Notes on Camp The EuroWhat? Podcast The EuroWhat? Podcast ------ Notes from Future Mike ------ 0:03 Mike 0:03 Hello, friends. Future Mike here. This summer, Ben and I are working on some behind-the-scenes projects for the podcast, so we'll be unlocking episodes from our Patreon. We'll be back with brand-new episodes for Season 10 on September 1st. In the meantime, this episode is our discussion of culture critic Susan Sontag's 1964 essay, Notes on Camp, that we released for the Eurowat AV Club in October 2023. If you enjoy this episode, we have dozens of more bonus episodes available at patreon.com slash Eurowat. For $5 a month, you can get access to that full library as well as new bonus episodes every month. We just dropped our May 2026 episode, where we watched the full 1994 Eurovision Song Contest, with friend of the show, Ted Van Houten. Our bonus episode for June will be about the HBO documentary, Billy Joel and So It Goes, which was referenced in this year's Eurovision Grand Final. You can also follow our Patreon for free, which will get you access to our monthly newsletter, where we get caught up on Eurovision headlines, look ahead to Bulgaria's preparations for 2027, get a sneak peek at what topics are coming up on the podcast, and keep track of North America tour dates for Eurovision acts visiting this side of the Atlantic. Sign up today at patreon.com slash . Alright, that's enough self-promotion. Please enjoy this discussion about Notes on Camp. ------ Episode Intro ------ 1:32 Ben 1:32 RIP Susan Sontag. You would have loved BookTok. Mike 1:38 Hello, and welcome to the Eurowhat AV Club, our exclusive Patreon podcast for you, our Patreon supporters. I'm Mike McComb, and I'm here with my co-host, Ben Smith. Hey, Ben. Hey, Mike. For this month's meeting, we'll be talking about Susan Sontag's essay, Notes on Camp. Have you read Notes on Camp before? Ben 1:58 It's one of those things that feels like it's in the cultural ether, especially as a person who enjoys mystery science theater and terrible movies. I feel like Campy gets thrown around there as well as with Eurovision. But, like, I've never actually sat down and read this until now. Mike 2:12 I was surprised that it was a relatively short read. Like, I think it was only, like, 12 pages. I think I was expecting it to be not quite a manifesto, because no. I was expecting it to be, like, a chapter or, like, a series of essays, perhaps. I'm also surprised that I've not it before we decided to do it for this episode. And, like, I've done a lot of, like, media studies type stuff. Ben 2:33 I was going to say, Mike, you're the one of the two of us that has, like,a media studies. Yeah. Mike 2:37 Yeah. It's quite shameful. Like, I have a film degree, but there are so many classics of American cinema that I have not encountered. I'm a fraud. That's what I'm saying. So... As you said, camp gets thrown around quite a bit in our various circles, particularly the Eurovision circle. So, yeah, just kind of wanted to see what all of the fuss was about. Ben 3:01 Also, we were over on Bradley's podcast as guests, and it came up, and, like, it was just sort of like a nice little, oh, hey, we should do that. Or to quote Karlie Kloss's pre-Met Gala tweet from a few years ago, we're going to look camp right in the eye, and then we're the most boring basic dress ever. That's the optional part for both of us. Yeah. Let's start with looking camp directly in the eye, and then we can see if we proceed to wearing a boring dress about it. ------ Notes on Camp Background ------ 3:27 Mike 3:27 Yeah, a little bit of background. The essay was written by Susan Sontag and published in the Partisan Review in 1964. Partisan Review, that was a quarterly about New York City culture. It launched Susan Sontag's career as a literary critic. I think the most recent callback to the essay was probably the Met Gala where that tweet came from, because that was the theme of the 2019 celebration. Like, I'm still not entirely sure what the Met Gala is. Ben 3:59 Fundraiser? Like, it's a fundraiser. Ultimately, it's a fundraiser. You pay a lot of money to go there, and then sometimes you wear a hamburger dress and get the memo, and sometimes you do not. Mike 4:08 I think that was the thing about the 2019 Met Gala,where it was just like, oh, a lot of people don't seem to know what camp is. I think that's a good entry point into this, because it is trying to define this very ethereal concept of what is camp. Ben 4:24 It's very funny to me that this opens with something along the lines