Explaining "Campy " To A Kid....

[Lord Jim]

I told The Warrior Princess last weekend that I would take her next weekend to see "Dark Shadows" (With Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins...played originally by Jonathan Frid...who happens to still be alive...)

And about how much I liked the original series when I was I a kid, ( I had a huge crush on Laura Parker) and her mother told her how much she liked watching the series ten years later on cable...


And I said, "I'm going to take you to watch this movie, and I can tell from the promos it's going to be very funny with Johnny Depp playing Barnabas, (and Tim Burton producing the film,) but it's going to be very campy...

And she asked a very logical question; "Daddy, what does campy mean?"


And I thought about that for a while....

And then I said, "well 'campy' is when you make a joke out of something that other wise would be serious..."

And the analogy I drew for her was the difference between the old "Batman" TV episodes we've watched, and some of "The Batman" movies we've watched...

And she seemed to get the distinction...

[Gob]

Campy? That's like poofs being poofy, isn't it?

[Lord Jim]

Campy? That's like poofs being poofy, isn't it?

Oh great, so next I'm going to get to explain to her what a "poof" is...?


She's already seen one...:

[Lord Jim]

It reminded me back when she was five years old when I taught her to sing Rule Britannia:

"Rule, Britannia! rules the waves:
"Britons never, never shall be slaves."

And she asked me a very logical question:

"Daddy what's a slave?"

And my first reaction was to say, "a slave is something you shall never be...."

(which when you think about it, is kind of tautological...)

So I said:

"A slave is someone who has no control over anything they can do and has to follow orders from somebody else all the time...."

After hearing this, and thinking about it for a moment, Tati said..."like a kid...."

To which I replied," NO not like a kid"...

"People love their kids, people didn't love their slaves..."

She had me sputtering trying to come up with a distinction...

"Look...uhh...telling someone what to do because you care about them is a completely different thing from being a "slave"....totally different deal...

"I think we'll save this difference between kids and slaves discussion for another time... "

She remembers this conversation...she was five then, she's going to be 13 this coming 4th of July (As I've I always reminded her, "You were born the same day America was born!")

I get the impression she wants to revisit my kids-versus-slaves theory....

[MajGenl.Meade]

Let me be of assistance LJ


Camp



Poof



Slave

[Lord Jim]

My OP edited to correct "original serious" to read "original series"....

I can not be trusted with a keyboard....

Speaking of things that don't seem right....

When I saw that still of Carrie Fisher, "I thought wait a minute...That's one of my favorite Star Wars scenes...she looked a lot better than that...

I thought maybe that pic had her head on somebody else's emaciated knobbly kneed body...

But no, that really was her....

She must have been doing coke up the ying yang when that was made....

She sure doesn't look that bad in the scene in the movie....

[Scooter]

When John Belushi is telling you you're doing too much coke, an alarm bell should be going off.

[Lord Jim]

When John Belushi is telling you you're doing too much coke, an alarm bell should be going off.

Yeah, that's kind of like having WC Fields walk up to you and say, "Dude, I think you need to dial back on the booze"....

[Rick]

"People love their kids, people didn't love their slaves..."

LJ good thing she didn't know about TJ.

[BoSoxGal]

But it's not true! All the darkies were loved and well-cared for, just like in Gone With the Wind.

Haven't you shown her that classic yet?

[Gob]

[Sue U]

And she asked a very logical question; "Daddy, what does campy mean?"

For God's sake, man, you live in San Francisco! Hasn't she been to a drag show yet?

[dales]

[Crackpot]

Haven't tried "it's so bad it's good"?