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THE_FALCON
January 1-18, 2005
In editing my Sontag quotes, I've elided
many of her examples of camp because to
my eye, her examples obscure her points. SUNDAY_CAMP
She continually comes up with
cases that I want to argue with:
o "The Maltese Falcon"
"The Maltese
Falcon! But
that's a great (The George Sanders
movie!" Falcon would be a
much better example.)
o "Trouble in Paradise"
"Trouble in Paradise" --
the Lubitsch comedy about
jewel thieves.
Rogues naughty, but
not villanous... much
like "To Catch a Thief".
It's also quite
obviously a comedy,
with a prominent
role given to
Edward Everett Horton...
o Edward Everett Horton
By what stretch of the
imagination could Edward Horton was a
Everett Horton be regarded comic actor.
as unconscious of his art, How is it
an innocent producing "camp" possible to
by accident? see his work
as "failed
seriousness"?
o Gaudí
Could it be that
Sontag is
Maybe Gaudí registered conflating two
as camp to someone still different concepts?
steeped in the esthetic
of modern architecture? Bogart & Horton are
favorite subjects
for campy imitation,
but they themselves
need not be camp
for that to work.
Perhaps it would
be better to
o "To Catch a Thief" reserve "camp" for
the genre of queer
Now... In what sense would stage act, and
I want to defend "To Catch think of the
a Thief"? Not on grounds central subject
of realism, certainly. here as "kitsch".
Though, while there's
certainly a forced,
clumsy quality to much
of Hitchcock's The "suspense" form in
"suspense", I don't general has an air of
see too much of it in contempt about it...
this film. it's very manipulative,
and rarely "plays fair".
TO_CATCH_A_FAKE
CHEAP_SUSPENDERS
I can't detect the CASTLE_SKULL
sense of contempt that
Sontag refers to.
But it's not hard to
think of examples of
forced camp redolent
of contempt e.g. the
60s Batman TV show.
But even that TV show --
AVENGING_RAND which I've come to loath --
I liked it a lot when I
was six or so. It was a Artworks can
guilty pleasure; function in multiple
I didn't want to let on different ways for
to my older brothers how different kinds of
much I wanted to see it. people: this should
NULL_HINGED not be something
that needs to be
repeated this often.
And *many* people feel
some affection for it.
(Though for them
there may be a veneer
of nostalgia lathered
over it's badness.)
Is it just that
camp is in the
eye of the beholder?
Sontag denies that taste is
a purely individual thing --
hence her many flat pronouncements
about what is or isn't camp -- So possibly: "The
but she at least admits that it Maltese Falcon" may
can change over time. have once been camp,
and now is not.
A film missing from her lists
is "Cassablanca". Because too Algis Budrys (Galaxy, Sept 1971):
many would argue with her "Full appreciation of a hero's
pronouncement, either way? hard knocks requires a battered
context of one's own. The
Because "Cassablanca" seemed Maltese Falcon will not work on
more complicated... some an innocent reader."
camp lines here and there on
a more serious framework? Perhaps then,
Sontag was
Cassablanca certainly didn't revealing a
work on *my* unbattered kind of
context -- when I was a kid innocence of
I just thought it was boring. her own...
(She was 35
in '68, if
The noir detective that matters.)
has hooks for
different levels
of experience.
Youth just sees a Possibly, Sontag
Hero, it takes was blinded by
experience to see a seeing it only on
failed, bitter figure its simplest level.
flailing through life.
No sane person sets
out to be a Spade or G_IN_THE_AIR
a Marlowe.
"36. But there are other creative
sensibilities besides the
seriousness (both tragic and comic)
of high culture and of the high So she notes that
style of evaluating people. And one a love only of the
cheats oneself, as a human being, if serious is too limiting...
one has respect only for the style
of high culture, whatever else one But I would go further:
may do or feel on the sly."
Must we only take the
serious seriously?
"37. The first sensibility, that of
high culture, is basically TAKEN_LIGHTLY
moralistic. The second sensibility,
that of extreme states of feeling,
represented in much contemporary
'avant-garde' art, gains power by a
tension between moral and aesthetic
passion. The third, Camp, is wholly
aesthetic." Sontag here does not
undermine the high
and low distinction,
This is what's offensive about she embraces it.
shuffling "The Maltese Falcon"
off into the "camp" bin.
It amounts to a denial that any
of the moral issues involved
amount to anything.
SUNDAY_MORNING
"The Maltese Falcon" is about
living according to your own
standards in a corrupt world. LIGHT_EXPECTATIONS
The near infinite cynicism of
the Falcon... all just a joke?
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