of, a sensibility is one of the hardest things to talk about, and then proceeds to try and, like, nail jello to a tree in terms of being like, here what it is! Mike 4:37 A sensibility, or what we would now call a vibe. O of the first things that I have underlined is, to talk about camp is therefore to betray it. And it's like, oh, okay, so camp is Fight Club. So we don't talk about camp, episode over. Great. We did it. Hooray! Thanks, everybody. Goodbye. I like the idea of it being described as a sensibility. Throughout reading the essay, the thought that came to my mind is also the definition of obscenity. Like, you can't really say what it is, but you know it when you see it. And it's just kind of defined in negative space. Ben 5:13 This is the most I have underlined a piece of work since undergrad for me, is just like, just reading through this, it's like, oh, m,this is real good. I love this. More please. Mike 5:22 Yeah. So the way that the essay is structured is, there's a brief introduction, and then there are a total of 58 notes that are, it's kind of the format of a post that you would see on LinkedIn, which I would argue LinkedIn posts are camp. Ben 5:41 Oh, yeah, no, just like the little business bro tone poems. Yeah, those are camp. Mike 5:46 I don't think they're all distinct notes from one another. Like, they all kind of flow. It's really kind of more the numbering of the paragraphs. Ben 5:52 It sort of circles around the same three or four ideas. I love that it calls out that one of the main areas that you still kind of see, oh, this is camp is in movies, because movies are very accessible. But just the idea of seeing everything in quotation marks and trying to understand like where it's coming from is very interesting. Just sort of the idea of artifice and the idea exaggeration of that artifice. Mike 6:17 But it's not just that. There is this level of remove that has to exist. But camp isn't always successful on its own terms. Like, it really is such a regally concept, at least the way that Sontag seems to be defining it. Ben 6:36 The one other area that really jumped out to me is the notion of it as being relative to time. Things can become camp, but I think they can also stop being camp. And you can't intentionally aim for them to be let's stick a pin in that come back to that later. The notion of the canon of what is camp changing. One of the first little text blocks that you get is here are random examples of things that I think are camp in 1962. I read this and then had too much time and wanted to dive into that some more. So I went to my local library and I picked up both God's Man, which I was like, I don't know what this is. And it's basically like a protographic novel, but it's done in all in woodcuts. And I don't understand how that was camp. Like I engaged with the text. I read it. I'm just like, I don't get it. Zulika Dobson is a campus novel that's set at Oxford and basically a woman shows up and all of the male students lose their dang minds. Basically, I read through a few chapters like I get it. I get why this is kind of camp. I didn't finish it. Other things in the list. The Brown Derby restaurant. It's a restaurant that looks like a hat. Like what's not to love? Yes, that's camp. Flash Gordon did not seek out the original serials, but did watch the 1980 movie. And that is aiming for intentional camp and kind of misses the mark. Mike 7:51 Oh, you think that that's intentional? Ben 7:53 There's some level of it that feels like it knows where it's going. Like it's trying to capture some of the vibe of that. Like I enjoyed it, but it's the sort of movie I would enjoy. Right. Mike 8:03 I mean, I think it's also hampered by the fact that 1980 was such a weird year in cinema that I think there was probably more sincerity behind it because it was like space opera. I think the whole concept of space opera is inherently camp. And maybe they were trying to be like, but we're not camp. We're not camp. It's like your camp. