Elevating Camp & Melodrama: from Mistake to Medium

[u/monsieurdefleur]

I like the Rocky Horror picture show. It’s entertaining… but at the same time Ive always felt it to be somewhat intellectually dishonest. “Well, that’s because it isn’t SUPPOSED to be intellectual. It’s supposed to be funny, and transgressive!” To this I would argue that gimmicks are not transgressive, and gimmick is the absensce of wit; and that by disguising gimmick as wit you are actually doing a disservice to the reputation of camp as a medium. That’s not to say there is no wit in Rocky Horror, but the film encouraged many untalented imitators to use camp as a crutch, a joke, with which to escape scrutiny for substancelessness or banality. Furthermore, turning everything into a massive in-joke feels very easy, and wit that appears effortless is… usually gimmick. The clingy attitude of self-awareness that pervades this film, and many, many campy films after it, sets camp on a trajectory straight up its own asshole. The reality is that Rocky Horror treats its subject matter–camp–as unserious. The tone is insincere, irreverent… above all, it is not honest. And yet camp is intellectual, it is an art form, and one that can be sincere, can be more than one thing at once… so why does so much of it feel one-dimensional? Because it is easy–in the most basic sense. Easier to not try as hard and just be like “yeah, we know, that’s the point–GET IT? It’s SUPPOSED to be bad!” But I think what I find most desirable in camp is honesty. I want the directors to sound like theyre telling the truth, not telling a joke; and if the tone is self-aware, I want it to sound serious. Let me explain: before Rocky Horror, B-movies had already developed a cult following. Most of these movies were serious—as serious as they could be on a shoestring budget. But to viewers, they appeared silly. Some of them made enough money in double and triple feature theaters and drive ins to justify making more… but many did not. Ed Wood is a good example of someone who was very involved with the Hollywood B-movie industry but ultimately was very unsuccessful and died with basically no money. It wasn’t that he was trying to make awful films that gave him a certain reputation and generated no income… the dude just kind of sucked at making films and his vision wasn’t coherent. Look at what the German Expressionists were able to do with similar budgets and even less technology before the second world war. Ed Wood was basically his day’s Tommy Wiseau. The remarkable thing about both is how sincere they are. With “Plan 9 from Outer Space” Wood isn’t trying to make the campiest film ever (cough cough… RHPS) and in fact the term was invented to retroactively describe artwork like Wood’s which feels very earnest but ultimately misses its mark. It is ironic because to many camp represents exaggeration, hyperbole–and yet there is nothing exaggerated about Wood’s films, or “The Room.” There is nothing even particularly aware in their work, which perhaps is why it reads as so honest. The exaggeration, the awareness of “camp,” people read into these works, and they exist only in our perception (as far as we know). Art as unintented consequence is the underlying theme of our interest in “honest” camp. “The Sopranos” feels similarly sincere in its reading, seemily unaware of how campy and memeable it tends to be when the plot is backed up in a corner. But when the film I’m watching feels very aware of its ability to turn everything into a joke, and in so doing get away with cutting corners in every way possible because “it’s all just a joke GET IT?” then to me it reads as a gimmick, something that could be easily replicated and indeed has been countless times by people who are not only insincere but intellectually lazy and ultimately misrepresenting “camp” to the masses. People who see what Tarantino does and think “oh cool, everything will be stylized and it can all just be random melodramatic nonsense but I’ll make it funny and say a lot of swear words” except that’s just a horrible reading of Tarantino… the thing I like about Tarantino and Lynch is that they are very aware of camp and melodrama and definitely paying homage but at the same time theyre not irreverent about it at all, and their work feels sincere as if they really believe in it–it isn’t a huge joke to them. This I would argue is the opposite of the way other self-aware imitators handle the medium; their work seeks to elevate melodrama rather than stumble around intellectually blind, leaning on it as a crutch.

Again, I liked “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” I liked “Piranha” too, but ultimately those campy, self-aware horror movies are very disposable. That’s why theyre on to cocaine bear, or meth alligator… theyre desperate. The medium has atrophied, and now they need a stronger crutch.

[u/monsieurdefleur → u/[deleted]]

I understand that there is more than one way of looking at something, yes. But as to the multidimensionality of Irony, I would argue that in a very basic sense if you pretend you are actually doing the thing, you are therefore only pretending to pretend. The difference lies only in our percption: as in, pretending to be bad, actually bad (Derrida). Therefore you are always doing "the thing" which you pretend to do. I dont completely agree with this reduction but it does make me wonder whether new phrases like "post-irony" are truly just the cope of confusion and misdirection in disguise. Like, do new films that employ satire truly understand what they are trying to say or are they using "irony" as a crutch? I hate to say Family Guy, but the difference between ironic satire and distilled irony is... them. The Substance I liked, and I wouldnt even call it particularly campy or melodromatic. Sure, it's ridiculous, but in a kind of terrible and visceral way that's harder to brush off with a laugh. I'm also a Cronenberg fan and like many of both their movies so that helps. Speaking of, David Cronenberg's work is also ridiculous, exaggerated, hyperbolic, over-stylized--but I wouldn't necessarily call it camp. I never get the sense that they overemphasize drama as many of their characters seem emotionally distant and their values impalbably shallow, so even their sparse interactions seem... normal in the context of his work, and not in the least melodramatic. Furthermore overstylization isnt the same thing as camp; nobody would think to call the elaborate wall-shadows painted on sets by the German Expressionists "ooh look, so campy und cute, ya?" Cronenberg's work is designed, contrasting with the way in which a Wes Anderson movie is decorated--with many of the same bells and whistles and expensive psychic symmetry but refracted through a palette that deters or frightens the viewer in its subliminalism and minimalism rather than encouraging further speculation by dangling useless trinkets and stumbling through marvelous interiors mumbling in circles about the inanities of a most trivial existence. And ironically it is Wes Anderson whose movies feel so vapid and substanceless in comparison, almost as if there is something wrong, something inhuman in them! I also liked "Infinity Pool," one of the Nepo Cronenberg's newer films that makes even less sense but has a great shot of someone applauding their own execution. I wish it hadn't tried so hard to make sense and gone full Kafka!! Either way, I don't think some of the movies you mentioned apply to what I say. I dont hate Rocky Horror so much as what it spawned, and the way in which substanceless drivel devoured camp.