Camp in Velvet Goldmine

The film, Velvet Goldmine, is Camp in the Sontagian sense. This film is meant to depict the life of a David Bowie adjacent character. Despite this, he is named Brian Slade and none of Bowie’s songs are played. This obvious attempt to capture Bowie’s essence, foiled by the inability to depict him directly, is Camp. The original songs are obvious imitations of Bowie’s style. Sontag’s phrase “things-being-what-they-are-not” is an apt description of the film’s parallels between its original characters and the world of Glam Rock. 

The song “The ballad of Maxwell Demon” has an accompanying music video within the film which embodies Sontag’s classification. This diegetic music video is Camp because it maintains the “delicate relation between parody and self-parody.” (282) It is a parody because the song directly mirrors Bowie’s “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust.” The video is self parody because it attempts to achieve the same level of seriousness and genius of Bowie. The film both attempts to convince the audience of the narrative that Slade is a one of a kind genius who is blessed with powers from outer space, and refuses to acknowledge that his character is an imitation. This is paradoxical to the supposed uniqueness. 

The film also addresses those aspects of taste, aristocracy, and homosexuality that Sontag writes about extensively. There are direct parallels in scenes which show the entourage of Slade and other glam rockers in a room adorned with red velvet, gold, and pearls. Sontag writes: “The experiences of Camp are based on the great discovery that the sensibility of high culture has no monopoly upon refinement.” (291) This relates to the scenes in the film involving exorbitant wealth because it is paired with the abuse of drugs and orgy. Although are not alien to the world of aristocracy, are not innate to its existence. This aesthetic of wealth is also Camp due to its falsity and performative quality. Slade and his posse have not been born into an aristocracy and their recreation of it, in some ways, defeats the entire point. 

In the end, this film is centered around the failure of a great artist, who’s real life counterpoint did not experience. When Brian Slade loses passion for his art, that is the moment when he loses success and eventually, dramatically fakes his own death. This is the height of Camp as the death of his creative persona has the effect of one of his human body. The anguish of those around him departs from the unseriousness of the rest of the film, especially when displayed by Toni Collette’s character. The unclear ending which implies that he has transformed into a new, less authentic artist, Jerry Devine, returns to Camp and provides a ridiculous, yet earnest ending.