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Ben 8:22 Like there's a lot of, there's a, there's a tug of war happening with that movie. And I'm currently reading a book about the production process of David Lynch's Dune that also brought that up. So like, just like, it's a bit like the space opera has been on my mind lately. And space opera is very campy. Yeah. Just thinking of like Barbarella in particular, thinking about campus time bound, like a lot of the stuff that gets, that's getting brought up. Art Nouveau, Tiffany lamps, just like are like kind of 18th century, 1900 stuff. So just like, just thinking like you have tragedy plus time equaling comedy, maybe just media plus time on some level produces camp. Oh, that's interesting. Mike 8:56 I think where I was coming down on this is context matters quite a bit. And she doesn't really get into the context of things. And I think in certain contexts, and I think with Eurovision in particular, like if a song is a Eurovision entry, I think it gets put into this like camp box. Whereas if it's just a song that is put on the radio, not having that Eurovision context to it could end up changing the way that you are interpreting it or receiving it or am I making sense? I don't know. Yeah, no. Yeah. Like, yeah. Ben 9:30 Like saying that something is a Eurovision song puts a certain level of expectations on it that might not have otherwise if you're just exposed to it without that context. Mike 9:37 Yeah, I think I think expectation is the right word there. Ben 9:40 Well, I'm just thinking towards Eurovision. And again, like the stuff that gets called out, Gothic novels, chinoiserie, fake ruins, there's like a sense of caricature happening. And there was also a wonderful note about camp blocking out political content that made me think, oh, Eurovision, Eurovision is not a political contest. Camp. The idea of providing time to kind of detach, but also build a sense of sympathy. I liked that a lot. But also the spirit of extravagance. I just have so many exclamation points. Ambition, a lady in a dress made of three million feathers, the glamorous, the extraordinary, the special. Mike 10:18 It sounds like you have a lot of the same stuff underlined that I have underlined. Ben 10:22 I did so much underlining with the first time I read this. And then I came back today and I highlighting the notion of camp as some sort of like measure of time against a piece of media. Many people who listen with delight to the style of Rudy Valley revived by the English pop group, The Temperate Seven, would have been driven up the wall by Rudy Valley in his heyday. Just like me every time I said to my friends, the worst Eurovision entry from 1986. This is great. Mike 10:48 No, this is awful. I think what I really appreciate about camp, because I've had kind of a prickly relationship with the term or at least how the term is applied. Like it feels like there's this sense of less than or sneering or condescending to whatever is being referred to as camp. One of the things that she does bring up, which I was particularly interested in, because there is this sort of queer coding to camp that also makes the sneering condescension. Maybe that's why I'm particularly attuned to it. But yeah, like, oh, where was it? It was a place where I think I wrote, uh-oh. Oh, yeah, here we go. Note 50. The history of camp taste is part of the history of snob taste. But since no authentic aristocrats in the old sense exist today to sponsor special tastes, who is the bearer of this taste? Answer, an improvised self-elected class, mainly homosexuals, who constitute themselves as aristocrats of taste. In the margin next to that, I said, also podcasters. Ben 11:55 So hello, everybody. RIP Susan Sontag. Y would have loved book talk. Mike 12:05 She does get into the kind of queer coding of it, saying that homosexuals, by and large, constitute the vanguard and the most articulate audience of camp, and that homosexuals have pinned their integration into society on promoting the aesthetic sense. Camp is a solvent of morality. It neutralizes moral indignation and sponsors playfulness. Ben 12:26 That notion of sponsoring playfulness, that ties in with another section I highlighted in Notes 36, of, like, there are other creative sensibilities besides the seriousness of high culture and the high style of evaluating people, is that it's like proto-poptimism, kind of. You can also just like this thing that is sort of for the common people and the masses. You don't just have to read boring books. Mike 12:45 Right. Or, like, just eating food, like, enduring food because you need energy. It's like, oh, no, there's flavors and color and texture. Like, there's so much more to enjoy about the thing rather than just its utilization purpose. Ben 13:01 CAMP tastes above all a mode of enjoyment, of appreciation, not judgment. CAMP is generous. It wants to enjoy. My notion of CAMP has, like, kind of gets tied up in the notion of, oh, this is a license to make fun of a thing. Over time, in my own appreciation of terrible movies, it has not been because, oh, this is so