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"The Queer Sensibilities of Cinema" Transcript

The Queer Sensibilities of Cinema    
14 Jun 2022

How The Gays Stole Cinema

The Mainstreaming of Camp

The Beauty of Camp

Camp (Thumbnail)

In Progress
IA1 | VB
1

You can view the archive of this video on the Internet Archive or on the Internet Archive

Auto-transcribed by YouTube, downloaded by TerraJRiley.
Thanks to /uGrand_Pineapple_4223 for finding various sources.

  • James invents a quote for Faye Dunnaway about basically being haunted by Joan Crawford. (Jump to )
  • James misattributes a quote from a news article as being from a book. (Jump to )
  • James edited out the context of a quote for director Herbert Kenwith, making it look like he was saying something when he was quoting someone else. (Jump to )
  • James probably overblows Joan's value to the Pepsi-Cola company. (Jump to )

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00:00 Introduction
04:42 All About Eve
10:48 Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?
25:28 Who's Afraid if Virginia Woolf?
37:52 Mommie Dearest
59:46 Intermission
01:00:39 Clue
01:07:02 Death Becomes Her
01:20:13 Elvira
01:26:17 Batman
01:38:47 Drag Queen Road Trips
01:46:36 But I'm a Cheerleader
01:52:56 Climax

#gay #lgbt #videoessay

 

Tustin2121

Note: This video is a compilation of two previous videos. Additionally, one section of part 1 was spun out into its own video after this compilation video was released.

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See Part 1 for the Cold Open

How The Gays Stole Cinema  
27 May 2022

Finished
Vm

But if that logic applied to straight men... why are any number of Westerns not held up by the gays? Because these cowboys often got very close and vulnerable with each other. Instead, we gravitated toward a very specific iteration of femininity in various specific films.

[Happy music, like something ripped from The Sims; tiny font]

James Somerton presents

Written by
Nick Herrgott
& James Somerton

Executive Producers
[21 patron names in two columns]

Producers [Patron names in columns: 19, 19, 19, and 14 names]

Edited and Directed by
James Somerton

Whatever Happened
To Good Taste?
How the gays used camp to steal Hollywood
and how the straights tried stealing it back

All About Eve is a perfect place to start. Like I said, not the first queer icon movie, but one of the first you may hear referenced. A drag queen may refer to someone as an "Eve Harrington", and you may not know what that means. But what they're doing is accusing someone
How The Gays Stole Cinema  
27 May 2022

Finished
Vm

A fandom that upon the movie's release would hang Christina Crawford in effigy. Mommie Dearest legitimized a whole group of audiences and creators who were going to do what Dunaway did, but do it on purpose. With or without the ghost of Joan Crawford.

Intermission

Believe it or not, studio heads rarely know what they're doing. Which is how you can have money catapulted at projects like Cleopatra or Mommie Dearest.

[Meme cutaway]: Joan Crawford taking an axe to a tree.
The Mainstreaming of Camp  
30 May 2022

How Camp Cinema Went Mainstream

Camp *Now For Straights (Thumbnail)

In Progress
Vm

Yes, all these films are remembered in no small part due to the strong queer following, and like Schumacher, queer creators work tirelessly to project camp aesthetic to an otherwise naive and innocent straight audience.

