So yes, figure skating is obviously a real sport...it takes a heckuvalot of work to be good at it and requires both athletic endurance and lots of talent. But relative to other sports do you think it has a certain camp factor? It doesn't necessarily have to be a negative thing...but would you agree that something about figure skating lends itself to a bit of camp humor? And on that note, who do you think, aside from Johnny Weir, are the campiest skaters skating today? I would say Alena Leonova, Savchenko and Szolowsky, Duhamel and Radford, Scott Moir, and Kevin Reynolds definitely fit the bill.
Do you think figure skating is a campy sport?
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Hah, it's totally a campy sport sometimes. Amodio, Leonova, Plushenko, Mao's SP, Domnina/Shabalin, Volosozhar/Trankov's SP, so many examples. I mean, you just need to look at some of the costumes! I agree that it makes it more entertaining and glitzy, but there's a fine line between a program having character, and skaters pandering to the crowd. For competition, projecting to the crowd is good (and if it's a humorous or cheeky program, like Javier's FS, it makes sense to have that charm), but movements should reflect the character of the music and there's plenty of programs where skaters shimmy their arms or thrust their hips and it pushes the camp factor to over-the-top territory.
I don't think it's campy.
Campy implies humor, intelligence, good fun, and giving tradition a wink and a nod.
Not much of that in skating any more. We have trashy programs. We have in-poor-taste programs. We have many, many programs without solid choreography.
But campy? no.
Campy implies humor, intelligence, good fun, and giving tradition a wink and a nod.
Not much of that in skating any more. We have trashy programs. We have in-poor-taste programs. We have many, many programs without solid choreography.
But campy? no.
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- Feb 27, 2012
YMMV, but since when does campiness imply intelligence? Never heard of that association.
One dictionary definition of "camp": used of art and entertainment when qualities that are normally considered bad (such as excessive emotion and bad acting) are exaggerated so much that they become interesting and funny.
Relative to other sports? I wonder why you framed your question that way. Few other sports use music, costumes, and choreography.
IMHO, it would be hyperbole and a disservice to figure skating to call the entire sport campy. I do not like the idea of extrapolating from a limited number of campy programs to characterize the entire sport.
(And I do not think of Savchenko/Szolkowy, Duhamel/Radford, or Moir as campy. Don't know enough about the others to have an opinion.)
lol!
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Just wondering, how are Duhamel and Radford campy? Is it Duhamel's fist pumps?
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- Jan 7, 2011
Unless one goes by the most esoteric of definitions, this question is not even worth asking. The answer is glaringly, blindingly yes. If figure skating isn't campy, nothing is.
And it is very esoteric to try to insist that camp must be intentional and witty. Since the concept existed, it has been a label that's assigned, often derogatorily, by a viewer/critic to something that someone else is doing. Do some performers/creators, once aware of the concept, aim for camp? Sure. But most of the time, things are deemed camp.
Figure skating is inherently campy at the competitive level. The athletes wear heavy makeup and elaborate costumes during competition. Most competitors use dramatic music that they emote to. Ice dancing alone provides enough campiness for the entire sport. As fans and participants who are inured to the everyday excesses of the sport, it may be tough to see how ridiculous it is. But to the uninitiated, figure skating is thoroughly, ballistically campy.
As for who may be the campiest skaters competing today, that's not really a fair question to ask across the disciplines (ice dancers would win in a landslide). Instead, let's first compare the disciplines:
Ice dancing, of course, is the undisputed champ. Looking at the current World standings, I'd have to say among the top skaters, men's singles is campier than women's. This might be owed to the fact that the top women skew younger, and those younger skaters have had less time to bother with any kind of theatricality in their performances (Gracie Gold epitomizes this). And the least campy discipline these days is pairs. With how difficult, dangerous and complicated high level pair skating is now, pair skaters just don't seem to have any time to perform. Even the top pairs teams barely have any breathers in their competitive programs to vamp. Spin, lift and death spiral positions, which in past eras would lend themselves to plenty of campiness, now seem like yoga done at gunpoint.
So who's campy, who's not within the top echelon of each discipline?
Among the top ice dancers, Meryl Davis stands out as one of the campiest, while her partner Charlie White is the least. Maybe that's why they make such a good team. Madison Chock, the woman in my avatar picture, is another camp winner. Really, aside from the aforementioned Mr. White, ice dancing has so much camp I don't see how I can sort them.
