Test: Camp! volume 3 — Soap Opera & Camp Gay
by Pascal Francaix
Release Date : January 30, 2023
Publisher : Marest Publisher
Language : French
Number of pages : 440 pages
What is the Camp?
"The Camp is the unbridled pose, the affectation erected into a system, the derision by the excess, the exacerbated exhibitionism, the primacy of the second degree, the sublimation by the grotesque, the kitsch going beyond the aesthetic domain to penetrate the behavioral sphere. It is the reflection of Narcissus in the mirror of the Evil Queen from Snow White. »
After having revisited exploitation cinema and musical comedy, now Camp ! ends with a fireworks display. He plunges us back into the outrageous melodramas of Edward Dmytryk, the battered divas, overflowing with flesh and make-up (Liz Taylor or Lana Turner) via the soap operas adolescents by Delmer Daves with Troy Donahue, a pale imitation of a James Dean. The Hollywood metafilm revisits the destinies of Jean Harlow and others up to the essential plague day by John Schlesinger. The second part of the book looks at the avant-garde and gay porn and honors anarchist authors, such as Jack Smith, Kenneth Anger, the Kuchar brothers, without forgetting John Waters and his Divine avid for refuse.
This last volume explores a cinema that illuminates in a new, subversive and protesting way, sexuality, norms, Hollywood and its margins; the Camp turns out to be an indispensable tool for envisioning the world.