Part 9: Drag Queen Road Trips

Because camp was an aesthetic so closely associated with drag queens and drag culture it only made sense that you would start to get movies about them the public was aware that drag queens existed though usually referred to them as slurs and having them depicted as anything but punchlines was uncommon and thanks in part to the early rise to rupaul who somehow managed to break out of gay obscurity and reach a degree of public renown there was indeed a public curiosity about drag queens and two movies about drag queens were released at roughly the same time now the adventures of priscilla queen of the desert hereafter we'll just refer to it as priscilla to save time was released in 1994 in australia three drag queens one of them being a trans woman need to go cross-country to make a career-making performance this starts hugo weaving guy pierce and terence stamp riding on the titular priscilla the chrome tour bus that will carry them across the australian outback the group struggles to get along amid intergenerational tension and all kinds of road trip hijinks however its status as camp is somewhat difficult to explain see it's australian which means it comes from a very different collection of cultural sensibilities leaning on a bit more of what we may consider to be dry british humor though i struggle to really say it's british humor because for those who have seen shit's creek or other canadian comedies it seems like the only former british colony that doesn't seem to prefer dry comedy is america dry humor is one where a given punch line of a joke is delivered with less emphasis in a general sense it involves far more sarcasm and delivery and in comedic styles a reaction to the joke is far less important there's no prompt to let you know when to laugh it's kind of up to the viewer to use their reasoning to spot when something is funny in order to generate this kind of comedy one requires a separate in-world state of absurdity all characters even the straight characters have full awareness of the inherent rules of this world and their comedic responses are built around what is outrageous by these established standards this is abundantly clear in one of the ultimate drag queen camp movies spice world and sensibilities like those demonstrated in spice world are opposed to more american styles of comedy where the world is meant to be normal with a few exceptions like phoebe from friends but as another example i was inclined to include the british series absolutely fabulous this series itself is pivotal in establishing sensibilities in the queer community and gets overlooked for continuously indicating that one of the two primary characters is actually trans femme without any character having a single problem with it it is simply an element of the character that is taken for granted which feeds from the generalized style of comedy where characters simply don't react to the comedic antics of other characters within the script all individuals take for granted that this is simply how things are which is the difficulty when it comes to including international camp media it's played so dry and straight that north american audiences often assume that this is simply how people act in australia and the uk so because the comedy is downplayed to find the humor the viewer must be intimately familiar with the given culture to know where the separation lies between cultural absurdity and emotional realism such as in priscilla the elder queen cleaning up the younger one after a gay bashing and the drama revolving around hugo weaving's character having a child raised by his estranged former wife and the trans queen falling into a romance with a backcountry mechanic they meet by happenstance to an audience expecting a comedy to be aceventura it's not clear when the drama ends and the comedy begins leading many to assume it's simply a slice of australian life the themes of this movie don't necessarily focus on gender so much as it refocuses perhaps shedding the proxy of gender discourse to develop a discussion about queerness as a whole but having an open discourse about queerness where the messaging of queerness was not directed to straight people was refreshing and even if they are international actors they were actors of some renown which is also nice to see actors taking a risk especially at the time priscilla particularly resonates with me because there's this kind of ending message that says that it's perfectly okay to modify your life to accommodate being with other people that it's okay to lean in to other people and that nobody should really be expected to be entirely independent not necessarily a queer message but it's nice to hear that we get so much social pressure to be completely self-sufficient at all these dumb little adulting things that i feel like we don't take as much time as we should to just let ourselves be human priscilla made about 30 million dollars on a budget of 2 million which with hollywood accounting is about 26 million dollars profit free and clear so when it came to hollywood they thought hey let's see if we can do that tu wangfu thanks for everything julie newmar was actually in development at roughly the same time as priscilla once again for the sake of expediency we'll be referring to this as simply to wong vu granted the length of these titles is kind of camp in and of itself and patrick swayze is marvelous in the lead role but we could have had willem dafoe instead part of me is a little sad about that defoe is under consideration for the role but apparently swayze as a test went out with the director for a broad daylight walk around new york in full drag and was unclockable this film another road trip features two established queens noxima jackson played by wesley snipes and vita boem played by swayze bringing a younger queen under their wing chichi rodriguez played by john leguizamo after winning a trip to hollywood to enter into a major drag competition they pawn the plane tickets and use the money to buy a fabulous convertible coupe de ville to drive to la instead the camp here like with priscilla is featured in how these girls opt to do the entire trip in drag the early section of the film alludes to traumatic family life and an attempted sexual assault by a police officer who stops the working girls on the road without knowing that there were drag queens their car breaks down a staple of all road trip movies and hijinks ensue when the queens have to blend into a small town as women because they're never out of drag apparently chichi becomes enamored with a local boy who believes she's a girl or a sis girl anyway and the other two queens become frustrated with country living while they wait for a replacement part for their car through the duration of the movie they work to improve the lives of the locals including standing up to the abusive husband of a woman who befriends the group the cop who had assaulted vida who is ridiculed by his fellow officers