercial with the 10.9% financing as a selling point.
(And yes, I’m shutting the machines off early and watching the entire episode of Matt Houston commercials and all)
Oh also extra points for using a Crazy Ex-Girlfriend promo in the top shot. Great show if you are a musical nerd like me!
Rachel Bloom’s “Fuck me, Ray Bradbury” definitely camp.
I agree with what you’ve posited above, Matt: I think it’s a matter of self-awareness. Camp is self-aware. Kitsch is not. In other words, kitsch is camp minus self-awareness.
To Jack Swansey’s point (although, as a chemist, I have not studied such subjects in depth), in my opinion, NASCAR (the industry) is camp. NASCAR fans are largely kitsch.
The exact words rattling ’round my noggin before I got to your comment were “kitsch = camp – authenticity”. Fantastic!
Okay, everyone, we’ve solved it! 😀
Kitsch is camp that takes itself too seriously while everyone else sort of laughs at it a little.
The Simpsons episode with John Waters is a good primer on camp.
I was going to say, regardless of his character on that episode, he’s a perfect arbiter of this sort of thing anyway, so I say just await his ruling on the subject
His funeral tableaux on My Name is Earl were surreal art on a classical scale.
The ending a treatise on digital social interaction.
“The tragically ludicrous? The ludicrously tragic?” – J. Waters
Lowriders: art.
Donks: gloriously camp.
Stanced: must be camp, because otherwise I lose faith in humanity.
Stanced definitely has the self-awareness part of the camp definition down, since a lot of them have bumper stickers or windshield decals saying things like “Ruined” or “Low N Slow”.
The Walmart employee whose bumper was backed into at work, and now has a Stand 6 Feet Back decal over the damage?
Art and grace.
More or less an entire chapter of my undergrad thesis was dedicated to answering a similar question: Is NASCAR camp?
(yes)
So is most modern country-pop music camp or kitsch? And was this thesis for a Semiotics degree from Brown so you could work in reality TV? (note: I jest but it’s an interesting article.)
Kitsch, based on how their fans react with it
The word I’d use is “shit”.
Wesleyan (because I didn’t get into Brown)
You’re better for it, I’m sure.
I’d argue (and have) that there’s the necessary level of performance and self-awareness among at least the drivers and media personalities – see the 2011 Kentucky Speedway pre-race invocation riffing on the Talladega Nights prayer scene, for example.
Yes, all the craven pop-nationalist flag-waving — or at least most of it — is more kitsch than camp – but the Earnhardt-worship (now 20+ years after the man’s passing) is definitely self-aware. “Raise Hell Praise Dale” is a bit.
Great post!
Camp is like porn: I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description, and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it.
Porn is any media that stops being interesting immediately after orgasm.
That might be the best definition of porn I have ever seen!
Matt Houston looks like Ron Burgundy = camp.
I’m sure Will Ferrall knew this,
I think David Tracy should be assigned a selection of John Waters films in order to understand camp.
There is no possible way he has been exposed to those before.
That’s a divine idea.
He may be a Rocky Horror virgin as well… A ’70s cinema expo is in order.
At midnight! With props! Rice, toast, toilet paper, a lighter, etc.
Start with ‘Hairspray’ though. I think ‘Polyester’ would permanently damage him.
Oooh, Autopian John Waters Movie Watch-Along should totally happen!
Start with the film Head.
But who’s on first? And is first camp?
I think I understand some of the technical deep dive articles on here more than this discussion, and I’m very much not a technical person. 🙂
Anywho, I think my best take on this is hot-rods can be camp if the car is both unique and fun and the owner isn’t some over-serious arse.
I’m probably wrong about that, but I know I’m right about one thing: THIS site is camp in the absolute best way.
Original Hot Rod – camp, 1000th derivative – kitsch.
Original hot rods = serious cars
Munsters hot rod = camp
2020’s hot rods = kitsch
Pretty much anything George Barris took credit for is camp.
Now then, fake patina: camp, cool, or crap?
Fake patina on home goods is kitsch, I don’t see how it would be different on cars unless it was used for a thematic purpose, like say a Holly Hobbie hot rod or something.
All of Jeff Beck’s hot rods were/are camp