12/19/2006
3 serious points
When I have said "Wolfgang Sauer is the best musician in the world" or "Yatta is awesome!" many people have asked from me am I really serious. Do I really like those? I can't be serious, or can I? The problem is that many things aren't just that simple. When answers are limited to yes and no, it's cutting limbs from the real conversation and just leads to extreme polarizations of the subject. Yes, actually I am serious, but what does that mean? Am I seriously serious, sarcasticly serious or just lying to get rid of the annoying question? You can never really know.
Perhaps we are missing a point here. Instead seriousness, perhaps we should think if we let this particular peace of "art" getting through. Are we rejecting Wolfgang Sauer because it appears to be something crappy, or are we trying to find something from it? I find this approach more suitable when encountering creations of camp. It doesn't matter how bad, fake or corny it is, as long as I can find something to hold on with. And if even better, I get very inspired!
From Yatta, Wolfgang Sauer, David Hasselhoff it's easy for me find the inspiration. The magic of camp can be sensed from miles away, no doubt for that. But many other works of today's pop culture are far more challenging, at least for me. For example the video above, song of Norwegian Idols stars, is bad but not in entertainy, campy way. I find it very boring. And it's not just this, Britney Spears and many other pop artists just seem to lack something. When I started to think about why, I found at least these three points:
1. Time. When years comes by, cliches and typical mannerisms of this decade can be seen easier. For example the visual style of the 80´s is playing important part in the camp of that time. And during the years the characteristics of the 90´s are coming more clear too, because we get more distance from it. It's difficult to see what's going to look ridiculous from our current when we are living it. We always have only the past to compare with.
2. Big money. Unlike many works of previous decades, many products of the pop culture are now made with huge budgets. The videos of superstars can have now have state of the art special effects. A lot of money is used to make it cool in the eyes of teenagers. Because of this there is no much room for clumsy technical decisions and unintensional mistakes. At least this leaves clumsy CGI effects to be the trademark of music videos of the 90´s. Too bad that they're now too good!
3. Counterculture. For example most of the videos in the Mtv represent the mainstream of our culture. We can talk about mainstream, even though it's split into different subgenres. Popular ideas are recycled among each subgenre: rap videos are taking elements from other popular rap videos and so on. Camp often comes with some kind of originality (sometimes parodoxically, being original in unoriginality). Of course culture vs. counterculture is a rough way to categorize just like the question about seriousness, but it also point out important feature of camp. Not necessarily a random work of camp is political, but when spread all over the Internet it could be a polical tool of counterculture. Intentional or not, works of camp can be seen as satire of our culture, making fresh irony of it that stands out from the mainstream.
Video below was shown in Finnish television program, where group of people evaluate music videos. This happend in the time, when the "gay trend" became to Finnish TV and gays were seen in many programs. Because of this, I saw a lot of satire in this video, even thought it's possible that it wasn't intentional at all. That's how camp sometimes works!
This video is also example, that not all works of our time are automaticly dull, boring stuff that does not have any camp value. You just need to keep your eyes and ears open. That's how I encountered this one too, when a friend of mine mentioned it to me. Thanks to Internet, I could see it afterwards pretty easily. And thanks to YouTube, you can see it now!
Did you checked it out? Teuvo is definitely out of closet, isn't he! Nothing wrong with that, but perhaps he should focus on his main profession, be a costume stylist instead of singing. Or should he? If he could would do more as hilarious videos as this, I would be happy to see them!
...SERIOSLY!
Perhaps we are missing a point here. Instead seriousness, perhaps we should think if we let this particular peace of "art" getting through. Are we rejecting Wolfgang Sauer because it appears to be something crappy, or are we trying to find something from it? I find this approach more suitable when encountering creations of camp. It doesn't matter how bad, fake or corny it is, as long as I can find something to hold on with. And if even better, I get very inspired!
From Yatta, Wolfgang Sauer, David Hasselhoff it's easy for me find the inspiration. The magic of camp can be sensed from miles away, no doubt for that. But many other works of today's pop culture are far more challenging, at least for me. For example the video above, song of Norwegian Idols stars, is bad but not in entertainy, campy way. I find it very boring. And it's not just this, Britney Spears and many other pop artists just seem to lack something. When I started to think about why, I found at least these three points:
1. Time. When years comes by, cliches and typical mannerisms of this decade can be seen easier. For example the visual style of the 80´s is playing important part in the camp of that time. And during the years the characteristics of the 90´s are coming more clear too, because we get more distance from it. It's difficult to see what's going to look ridiculous from our current when we are living it. We always have only the past to compare with.
