Susan Sontag describes Camp taste in note 34 from Against Interpretation and other Essays as"turning it's back on the good-bad axis of ordinary aesthetic judgement. Camp doesn't reverse things. It doesn't argue that the good is bad, or the bad is good. What it does is to offer art (and life) a different-a supplementary-set of standards."
My question is can something be "campy to some, but not others? What is the distinction between something bad or campy? Doesn't it lie in the opinion of the person and what meaning it holds for them? For example, the Evil Dead movies to me are campy because they were trying to produce a serious scary movie on a low budget and it turned out to be silly yet a cult classic of zombie movies. Although throughout the series they were obviously playing up the silliness on purpose. Sontag also mentions that "the canon of camp can change . Time has a great deal to do with it." "Camp is the glorification of character." Or, "Camp is failed seriousness." These movies offer a great deal of the Camp canon along with that "80's mood that horror movies in that time frame had, which to me makes it more campy. Furthermore, if this is not an example of Camp, is it a level of camp? When I mentioned it being a cult classic, is there even a difference between cult and camp, and if so what exactly is it? Sontag again states," Camp is the consistently aesthetic experience of the world. It incarnates a victory of style over content, aesthetics over morality, of irony over tragedy." On this note I find myself re-evaluating art and other things in a different light; "is it camp or is it crap?"
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