Among the top men's singles, Daisuke Takahashi takes the tiara. Florent Amodio has a pretty good case for snatching it from him, though. Yuzuru Hanyu and Javier Fernandez are also two shiny hams. It might be easier to list who is not campy. And among the current top 20 men in the world, it'd have to be Han Yan. Who, while slightly more emotive than the rest of the poker-faced (and not in the Lady Gaga/Johnny Weir way) Chinese single skaters, still falls far short of displaying any kind of emotion during a skate.
Among the top women, Alena Leonova would win Faye Dunaway's Wire Hanger of camp, but she's not really a top skater any more except by the lagging indicator of the ISU rankings. Akiko Suzuki, who always goes all out during her movie/musical inspired footwork sequences, may have a claim. Mao Asada can occasionally turn up the camp, like she did with her "I Got Rhythm" short program. Carolina Kostner stakes out her ground in camp with all that hip-shaking in her Bolero piece. Overall, though, the women just don't go over the top enough. Yuna Kim is the greatest disappointment in this area. In her recent short program, she skated to music from a b-list horror movie. And yet there was very little kissing and very little vamping in her The Kiss of the Vampire program. And like I said before, Gracie Gold stands out as devoid of camp, as she doesn't bother to perform at all.
In pairs, Savchenko and Szolkowy used to have plenty of camp (they did programs to Pink Panther and Lost in Space, after all). But now, like most other pair teams, they seem way too focused on executing difficult elements to bother much with anything else. Overall, pairs gets a big fat fail for campiness.
And it is very esoteric to try to insist that camp must be intentional and witty. Since the concept existed, it has been a label that's assigned, often derogatorily, by a viewer/critic to something that someone else is doing. Do some performers/creators, once aware of the concept, aim for camp? Sure. But most of the time, things are deemed camp.
Figure skating is inherently campy at the competitive level. The athletes wear heavy makeup and elaborate costumes during competition. Most competitors use dramatic music that they emote to. Ice dancing alone provides enough campiness for the entire sport. As fans and participants who are inured to the everyday excesses of the sport, it may be tough to see how ridiculous it is. But to the uninitiated, figure skating is thoroughly, ballistically campy.
As for who may be the campiest skaters competing today, that's not really a fair question to ask across the disciplines (ice dancers would win in a landslide). Instead, let's first compare the disciplines:
Ice dancing, of course, is the undisputed champ. Looking at the current World standings, I'd have to say among the top skaters, men's singles is campier than women's. This might be owed to the fact that the top women skew younger, and those younger skaters have had less time to bother with any kind of theatricality in their performances (Gracie Gold epitomizes this). And the least campy discipline these days is pairs. With how difficult, dangerous and complicated high level pair skating is now, pair skaters just don't seem to have any time to perform. Even the top pairs teams barely have any breathers in their competitive programs to vamp. Spin, lift and death spiral positions, which in past eras would lend themselves to plenty of campiness, now seem like yoga done at gunpoint.
So who's campy, who's not within the top echelon of each discipline?
Among the top ice dancers, Meryl Davis stands out as one of the campiest, while her partner Charlie White is the least. Maybe that's why they make such a good team. Madison Chock, the woman in my avatar picture, is another camp winner. Really, aside from the aforementioned Mr. White, ice dancing has so much camp I don't see how I can sort them.
Among the top men's singles, Daisuke Takahashi takes the tiara. Florent Amodio has a pretty good case for snatching it from him, though. Yuzuru Hanyu and Javier Fernandez are also two shiny hams. It might be easier to list who is not campy. And among the current top 20 men in the world, it'd have to be Han Yan. Who, while slightly more emotive than the rest of the poker-faced (and not in the Lady Gaga/Johnny Weir way) Chinese single skaters, still falls far short of displaying any kind of emotion during a skate.
Among the top women, Alena Leonova would win Faye Dunaway's Wire Hanger of camp, but she's not really a top skater any more except by the lagging indicator of the ISU rankings. Akiko Suzuki, who always goes all out during her movie/musical inspired footwork sequences, may have a claim. Mao Asada can occasionally turn up the camp, like she did with her "I Got Rhythm" short program. Carolina Kostner stakes out her ground in camp with all that hip-shaking in her Bolero piece. Overall, though, the women just don't go over the top enough. Yuna Kim is the greatest disappointment in this area. In her recent short program, she skated to music from a b-list horror movie. And yet there was very little kissing and very little vamping in her The Kiss of the Vampire program. And like I said before, Gracie Gold stands out as devoid of camp, as she doesn't bother to perform at all.
