CAMP: I’m confused when people try to describe something as “camp” because it treats some usually-serious thing (religion, or sex, or love, or patriotism, or whatever) as just ridiculous. That style of mockery generally has a heavy dose of contempt for people who don’t find the ridiculous thing ridiculous. It also usually presents breaking away from conventional values as much easier than it really is. Camp, to me, is darker, more nuanced, more double-tongued. To be camp, rather than just plain old ordinary mockery, doesn’t there have to be an edge, an acknowledgment of the force of conventional judgments (in the world, and also in the performers’ own hearts and minds)? Would “Sunset Boulevard” (say) still be attractive raw material for camp if there were no real tragedy in the story, or no real grandeur in Norma Desmond?