At Vulture, Angelica Jade Bastién has some thoughts about camp and gender. “At times, camp can feel like a suffocating label. Its proponents often misconstrue the fact that recreating oneself as a character is not merely an aesthetic for women, but rather, for many, a matter of survival. Living in a culture that profoundly scorns ambition, autonomy, and independence in women, girls learn quickly the narrow parameters of femininity available to them. When they transcend these parameters, life can get even more difficult. Women often pick up and drop various forms of presentation in order to move through the world more easily. Performance as a woman — in terms of how one speaks, walks, talks, acts — can be a means of controlling one’s own narrative. Camp often limits this part of the discussion, focusing instead on the sheer thrill of watching larger-than-life female characters cut and snark their way across the screen. How these works speak to women, past and present, becomes a tertiary concern at best, and the work loses a bit of its importance in the process; it either comes to be regarded as niche or, if it still has mainstream prominence, as abject spectacle. In turn, the conversations around these works become less about the women at their centers and more about how those women are presented. Nothing captures this trend better than two recent projects: Pablo Larraín’s Jackie and Murphy’s Feud.“

Read more here. (Thanks, Tim and Kate!)