1/15/2007
Hacking reality in a very gay way
My previous examples of camp here have (probably) been examples of unintentional camp. The lack of talent can sometimes create things that become infamously famous and sometimes even create cult following like Plan 9 From Outer Space as the worst movie ever. However, camp can, and also have been done intentionally. Just like any other artistic style, using camp as a base for creation it requires to be picky: something have to be included and something excluded.
When talking about art, the one common difficulty I have encountered is the fact that many people except art to be either serious (perhaps political, at least commenting issues) or aesthetical. When camp is not serious and not even beautiful in common ways, it's easily considered as a trash, kitch and it's value isn't considered at all. Perhaps it's flirting too much with pop culture, which makes some people to easy to categorize it to pop - not art or design. But in my postmodern views of culture, these categories are artificial and doesn't excist at all. Institutions and some individuals with power can claim something to be "real" art but that doesn't make it any more art for me.
This leads to the points that Wikipedia's article mention about. The first two sentences goes like this:
Camp is an aesthetic in which something has appeal because of its bad taste or ironic value. A part of the anti-academic defense of popular culture in the sixties, camp came to popularity in the eighties with the widespread adoption of Postmodern views on art and culture.
Even though I'm pretty educated myself and studying my bachelor of graphic design all the time, I find this approach very appealing. I have always thought that our culture teaches to us consider certain works as priceless and consider certain artists to as marvelous genious. This is why many people are disapointed, when they actually see Mona Lisa. I have seen it myself too and yes, it was very small and in my opinion not at all worth of that hype I have heard about it. So, my structuralistic (or perhaps post-structuralistic) view of culture itself makes me easily like camp. Even though I don't agree with all cynicism of Theodor Adorno, but I like his view how camp openly lives on the hypocrisy of the dominant culture. That way it can confront culture and being used as a tool for reality hacking.
Theodore Adorno also had very elitistic view about the culture. Even though his good and witty observations, he couldn't understand the pop culture and find any value from it. He would probably think that South Park is crap, even though it's the one of most intelligent TV shows running right now. The gap between "high" culture and pop culture still excists. But something is changing: the development of Internet and other computer technology had make possible anyone to compose videos and share them. Already some years, it's been pretty easy compose video with home computers, but now services like YouTube make also broadcasting possible and millions of people can see works of a boy from next door. I'm one of them too with my own videoblog, experimenting new ways to express myself using these new possibilities. The third entry in my videoblog is my experiment of camp, so that's why I put it here.
The idea for the video came originally from two of my friends who visited me in the beginning of this year. No, they're not German and not gays either. My iTunes played Homosexuél song by a coincidence and Olli happened to hear it. He laughed at it and later came up with an idea about guest performance in my blog, using the song as a source of inspiration. Making the video wasn't too easy even it looks like cheap and campy. Putting certain kind of style always needs attention and thinking what to use to maintain the style. Frankly, as a graphic designer, I found it very nice to use Comic Sans for a good reason. As it is probably the most campy font in the world, it's usually something to avoid among designers. But sometimes breaking unwritten rules is necessary. Begins to sounds like an art, huh?
It can be viewed as an art, but everything can be seen as an art if we just wish to. Many people seem laugh at it and it's getting more views in the YouTube than any other videos of mine. Some people have asked me "what's the point or message of the video? To them I have said: "it's all in the one word which is repeated many times in it, using audio and video". It doesn't need to have any deeper meaning, but sure, there is one to those who demand it. Sexuality and it's meaning as a part of each personality is overly exaggarated in the media of today. If someone is gay it's an huge issue and also straight people want desperately prove that they're not gay. When Theodore Adorno was still alive and kicking, gay was a word for happy, joyful person. In this context, this video can be seen as a satire of this attitude: the only message of it is just "gay gay gay gay gay gay gay and gay".
Gays have been out from closet relatively short time. To the mainstream shows they have appeared very recently. It will be interesting to see, can they ever get rid of the campiness. Is homosexuality going to be always campy and therefor connected to humour? Perhaps gays don't mind if campy stamp prevails. Humour might be the way to acceptance equality.