poorly created. I think about the work of Roger Corman. His memoir is about how I made a hundred movies in Hollywood and I never lost a dime. Like, he was making them quick and cheap because there was a demand for them. You have the original Little Shop of Horrors, which was shot essentially in a weekend on a set that was going to be torn down. Some of his stuff shows up on Mystery Science Theater and it is his early stuff that's kind of schlocky and like, oh, we made this western in six days and you can tell. The Criterion Collection just featured all of the adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe he did, where you can see that same frugal eye in reusing these beautiful gothic sets that were hanging around and using public domain material and, like, really just, like, elevating the material and just giving way too many delightful monologues to Vincent Price, who's just, like, chewing the scenery in the best way. Like, they are highly recommended. I would love just, like, one nice DVD box set of all of them. Studios, the notion of taking this lower B movie and going, oh, no, this is also worth appreciating and it has its own merits and you can see what it is striving for and achieving. Mike 14:20 One of my favorite movies is Ed Wood. If you've seen any of Ed Wood's movies, like, they're not good, but you can see the passion. You know what he's trying to do and he's just so enthusiastic about it. He just, like, just wants this to happen. There are just limitations there. Some of them are financial. Some of them are talent-based, but it's just like, oh, like, the intention and the goal and, like, the dream is there. I think that is one of the things that I really do respond to with Eurovision, and I think that's something that comes up in the podcast quite often, where it's just like, oh, like, it sort of works and, like, you can see what they're going for here. It's not always going to be successful, but hey, I enjoy it. Like, I think of, like, San Marino's entry this year or, like, when we were talking about Solo and, like, comparing it to hotel art, particularly when you get to the point where she's wearing the baby dress at the turquoise carpet. This is 100% camp and good job. Congratulations. You have achieved what I think you were going for. Ben 15:23 Yeah, and it's, like, just on the edge of self-awareness enough, because that could easily tip over into being too self-aware, because, again, I think you can't intentionally do camp. And as this calls out, intending to be campy is harmful. I love the examples it gives of, like, the effort that goes into this and the intention, because you have an Art Nouveau lamp where there's, like, a snake whining around it. Like, that's great. I've seen, like, 20 of those at the House on the Rock in Wisconsin, which is a really good monument to both camp and hoarding. Busby Berkeley musical numbers. The first time you see one, it just kind of strikes you just because it's like, no, there's literally 200 people on this soundstage doing this. Mike 16:05 Yeah, yeah. Or, like, Esther Williams swimming choreography. Ben 16:09 Yeah, just anything with the scale of people that that took and just thinking about the number of takes it took to get that right the first time. But then you look at things that are, lik, sort of twisting things into, oh, we're aware of this and we're making it intentionally campy. So, like, the two examples that came to mind for me, one that is, I think, a little bit more accessible than the other. Reefer Madness became a midnight movie because its 30s moralism about marijuana was taken to this hilarious extreme. It's not knowingly aware that it's sort of, like, tipped over the edge into being camp. But Reefer Madness the musical takes all of that subtext of what's hilarious after the fact and sort of makes it the main text of the movie, and it didn't really work for me. Similarly, one of the movies that gets featured on Mystery Science Theater, Hobgoblins, is a very 80s, clearly knocking off gremlins, kind of campy. Like, I wouldn't necessarily say it's full camp, but years later, after it got picked up by the show, the original creator of that movie made a sequel. And it's awful in a completely different way because it's way too self-aware of what people liked of the first one. It's caricature taken to, like, the wrong That makes a lot of sense. Mike 17:16 Yeah, ------ Is Eurovision Camp? ------ 17:16 Mike 17:17 like, putting this in sort of a Eurovision context, the thing that immediately jumped to my mind in this was