I was struck by Sontag’s notes on Camp as “bad art”, as it immediately made me think of student filmmaking. Films made by students are inherently Camp, for their shoddy production values and lax acting skills create art that is in every way a failure, but in a way where said failure is part of the charm. As Sontag says, “the essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration”, and this can be most clearly seen when the artist lacks talent. Whether intentional or not, for a student film to survive it must be exaggerated in a way that opposes all semblance of naturalism, so as to make up for this lack of talent. They are films made for no money and purely for fun, the very amatureness of their existence highlighting the artifice of filmmaking, as what they attempt to achieve has no meaning to audiences outside of the immediate circle of filmmakers – in essence, student films are an inside joke.
Matt Johnson’s The Dirties (2013) exemplifies this whole idea: a film about highschool students making ‘bad’ films, with the very film being shown to the audience being the found footage of what they shot. Yet the entire thing is played as a comedy, even as the director (who also stars) plans a school shooting just to make his film more believable – and, indeed, executes said plan in a shocking ending that questions the sanity of the director. Eventually, neither the characters, nor the audience, nor even the filmmakers are able to discern the difference between the movie and reality, which leads to a direct confrontation between the leads as the director has become incapable of not ‘acting’ all the time. As Sontag states, “to perceive Camp in objects and persons is to understand Being-as-Playing-a-Role”, with life becoming theatre and the distinction between the two irrevocably destroyed.
‘The Dirties’ film within a film that they make for class is full of blunt film references, revelling in the superficiality of creative inspiration by transforming it into a joke. It is as Campy as films get, for the authenticity behind its poor quality heightens the feeling that the stupidness must be real. However, the director shows what he made to his teacher, who simply does not understand what makes it appealing, telling them to cut out the violence and profanity, leaving them with a film that might be more presentable but which has no life – referring back to Sontag, Camp is “from a serious point of view” seen as ‘bad art’, thus requiring a suspension of critical faculty to enjoy said art. There is a campiness intrinsic to Johnson, not least because he literally cross-dresses to flamboyantly play a woman in the jazz bar scene for his movie (much to the students amusement); but his constant manic outbursts of insane ideas, cringe humour and random filmic references extenuate the feeling that this goes beyond any semblance of ‘bad art’.
I really liked the connection you made between student filmmaking and camp as I think that the points you highlighted (especially the poor acting!) make a clear connection between the two. I do think that it should be noted that there are varying degrees of student film productions (with some being drastically better than others), and perhaps not all of them fall into the category of camp. However, as a whole, I agree that the genre of student filmmaking definitely has camp aspects to it.
This is a really interesting take! I was initially wondering if Tommy Wiseau’s The Room could be considered camp as well by a similar metric. I like your emphasis on the fun of the amateur; I think that’s an important distinction between camp and something that’s just so bad it’s good. There has to be a sort of personal element to it, a vulnerability of sorts, which I think student films can very much fall into at times because there is no armor of intentional irony.