campyTelevision
Television shows such as CHiPs, Batman, Gilligan's Island, and Fantasy Island, are enjoyed in the 2000s for what are now interpreted as their "campy" aspects. Some of these shows were developed tongue-in-cheek by their producers. TV soap operas, especially those that air in primetime, are often considered camp. The over-the-top excess of Dynasty and Dallas were popular in the 1980s. Mentos television commercials during the 1990s developed a cult following due to their camp "Eurotrash" humour.
The ESPN Classic show Cheap Seats features two Generation-X, real-life brothers making humorous observations while watching televised camp sporting events, which had often been featured on ABC's Wide World of Sports during the 1970s. Examples include a 1970s "sport" that attempted to combine ballet with skiing, the Harlem Globetrotters putting on a show in the gym of a maximum security prison, small-time professional wrestling, and roller derby. The ABC Afterschool Special episodes, which tackled topics such as drug use and teen sex, are an example of camp educational films. In turn, the Comedy Central television show Strangers with Candy, starring comedienne Amy Sedaris, was a camp spoof of the specials.
In a Monty Python sketch (Episode 22, "Camp Square-Bashing"), the British Army's 2nd Armoured Division has a Military "Swanning About" Precision Drill unit in which soldiers "camp it up" in unison. In the English sitcom The Office one of Tim Canterbury's pranks on Gareth Keenan includes a pun on meaning of the word camp.
The concept of the comicbook superhero (an individual in a highly stylised, outlandish and possibly impractical costume avenging otherwise serious matters such as murder) could be interpreted as camp. However since it was aimed initially at children, it is camp only in an abstract sense. It was not until the 1960s television version of Batman (one of the more famous examples of camp in pop culture) that the link was made explicit, with the inherent ridiculousness of the concept exposed as a vehicle for comedy. However this was also possibly done to get round the strict censorship of comics at this time (after Doctor Fredric Wertham's essay Seduction of the Innocent lead to the Comics Code), as the Batman cartoon strips were very dark and Noirish until the 1950's and from the 1970's onwards.
[edit] Film
Movie versions of camp TV shows have made the camp nature of these shows a running joke throughout the movies. John Huston's Beat the Devil (1953, starring Humphrey Bogart) was an exaggerated film noir send-up.[citation needed]. Filmmaker John Waters directed camp films, such as Pink Flamingos, Hairspray, Female Trouble, Polyester, Desperate Living, A Dirty Shame, and Cecil B. Demented. Filmmaker Todd Solondz uses camp music to illustrate the absurdity and banality of bourgeois, suburban existence. In Solondz's cult film Welcome to the Dollhouse, the eleven-year-old girl protagonist kisses a boy while Debbie Gibson's "Lost in Your Eyes" plays on a Fisher-Price tape recorder.
Educational and industrial films form an entire sub-genre of camp films, with the most famous being the much-spoofed 1950s Duck and Cover film, in which an anthropomorphic, cartoon turtle explains how one can survive a nuclear attack by hiding under a school desk (its British counterpart Protect and Survive could be seen as kitsch, even though it is very chilling to watch). Many British Public Information Films gained a camp cult following, such as the famous Charley Says series. Interestingly, Charley's voice is performed by the camp surrealist comedian and Radio DJ Kenny Everett, who came from an advertising background.