quote-unquote joke entries. Like, I'm thinking, like, Dust in the Turkey, Sylvia Knight. There's an archness to it, but it's, like, it is a little too arch. And yeah. Ben 17:36 Yeah, like, I also had that on my list. When you have the ones, like, I think it was from 1980, Eurovision from, like, the Belgians. Or another one that popped up on my Twitter feed today of When Latvia Sent Beautiful Song, where, like, it is a Eurovision song in quotation marks. Mike 17:55 I hated that entry so, so much. Like, it made me not want to be a Latvia fan. And yeah, it took years for that to turn around. But yeah, I was like, oh, Latvia, what are you doing? Ben 18:07 And it's just like, the entire song just feels like the filler lyrics while you think of the actual good lyrics. Mike 18:14 That came out the same year as the Social Network song, where it's just like, okay, like, that does seem to work as camp, because it is being, like, self-aware, but there's still this, like, earnestness about it. Ben 18:28 Yeah, no, I think Ralph Segal just wrote that song of, like, yeah, I did it. Boom. Done. Next one. Mike 18:32 Like, he was trying to make a point, but I don't think he was, like, trying to be, like, incorporate Asano about it. So. Yeah. Ben 18:38 Yeah, no, like, I, no, there, there is no sense that he's constantly winking to the audience. Right. Another thing I liked about trying to put a net around what, whatever the heck camp is, is just the idea that it's a decorative art and it has texture. I think about the scrappiness of terrible movies. I think about when you can really see a nation doesn't have the budget, but they do have a dream and they're doing what they can't. Because, like, when Moldova, uh, My Lucky Day is, like, we have three IKEA wardrobes and a dream. We are going to do some farce on the stage. And it was delightful and lovely. Mike 19:09 I think Moldova has the camp quotient perfectly calibrated. Their entry this year, I think, wo qualify as camp. Trenuental, I think that definitely qualifies as camp. And, uh, yeah, Sugar. Like, I, I, I, like, tried, like, playing back in my mind. It's like, wait, what would, would, would have their non-camp entry have been? Ben 19:29 Uh, Wild Soul. Wild Soul was not camp. It's been a while since I've looked at that one. I said that and then to me, it was like, what, wait, is it good for you, Moldova? Keep up the, keep up the good work. Mike 19:40 They are very good at the camp. Whereas, like, a country like Sweden, I don't think they're necessarily camp, or at least would not fit Sontag's description of camp. Like, I'm looking at note 28, uh, which is, again, camp is the attempt to do something extraordinary, but extraordinary in the sense often of being special, glamorous, not extraordinarily merely in the sense of effort. Ripley's, believe it or not, items are rarely camp. These items, either natural oddities or else the products of immense labor, lack visual reward, the glamour, the theatricality that marks off certain extravagances of camp. And I never really think of Sweden as being extravagant, even with, like, panini presses and treadmills or whatever props they have on stage. There's still a kind of a clinical nature to the presentation. And I think that that prevents the sort of layer of separation that I think to happen. Ben 20:40 A compliment you can give someone saying that they made something look effortless. And I feel with Sweden, especially in, like, the last few years, you can see every bit of the effort. Mike 20:47 Like, they are putting in the work, but it's just like, oh, okay, like, th is, you really want this, rather than it being, like, a wink. And I'm like, I tried really hard. This is great. Oh, this whole thing? Yeah. Oh, don't make me sing. Ben 21:01 Thinking about Sweden and seriousness, the whole point of camp is to dethrone the serious. Camp is playful, anti-serious. Camp involves a new, more complex relation to the serious. One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious. That was the point where I'm just, like, pulled out my note, but I'm like, this is why I like talking about pop culture and our show. I feel like I've described our show as just sort of being irreverently reverent about the contest. And again, like, I have fun taking a very silly thing and going, okay, but, like, this is serious and it's good. Mike 21:31 It's important, but it's not important, but it is kind of important.And it's just like, like, doing that sort of tug of war. I think that is part of the capital C camp. And I think, I think this