Sontag considers Camp a sensibility reveling in the unnatural and the theatrical, rather than the natural and the sincere. The concepts of exaggeration, stylization, and artifice link the Saturday Night Live sketch The Californians: Malibu Beach with Susan Sontag’s Notes on “Camp.”
The Californians sketch embodies an exaggerated portrayal of Californians, particularly through its depiction of driving directions, superficial melodrama, as well as the way the characters speak. Aligning with Sontag’s claim that Camp embraces things being what they are not (p. 280), the characters’ exaggerated language, dramatic emotional reactions, and their fixation on freeway routes turn what is normally considered mundane into moments of absurd comedy. Given that The Californians is making fun of Californian stereotypes, the heightened depiction of certain characteristics enables the skit to become comedic not necessarily in what is portrayed but in how it is portrayed. As a result, its intended humor stems from deliberate excess as each character attempts to one-up the others in their dramatized mannerisms.
Furthermore, Sontag notes that Camp “incarnates a victory of “style” over “content”” (p. 287), something that The Californians embodies. Even though The Californians: Malibu Beach is promoting a Volkswagen vehicle, the skit maintains the exaggeration, dramatics, and cinematic style of the other The Californians comedy sketches. In one moment, the car is almost integrated as one of the characters, fully leaning into an energy of ridiculousness as the car becomes a part of the dramatics. This serves as another moment contributing to The Californians: Malibu Beach’s lack of seriousness by being overly serious, mirroring Camp’s ability to “be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious” (p. 288). While the focus is to promote the car, the emphasis very clearly remains on The Californians: Malibu Beach’s playfulness, exaggeration, and drama.
The Californians: Malibu Beach embraces being overtly performative and leans into what Sontag describes as Camp’s “love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration” (p. 275). The repeated use of intense emotional reactions over small things and an overall exaggeration of speech, dialogue, conversation topics, allow the sketch—and its The Californians counterparts—to reflect several of Sontag’s observations of Camp, particularly those relating to exaggeration, stylization, and artifice.