As for the intentional vs. unintentional distinction – the anthologies will cover this, but essentially unintentional camp is derived via reception, whereas intentional camp is constructed via production/performance. Unintentional camp is Mommie Dearest, intentional camp is John Waters and RuPaul.

For understanding the politics of queer readings, the best work is still Alexander Doty’s Making Things Perfectly Queer – especially the first two chapters.

I’ll also try to locate Rich’s essay on Faster, Pussycat!

Yes, but everything you take issue with, the film is *itself* taking issue with: The film is making fun of the very idea of predatory lesbians and tranny killers. And, the ending is a parody of Hollywood endings. A double-wedding plus a paraplegic, remarkably able to walk again, meandering down a rocky river bed with his go-go-suddenly-turned-Victorian-girlfriend. Absurd! It’s in no way meant to be taken seriously or to support the idea of marriage and hetero coupling. In fact, I would say quite the opposite. There is unintentional camp and intentional camp, and this film is unequivocally an example of the latter (i.e., it knows what it’s doing).

Plus, it’s not just Meyer’s characters that have feminist followings, but Meyer himself. Indeed, in praising Faster, Pussycat!, lesbian feminist scholar B. Ruby Rich called Meyer, “the first feminist American director.” This is surely an overstatement, and one that is insulting to the truly feminist (and female) directors that came before him. But, while I do not agree, I think there may be something to the idea of Meyer’s films as containing feminist elements. True, the women in Meyer’s films have large breasts that – along with the rest of their bodies – are repeatedly put on display. But, while Meyer’s men are generally either jerks, morons, losers or all three, his women are generally smart, (physically) strong and victorious by film’s end. For sure, this doesn’t qualify Meyer for a “Feminist of the Century” award, but it does make it more difficult to dismiss his films as simply sexist and regressive. Especially when his films are placed alongside others from the 1960s and 1970s.

And, again, there is the issue of sex/gender parody.

BVOD also has a large queer (by which I don’t mean just gay male) following. I’ve seen the film at queer midnight movie showings twice, and in both instances the audience was more than receptive.

There have long been debates over whether or not, and to what degree, straights, due to different life circumstances, have access to camp. Divergent reactions to this film and Pink Flamingos make me wonder about this.

Also, for me this brings up the whole question of whether or not effective critique must always be serious, or whether it can come in the form of humor and deliberate offensiveness. This is a central issue that I will be grappling with in my dissertation, which is focused on works that combine camp’s humor with punk’s deliberate offensiveness.