is really helping me better understand, like, why I am so engaged with the contest and, like, the stuff that comes out of this contest, because it's like, oh, yeah, like, there are interesting conversations to be had. If there's a song that you don't like, there's a lot to be said. There's a song that you love, there's a lot to be said. And even for the stuff that is, like, right in the middle, like, again, I'm thinking of solo. These are conversation pieces, like, 35 to 40 conversation pieces presented to a global audience every year. Note 34. Ben 22:12 It's no longer, is this song good or is this song bad? It is a set of supplementary standards. One of the discussion questions we have had on the notes for a while is like, okay, b is Eurovision camp? My answer is slightly complicated. I don't know about yours. Mike 22:25 I think individual elements of a given contest are camp, but I would not say the entire experience is camp. Mike 22:35 The way that I phrased that was the Eurovision song contest as a whole contains campy elements, but is not itself Mike 22:41 camp. Okay. Yeah. Like, hmm. I think we are saying something similar. I think it may just be like a preponderance of the evidence is where I'm going with it. It's like, well, it's 51% camp. Therefore we have to describe it as camp, but yeah. But like, I think there would be disagreement on which elements are camp or not. Like we've called out a couple that I think are obvious examples of camp, but then I think of something like Ieya from Spain this year. I think I would argue that that was camp. Ben 23:13 That is in quotation marks, a flamenco song. Mike 23:16 Yeah. Well, I was also thinking about it where it's just like, it's being presented with such seriousness, but it missed the mark, but it was still like an aesthetically pleasing performance. Like I'm hearing Nina Garcia in my head, like saying if something is aesthetically pleasing or not. And I think that is also part of it. I think meme culture is really helpful in defining like what is or is not camp because if you're able to make a meme of it or make some sort of joke on Twitter or whatever social media platform we are migrating to. Ben 23:49 Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Well, yeah. Just thinking about when El Diablo was a thing and I just made the tweet that was just a picture of a taco, a picture of a tamale, and then a picture of Mahmoud. Mike 23:59 Exactly. And if you can make a meme of something, then it can become camp. I guess Sweden was successful in camp this year because all we could talk about was the panini press. And you know that that was not their intention. Ben 24:13 No, no, no. Eurovision again, plus Eurovision Twitter at the time was really good for applying meme culture to stuff like that. Cliff Richard performing congratulations is kind of camp. Yes. Part of that is just time and also just going, oh, he's in the Austin Powers suit. Yes. Mike 24:32 But then you also have like Sunit doing her interpretation of that song with like the clown Mardi Gras parade or whatever was happening with that. We're now talking about it as an art installation. So I think the transformative nature of things is also not complicating the discussion, making the discussion a little bit more fun, a little bit more accessible. I feel like there could be more notes added to this essay now that 60 years. Yeah. Yeah. 60 years. Year that ends in zero. Ben 25:06 So I spent far too much time thinking about, okay, what else would I put on the list of things and like never actually wrote any down? Mike 25:16 Just looking through the list that's provided and immediately I'm hearing, good evening, America. I'm Chloe Sevigny. And these are like all things that would be mentioned in the course of a single Chloe video. Ben 25:28 I've gotten very into camp. ------ Camp vs. Time ------ 25:30 Mike 25:30 I think it would also be interesting to read how something that was camp before may not necessarily be camp now. So my husband and I, we recently watched the series Feud, which is about the making of whatever happened to baby Jane and the feud between Betty Davis and Joan Crawford. And once we finished that, my husband suggested, oh, we should watch Die, Mommy, Die, which is kind of a play on that whole era. Like the whole kind of like psycho bitty. Yeah. Yeah. And we got about 20 minutes into it. And it's like, oh, I guess this was more transgressive in 1990 than it was in 2022. So we ended up turning that off. And it's like, oh, at the time that it was made, it wasn't 1990. I