In pairs, Savchenko and Szolkowy used to have plenty of camp (they did programs to Pink Panther and Lost in Space, after all). But now, like most other pair teams, they seem way too focused on executing difficult elements to bother much with anything else. Overall, pairs gets a big fat fail for campiness.
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- Dec 4, 2004
Campy: definition... amusing because it is obviously intended to be strange or shocking and seems to be ridiculing itself:
No, I see nothing in serious competition like that. Shows, yes...Mr. Weir and Plushy ( doing a program as a baby) are campy....
Someone who's parents spent $100,000 and more on them so they can practice late at night or early in the morning, and compete till they climb the ladder or injure themselves....campy? No. The Old Batman TV series was campy.....figure skating is blood, sweat and tears.....and hopefully some joy.
No, I see nothing in serious competition like that. Shows, yes...Mr. Weir and Plushy ( doing a program as a baby) are campy....
Someone who's parents spent $100,000 and more on them so they can practice late at night or early in the morning, and compete till they climb the ladder or injure themselves....campy? No. The Old Batman TV series was campy.....figure skating is blood, sweat and tears.....and hopefully some joy.
Yes!!! Leonova is totally Faye Dunaway from Mommie Dearest. Camp heaven!!!
Obviously you have no intelligence, or otherwise you would not have started this thread,this thread should be closed......
I take it you like to hold a can of beer and watch a macho sport....
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- Jan 23, 2004
I take it we are talking about competitive skating and not show skating.
Certain skaters show a lot of theater in their competitive programs and that is a good thing for me as it draws me into
the performance aspect much more that some one skating by the numbers and I tend to find those performances much more enjoyable,
whether it is a winning performance or not it does not matter to me.
Certain skaters show a lot of theater in their competitive programs and that is a good thing for me as it draws me into
the performance aspect much more that some one skating by the numbers and I tend to find those performances much more enjoyable,
whether it is a winning performance or not it does not matter to me.
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- Aug 1, 2011
Well you would have to separate camp from kitsch. And you could go one step further and separate kistch from, as a friend of mine would call it, too-tacky-for-words. Probably the definitive essay on camp is Susan Sontag's "Notes on Camp." Her first note (they are numbered in the essay) states, "To start very generally: Camp is a certain mode of aestheticism. It is one way of seeing the world as an aesthetic phenomenon. That way, the way of Camp, is not in terms of beauty, but in terms of the degree of artifice, of stylization." She elaborates this throughout the essay (such as in note 10: "Camp sees everything in quotation marks. It's not a lamp, but a "lamp"; not a woman, but a "woman." To perceive Camp in objects and persons is to understand Being-as-Playing-a-Role. It is the farthest extension, in sensibility, of the metaphor of life as theater.").
Kitsch though, is not necessarily about artifice as art (or should I say "art"?). Kitsch deals more with matters of taste, of quality. Bad art can be camp--but then again so can good art (Sontag lists the ballet "Swan Lake" in the canon of Camp). Kitsch is always bad art. But kitsch also tends to have an emotional component as well: you know something is bad, of inferior quality, but there is something about it that pleases you anyway (hmmm, I can think of a number of FS programs that fall under that definition).
Tackiness on the other hand, is something that not only lacks a certain quality, but fails the good taste test.
Carmen on ice is camp.
Some consider Evan Lysacek's Carmen program to be kitsch.
Some Carmen costumes are just tacky.
Kitsch though, is not necessarily about artifice as art (or should I say "art"?). Kitsch deals more with matters of taste, of quality. Bad art can be camp--but then again so can good art (Sontag lists the ballet "Swan Lake" in the canon of Camp). Kitsch is always bad art. But kitsch also tends to have an emotional component as well: you know something is bad, of inferior quality, but there is something about it that pleases you anyway (hmmm, I can think of a number of FS programs that fall under that definition).
Tackiness on the other hand, is something that not only lacks a certain quality, but fails the good taste test.
Carmen on ice is camp.
Some consider Evan Lysacek's Carmen program to be kitsch.
Some Carmen costumes are just tacky.
