Film Matters - Volume 14, Issue 1, 2023

Camp is a queer sensibility which has recently begun to enter the mainstream. By viewing a case study of several key camp films of the twentieth and early twenty-first century, it is possible to chronicle its radicalism, and its gradual co-optation by the straight gaze. Camp, while at times reductive, has served to mirror and affirm the vibrancy of the queer experience, making an understanding of its roots essential.

Existing academic discourse surrounding pioneering Blaxploitation film, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (Melvin Van Peebles, 1971), regularly frames the titular character as the forerunner of an eventual collection of aggressive, hypersexual, and macho Black heroes. These texts accordingly examine Sweetback’s characterization with limited nuance, and therefore overlook the film’s more complex contentual and formal engagement with masculinity and power. Via close analysis of the film and marketing materials, I propose that Sweetback’s macho behavior can be re-contextualized via attention to his repeated displays of passivity, which jointly signal the film’s engagement with notions of “ideal” Black masculinity, generational oppression, and trauma.

Review of: Horror Film and Otherness, Adam Lowenstein (2022)

New York: Columbia University Press, 248 pp.,

ISBN: 9780231205771 (pbk), $35.00, ISBN: 9780231205764 (hbk), $140.00, ISBN: 9780231556156 (ebk), $34.99

Review of: Billy Wilder: Dancing on the Edge, Joseph McBride (2021)

New York: Columbia University Press, 680 pp.,

ISBN: 9780231201469 (hbk), $40.00

Review of: The Rhythm of Images: Cinema Beyond Measure, Domietta Torlasco (2021)

Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 175 pp.,

ISBN: 1517910218 (pbk), $25.00, ISBN: 151791020X (hbk), $100.00

Review of: Adaptation for Screenwriters, Robert Edgar and John Marland (2019)

New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 275 pp.,

ISBN: 1350036676 (pbk), $26.95, ISBN: 1350036673 (ebk), $24.25

Review of: Black Panther: Interrogating a Cultural Phenomenon, Terence McSweeney (2021)

Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 254 pp.,

ISBN: 9781496836090 (pbk), $20.00, ISBN: 9781496836083 (hbk), $99.00

Review of: Olivia de Havilland: Lady Triumphant, Victoria Amador (2019)

Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 404 pp.,

ISBN: 9780813177274 (hbk), $40.00

Review of: Wild Bill Wellman: Hollywood Rebel, William Wellman Jr. (2021)

Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 658 pp.,

ISBN: 9780813180939 (pbk), $29.95

Review of: The Thought of Stanley Cavell and Cinema: Turning Anew to the Ontology of Film a Half-Century After The World Viewed, David LaRocca, ed. (2020)

New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 336 pp.,

ISBN: 9781501349164 (hbk), $150.00, ISBN: 9781501384073 (pbk), $39.95

Review of: Joan Crawford: The Essential Biography, Lawrence J. Quirk and William Schoell (2021)

Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 344 pp.,

ISBN: 9780813180496 (pbk), $24.95

Review of: The Stardom Film: Creating the Hollywood Fairy Tale, Karen McNally (2020)

London: Wallflower Press, 160 pp.,

ISBN: 9780231184014 (pbk), $22.00, ISBN: 9780231851145 (ebk), $21.99

Review of: Transmedia Directors: Artistry, Industry, and New Audiovisual Aesthetics, Carol Vernallis, Holly Rogers, and Lisa Perrott, eds. (2019)

New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 528 pp.,

ISBN: 9781501341007 (pbk), $42.95, ISBN: 9781501339271 (hbk), $160.00, ISBN: 9781501339264 (epub/mobi), $38.65, ISBN: 9781501339288 (pdf), $38.65

Review of: Post-Fordist Cinema: Hollywood Auteurs and the Corporate Counterculture, Jeff Menne (2019)

New York: Columbia University Press, 272 pp.,

ISBN: 9780231183710 (pbk), $32.00, ISBN: 9780231183703 (hbk), $105.00, ISBN: 9780231545082 (ebk), $31.99

Review of: Marcel the Shell with Shoes On: Life Through Googly Eyes

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2021)

USA

Director Dean Fleischer Camp

Runtime 90 minutes