believe it was closer to 2000. But at the time that it was made, this is a camp masterpiece. Whereas now it, I think it would just be like, oh, this is just kind of a bad movie. Ben 26:26 Time may enhance what seems simply dogged or lacking in fantasy now because we were too close to it. But on the flip side of that, time can also just go, okay, but you're taking like the low hanging jokes. Do more. Comedy should age poorly just because standards change, times change. And I had like this whole notion mostly because when I was looking at how does the internet render camp, found another great tweet that was along the lines of, many of you are calling things camp when they are picnic at best. Where I'm just like, yeah, we need something. It's like a step down from that. This is where you put all of the actual bad art and the kitsch and the stuff that has sort of aged out of camp. Of like, oh, I see how this could be considered that, but no. Mike 27:07 Throughout the essay, the word camp is capitalized. Usually when you encounter like, oh,this is campy or this thing is so camp, it's a lowercase c. That does make a difference. Like, I don't think it is just people not capitalizing things. It's just, oh, if you were capital C camp, like that is like brand camp, camp TM. Yes. Trying to describe something as camp. It gets into like a boring linguistic place. Ben 27:32 So camp is the answer to the problem, how to be a dandy in the age of mass culture, not in Latin poetry and rare wines and velvet jackets, but in the coarsest, commonest pleasures in the arts of the masses. Mike 27:45 Oh yeah. The whole dandy discussion. It was like, oh, I, that is exactly how I want to describe myself from now on. It's like, oh, I am the Yankee doodlest dandy. Ben 27:56 I mean, I mean,like I, I think about it both in the type of media I tend to consume, but also being a person who wants to describe themselves as a foodie, but then has to immediately clarify not like those foodies. Do I want to go to a tasting menu? Yes. Do I also want just like some really good street food? Yes. I have taken road trips where for each stop that we were making have mapped out. Here's where the good barbecue is and the good coffee and like the, you know, the good beer, the high and the low. I went on a food tour in Iceland where we had some very, very nice plated dishes, but also we went to the hot dog stand. I will eat anything at least once. Thinking about what I just said, and then just looking to another section, I have underlined the connoisseur of camp sniffs the stink and prides himself on his strong nerves. Yeah. Mike 28:41 I think it's no 55 that I most responded to, which is camp taste is above all a mode of enjoyment, of appreciation. What it does is define the success in certain passionate failures. I think that really kind of encapsulates how I try to consume culture and like maybe live my life. I don't know. Ben 29:04 As a person who is currently going through a lot of the Canon Films movies, yeah, some of these are absolutely bad. And like, again, like my favorite terrible movie is the Apple. And like, there is so much in that movie that is just maximalist and very much trying to be a thing. And I respond to that a lot. Mike 29:20 I'm so glad that we actually tackled this topic. This was a fun essay to read. We'll have a link the essay in our show notes because most undergrad classes apparently assigned this, even though like I somehow managed to avoid all of them. I don't know. Yeah. Ben 29:34 I mean, I did, but like, I have an engineering degree. Yeah. Mike 29:37 I have no excuse. Ben 29:41 Well, okay. So I do have one other thought. One of the things that stuck out to me in the list, I was going to make a fun, small playlist for you and then realized actually there's a lot of overlap between what we've talked about here and what we talked about when we discussed ABBA Gold. And so next time the AV Club meets, we're going to talk about the middle of that Venn diagram. Ooh, excellent. Mike 30:02 I guess with that, let's bring this month's meeting of the You're What AV Club to a close. Thanks for listening and supporting the You're What podcast. Both shows are hosted by Mike McCone, that's me, and Ben Smith. That's me. Ben 30:15 Let us know what you thought in the comments for this episode on Patreon, or hit us up on social media at You're What. Mike 30:20 Do you have suggestions for topics for future bonus episodes? Drop us a line through our website at Eurowhat.com. For our next gathering of the Eurowhat AV Club, Scopatone.