7/05/2007
Xabarín Club: treasures of Galicia
What is seen as camp definitely depends on the cultural context. As we see campiness in many japanese movies and tv-shows, they probably find the same from the products of western pop-culture. It hints that there might be some culture spesific elements that are found mainly from the entertainment of foreign cultures. Even though globalisation is told to make world small by making changing ideas easier, it seems that a lot of originally still prevails into an entertainment of each culture. What is it then?
You have to know what you´re looking for. I am a Finn so it´s easy to me invent the right keywords for Google to find something campy art of Finland. I already possess huge amount of information about the cultural history of Finland. It´s good to remeber that the most camp phenomena are underground. I think camp celebreties like David Hasselhoff are quite rare after all. Or at least a tip of the iceberg. There is a lot more to discover. And multiply it with amount of different cultures of this planet!
I have encountered the most of camp phenomena just by a coincidence. Going through cd´s at a second hand shop has been one of the most effective way to find campy music with hilarious covers. This basicly means that you´re restricted to the entertainment of the local culture. Depending where you live, this might contain sevaral countries though. Yes, we live in the information age where Internet rules and so, but to find some "treasures" you need know where to start. That is the difficult part. And right now I can know only two solutions: either you travel to the country itself or know someone who knows enough about it´s culture to give you some good tips.
The latter one we all can imagine: a friend tells you something hilarious video at YouTube and you go to see it. Imagine the same, but the the friend is from another country and the video is something very local - something that you could never find on your own. This kind of cultural trade is very important during the time. But don´t you still want to find something on your own?
At least for me it´s part of the "camp treasure hunting" to find something awesome on your own. It makes a treasure more valuable and exciting experience, when you find it yourself while travelling. An emotional bond is created between you and the treasure you found. Another part of the fun is to show it to your friends back home and see their faces when they see the ridiculous cover an album and/or play over the top gay music.
In the october 2006 I moved to Spain, Galicia, to study graphic design as an Erasmus exchange student. At December 2006 I visited La Coruña and found accomodation through HospitalityClub. Before I went there, I burned a cd-rom full with Finnish music. I took another empty cd and gave it to my host, asking him to put Galician music into it. He liked the idea of trading cd`s. Especially one folder in the cd I found very interesting: Xabarín Club. I remembered that it was some TV-show in the local, Galician tv-channel that had an animated boar as a host. It played another animated series such as Dragon Ball Z. The target audience of the show seemed to be kids and/or young teenagers. However, the thing I didn´t know was the fact that during the 90´s the show played a lot local music videos, both Galician and Portuguese. It was an important channel to broadcast the local music, generally punk, rock and folk. When I searched a bit more with Google, I found a huge collection of those videos from YouTube. The music alone didn´t reveal the whole campiness to me, but the videos finally did.
I tried to think what makes these videos to feel so campy. Is it just the amatourish visuals, technical clumsiness or what? One important thing was the karaoke style subtitles. Because the original medium was Galician tv-channel which promotes Galician language, it seemed to be important to underline the language by using the subtitles. When I listened songs alone I thought many of the songs to be in Spanish. Galician language is mixture of Spanish and Portuguese and some of the choruses of the songs sounded Spanish to me. However, subtitles revealed that it isn´t Spanish. It´s funny to think about how this linguistic (and nationalistic) choice to put subtitles adds greatly camp value to the video!
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.
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!