2. Big money. Unlike many works of previous decades, many products of the pop culture are now made with huge budgets. The videos of superstars can have now have state of the art special effects. A lot of money is used to make it cool in the eyes of teenagers. Because of this there is no much room for clumsy technical decisions and unintensional mistakes. At least this leaves clumsy CGI effects to be the trademark of music videos of the 90´s. Too bad that they're now too good!
3. Counterculture. For example most of the videos in the Mtv represent the mainstream of our culture. We can talk about mainstream, even though it's split into different subgenres. Popular ideas are recycled among each subgenre: rap videos are taking elements from other popular rap videos and so on. Camp often comes with some kind of originality (sometimes parodoxically, being original in unoriginality). Of course culture vs. counterculture is a rough way to categorize just like the question about seriousness, but it also point out important feature of camp. Not necessarily a random work of camp is political, but when spread all over the Internet it could be a polical tool of counterculture. Intentional or not, works of camp can be seen as satire of our culture, making fresh irony of it that stands out from the mainstream.
Video below was shown in Finnish television program, where group of people evaluate music videos. This happend in the time, when the "gay trend" became to Finnish TV and gays were seen in many programs. Because of this, I saw a lot of satire in this video, even thought it's possible that it wasn't intentional at all. That's how camp sometimes works!
This video is also example, that not all works of our time are automaticly dull, boring stuff that does not have any camp value. You just need to keep your eyes and ears open. That's how I encountered this one too, when a friend of mine mentioned it to me. Thanks to Internet, I could see it afterwards pretty easily. And thanks to YouTube, you can see it now!
Did you checked it out? Teuvo is definitely out of closet, isn't he! Nothing wrong with that, but perhaps he should focus on his main profession, be a costume stylist instead of singing. Or should he? If he could would do more as hilarious videos as this, I would be happy to see them!
...SERIOSLY!
12/04/2006
The introduction
I can't even remember how long I have been facinated by campy, corny and poor creations of the culture. The interest has always been with me, but sometimes sleeping during the years. It woke up again some years ago when started to collect different kind of magazines and children songs. I bought them from second hand shops and found music from low price sections of malls. Some of them were really campy but still inspired me a lot. Since then I have often wondered, what is that fascinates me in that kind of crap?
I started regularly to use Internet in 1996, but in the beginning sharing of culture wasn't very developed. Only some years ago it really started. Of course many of artists and especially companies want to prevent this to happen. Copyrights (or distributors rights) are another hot topic that I could say a lot about, but the only thing I say about it now is that all culture is based on the past and Internet just helps me to look what kind of things have been done before. Technology makes it possible to have an electronic library in my home to help me to learn history.Why do I want to know what kind of crap this so called civilization has vomited out during these years? I'm studying graphic design which creates natural interest towards these things. I have found camp as a source of inspiration as well as "good" and "professional" material too. Actually, many of my designs don't have any notable camp elements in them. One reason might be, that influences of camp seem to go more to my art projects. Perhaps I just need to wait untill I find a customer who wants a website with certain campy style!
Among the students of graphic design, there is always debate about good and bad design. Even though my own designs often aim to be something "serious" especially for clients, I think all art and design don't need to be serious, which I think is one of the most important aspect that camp has to offer. It's also been said that good art is at least a bit entertainy and vice versa. Of course it's not necessary to go to extreme and start doing bad design. All kind of influences should be filtered, not taken straightforwardly without a question.
Like mentioned before, Internet is a wonderful tool to find different camp phenomena from all over the world. For example, Ultraman (the picture above) would be totally unknown to me without Internet. When I have watched this campy and corny TV show for children, I have also seen what kind of costume design, stunts, script, music and other cultural elements Japan has had during the 60's and 70's (at least in the context of children program). A lot of this get into unconsciously and I don't even realize what kind of things I have absorded! It is imporant to me stop think these things more careful and summarize things here into this blog. And naturally at the same time all who are interested, can read my thoughts and also write comments. Please, I really want comments of yours and also links to delicious camp things in the net!
This suposed to be introduction, so I guess I should leave something to say another entries too. But before you leave, check out this David Hasselhoff's video, especially if you haven't seen it before. It might be one of the most campy music videos that is ever made. I woder if he is a human being. Perhaps he is one of Ultraman's villains from outer space? At least he seems to fly like many of them. Anyway, here it goes, straight from the YouTube!
