Shameless Saturday Camp Explosion: Christmas Eve She Lit the Candles....

Well, not technically a holiday number, I suppose, but it's candy-colored enough to pass for one, and it does remind us of the importance of fire safety whilst celebrating...

Shameless Monday Camp Explosion: So Special

Thus, the Camp sensibility is one that is alive to a double sense in which some things can be taken. But this is not the familiar split-level construction of a literal meaning, on the one hand, and a symbolic meaning, on the other. It is the difference, rather, between the thing as meaning something, anything, and the thing as pure artifice.

- Susan Sontag, Notes on Camp

Shameless Holiday Weekend Camp Explosion: Art Film

Carissimi, I have a shocking admission to make...

Shameless Sunday Camp Explosion: A Happy Song

Sometimes the depth of what I don't know really startles me.  How, for example, could I never have heard of Folies Bergère de Paris, a nifty little confection from 1935 that ends with this remarkable number?

Shameless Sunday Super Camp Explosion - Pet!

In the fall of 1964, Miss Petula Clark might well have had a few concerns about her career...

Shameless Saturday Camp Explosion: Hi-dee...No

One of the many topics in regard to which I heartily agree with Mr. Ethan Mordden (novelist, raconteur, and entertainment historian par excellence) is the regrettability of the extent to which Hollywood (and, to a lesser extent, the stage) embraced the idea of the New Dance Sensation Number.  This surprisingly long-lived phenomenon consists nine times out of ten of a (frequently quite lavish) sequence based on a (nearly universally) sub-par song in praise of said terpsichory, staged without even a hint of what the damn dance was supposed to actually be.  I mean, face it - based on what you've seen on screen, could you attempt to dance the Varsity Rag?  The Continental?  I thought not.

Along those lines, this one's a lulu - and that's the least of its (many) sins.

Shameless Sunday Camp Explosion: Streetwise

Some days you wake up knowing that what you need is a good dose of Constance Bennett singing and dancing.

Shameless Saturday Camp Explosion: Wasted on the Young

Some musical numbers remind one why some people detest musicals; here, I suspect, we have one of those.

Just Stew It!

Fly the friendly skies, Comrade!

Shameless Sunday Camp Explosion: A Tisket

Just in case your Easter didn't have a slight nightmarish edge yet, darlings, this very special moment in television history should take care of that, pronto.

Shameless Sunday Camp Explosion: Fire Away

Camp refuses both the harmonies of traditional seriousness, and the risks of fully identifying with extreme states of feeling.

- Susan Sontag, "Notes on Camp"

Shameless Saturday Camp Explosion: Promises, Promises

Time liberates the work of art from moral relevance, delivering it over to the Camp sensibility.

- Susan Sontag, "Notes on Camp"

Now you know what an Abba song created and delivered without one scintilla of charisma might have sounded like.

Shameless Saturday Camp Explosion: Mr. Music

What Camp taste responds to is "instant character"...

- Susan Sontag, "Notes on Camp"

Oh, Just about anybody can mark the birthday of the great Mr. Harold Arlen with Judy singing "The Man that Got Away" or Barbra blowing "A Sleepin' Bee" out of the water...

Shameless Saturday Camp Explosion: She Went Wrong

Camp taste identifies with what it is enjoying.

- Susan Sontag, "Notes on Camp"

Miss Dorothy Lamour may well wonder where exactly she went wrong; I would argue that it was when she agreed to appear in Pajama Party in the first place.

Shameless Saturday Camp Explosion: Oh, Go Ahead. Cry.

Camp taste turns its back on the good-bad axis of ordinary aesthetic judgment.

- Susan Sontag, "Notes on Camp"

Sometimes, all you can do is helplessly wonder: what were they thinking?

Shameless Saturday Camp Explosion: Folly of the Blonde

One of the facts to be reckoned with is that taste tends to develop very unevenly. It's rare that the same person has good visual taste and good taste in people and taste in ideas.

- Susan Sontag, "Notes on Camp"

Marion Davies turned 116 earlier this week, so I thought it would be nice to showcase one of her later efforts today...

Shameless Saturday Camp Explosion: Accept No Substitutes

"...the Camp sensibility is one that is alive to a double 
sense in which some things can be taken." 

- Susan Sontag, "Notes on Camp"

In the recent televisual Sound of Music, Poor Miss Carrie Underwood was given the unenviable task of filling the shoes of the likes of Miss Martin and Miss Andrews.  The phenomenon is hardly new.

Shameless Sunday Camp Explosion: The Divine

Taste has no system and no proofs.

- Susan Sontag, "Notes on Camp"

Since it's Bette Midler's birthday, herewith, Dear Readers, a gift for you.

Shameless Saturday Camp Explosion: Dance, Dance, Dance Little Lady

One is drawn to Camp when one realizes that "sincerity" is not enough. 

- Susan Sontag, "Notes on Camp"

Shameless Saturday Camp Explosion: A Piece of Happiness...

It's simply that the process of aging or deterioration provides 

the necessary detachment - or arouses a necessary sympathy. 

- Susan Sontag, "Notes on Camp"