for appearing to have been beaten up by a girl storms over to the town where the queens are hiding and demands their heads as payment for this humiliation the rest of the town comes to their aid dressed in the poise of drag and chase them off the town has a fabulous weekend festival and their car is fixed in hollywood chichi who had always felt so insecure about her ability to be a drag queen is the winner of the competition now while this movie like priscilla leans on camp comedy this is quite toned down from what you would get from diva centric examples like death becomes her and elvira mistress of the dark it's there but they don't lean into it as much and this isn't to say that gay movies didn't do camp john waters has an entire pre-hairspray filmography which i omitted because talking about it's gonna have to have its own video instead of serving up shameless camp i feel like the filmmakers here were using the platform to work in some legitimate feelings and spread awareness which was an ongoing theme of what became a weird glut of movies about gay people from the 1990s and 2000s kiss me guido mambo italiano in and out edges 17 etc but the 90s as a whole had a cultural aesthetic of taking things that were not meant to be serious and making them serious or using frivolous framing devices to talk about things that were very serious [Music] now to close out we are going to briefly talk about but i'm a cheerleader so trigger warning for those who need it this is one of the quintessential films about conversion therapy but i'm a cheerleader follows the story of fictional character megan plumfield i specify that the character is fictional because the more you know about how conversion therapy works the more this feels like a horror movie because literally everything in this movie is lifted directly from the practices of conversion therapists also known as sadists unaware that she is a lesbian she's outed to herself by her family and then shipped off to a conversion therapy camp the line but i'm a cheerleader is used by megan as a defense for her presumed heterosexuality the argument here being that she cannot be a lesbian because she conforms to typical feminine stereotypes megan becomes trapped in a secluded location with a collection of other gay and queer people who are out to beat the gay out of them sometimes literally if needed they are put through a series of heterosexualizing activities and often separated by gender the girls are pushed towards home economics cooking cleaning and feminine things in the hopes that it will overwrite their homosexual desires with the proper heteronormative ones again given that megan is a cheerleader and very effeminate in her own right these are not things that she is necessarily uncomfortable with the boys by contrast are forbidden from cooking and cleaning instead they do manly things like landscaping and simulated war games i mean when it comes to america's weird take on like conversion therapy rituals preventing boys from any kind of cooking is ridiculous like it's almost contradictory because hot cuisine is an industry dominated by men and i don't really want to get into analyzing the logic of people who isolate a few passages from the bible as the foundation and basis of their entire world view but the line between boy things and girl things has been erased and redrawn throughout history more times than you can fathom heels introduced to europe as footwear for men so that men would always be distinctly taller than women gender it's a thing sometimes anyway megan meets a girl graham as one does at one of these locations and it's heavily implied that these girls would make very good roommates but now we're getting into the territory of why a girl like graham who is comfortable in her sexuality would allow herself to go through this humiliating process as is normally the case it's an ultimatum put upon kids by their family and the risk is being cast out entirely because that's what jesus would do apparently very plain to see why the american version of jesus was not included in neil gaiman's american gods and it's also not like the conversion process only uses constructive processes to mold and shape gender roles and identities there are no walls in their dorm rooms for a reason no masturbation at night permitted and if an attendee experiences any impure thoughts they are encouraged to shock themselves when caught making out late at night two boys are reprimanded one runs away the other is kept back and isolated from the rest of the group forced to sleep in a dog house the one who ran away is rescued by two former attendees of the camp who then take megan and graham to a gay bar where megan begins to feel more comfortable with herself and who she is away from the confines of heterosexual society however when she's caught by the camp she's forced to leave with graham staying behind megan is rescued by the ex-ex-gay men and they plan a coup to rescue the kids before their heterosexual graduation meanwhile back at the camp the gendering rituals become more humiliating forcing boys and girls to wear skin suits with fig leaves covering the impure parts they simulate heterosexual intercourse these proper christians are forcing minors to engage in these rituals and yet we still let them call themselves christians let alone good people maybe this is just a catholic in me but i was under the impression that literally only god or jesus or saint peter had the authority to dictate who was or was not going to hell and therefore making the decision that another human being for committing whatever action is going to hell is speaking in the stead of the divine figure and thus is technically heresy which does sin due to hell but we don't need to get into theology right now anyway the day is saved the boys get to love boys and graham runs away with megan protected by the nice gay men in their youth shelter the movie ends with megan's parents attending a pflag meeting so things are looking up now while some of you especially those who have lived through experiences like this may take issue with how much of this content was depicted frivolously the ridiculous gender rituals were depicted for laughs which is valid if it was depicted as a psychological thriller it would automatically lose a chunk of the audience it's simply easier to spread this message around if it's showcased as something lighthearted essentially trick people into misunderstanding how grave this subject matter is until the very end anyway camp was used as a means to give this movie gay appeal beyond simply being a story about our experiences but also to add a lighthearted angle for straight people who needed to be massaged into this knowledge but even then with this movie and the drag queen road trips we see camp deployed as an aesthetic and camp sensibilities arising specifically where there is discourse about gender however the camp itself is toned down once again in lieu of realism for the sake of representation camp is used as a sensibility to highlight the gender discourse but the discourse itself was one that was meant to be seen when it comes to all about eve it seems to be a discourse about fame and corruption on the surface whereas given the minutia of the script it's really about the role of women in show business and the options that women in show business are given as they age the adventures of julie newmar the baby's afraid of a cheerleader i mean sorry camp although i totally see that movie the thing about camp in the end is that it's oddly ageless comedy is the fastest to age and the most likely to age badly but the extremes of camp leave it fresh for generations to come the absurdity is a preservative [Music] it wasn't long before the entertainment industry as a whole recognized the power of camp not just as a way to covertly bring in queer audiences without actually showing queer characters but as a way to bring in all audiences you see camp can be very all-inclusive if you choose to let it be the hyper-masculinity of the works of directors like michael bay and zack snyder are just as campy as a busload of drag queens just pushed in the opposite extreme instead of making a farce out of the femininity they make a farce of the masculinity whether the director is intended to or not the glistening muscles of 300 spartans lovingly depicted in slow motion for maximum impact led to posters for that movie adorning the walls of just as many gay boys as straight boys when it first came out the sequel was even supposed to feature a gay couple which snyder fought for but was overruled by the studio at which point he left the project the sequel instead features lena hedy in the scene-stealing role of queen gorgo a badass powerful woman ripped from the mind of john waters and planted into a homoerotic greek epic i'd argue that this is another drag queen role that's played by a woman and while hollywood was accidentally turning male power fantasies into peak camp cinema knowing filmmakers were bringing camp into the mainstream the over-the-top caricature of an aged actress played by catherine o'hara in shit's creek knowingly took the absurdity of faye dunaway's joan crawford and turned it up to an 11 and then broke the dial off moira rose former soap opera starlet seems to exist in a reality in which the golden age of hollywood never ended even as she lives in a run-down motel clutching onto her fabulous wigs and outfits for some comfort in the chaotic world of normalcy but this knowing camp character earned o'hara an emmy for her career defining performance whereas it earned dunaway or razzie decades before though nobody would argue that moira and joan are the same kind of character the same kind of performance is given the difference being that o'hara knows how far she's pushing it and then keeps pushing at the right moments but brings it back in when needed creating a camp character you wish you could be friends with instead of one you'd flee from and of course there's rupaul's drag race now in its 144th season taking every possible aspect of a camp's sensibility and making it mainstream drag queens who were once the camp idols drawing crowds at gay bars are now filling stadiums as the absurdity of a man dressing as joan crawford becomes not so absurd camp has always had a loving cisgender heterosexual audience who either discovered it through queer friends or just happened to be heteros with taste here on youtube cold crash pictures has done more videos about camp classics than i ever have and he's got a girlfriend even anime has embraced camp the intense masculinity of shows like dragon ball z with the glistening abs and queer-coated villains has an unintentional camp factor ed wood would cream their pants over and do not even attempt to tell me that jojo's bizarre adventure isn't one of the campiest things ever created in fact one could argue that camp is the primary aspect that gives jojo's bizarre adventure its primary fandom in susan sontag's defining essay on camp she explains that camp is a sensibility a mode of aestheticism a private code a badge of identity the hallmark of camp she says is the spirit of extravagance it can be broad but not everything can be camp here i disagree because everything can be camp if it tries hard enough and that i think is my definition of camp trying hard enough putting your all into something that others would expect little from seeing where the limits lie and then stepping over them enjoying your exuberant love of something instead of hiding it the brilliant cattiness of all about eve the venomous shade of who's afraid of virginia woolf the fabulous bitchiness of death becomes her the beautiful absurdity of drag queen road trips the weaponized feminism of pfeiffer's catwoman the voluptuous feathers and blinding sequins of elton john the living art projects of david bowie the boundless genre-defying queer energy of freddie mercury and even the glistening muscles of 300 spartans and anime supermen it's all camp it's all more than just a little queer and it's all us we queers not so secretly define the culture we live in no matter what the straits think so this june of 2022 pride month in the united states go to parties parades events seminars protests as you normally would but for those of you who don't recognize entries in this list i hope you make some time for movie marathons by all means watch the movies on this list but there are so many other movies and shows that i haven't even mentioned here these are the cultural milestones that have helped shape queer culture and have helped us endure persecution and scrutiny when the politicians and the zealots and the turfs and the homophobes and the hate mongers come for us and push us out the proverbial window we just keep getting up we've got more than nine lives we've got hundreds thousands millions we survived the trauma of our own mommy dearests and drank the potion of immortality so we're going to be around forever no matter how many eve harringtons try to steal our luster no matter how many small towns try to burn us at the stake no matter how many fiends try to murder us with a candlestick in the library we're not going anywhere hell we can take over the whole damn world because if camp has taught us anything it's how to make the absurd into reality [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] baby if you love me you become a better man [Music] you really like it but you never [Music] baby if you find it better [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] me [Music] [Music] sexy [Music] six [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] you [Music] [Music] so [Music] uh okay [Music] do [Music] [Music] oh uh you

Transcript of the extra chapters

These include sections on:

  • The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
  • To Wong, Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julia Newmar
  • But I'm a Cheerleader
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