Popular Culture, Kitsch as Camp, and Film

In his article, "Popular Culture, Kitsch as Camp, and Film," Benton Jay Komins argues that at the crossroads of kitsch, between the irresistibly human and total spuriousness (Milan Kundera's and Clement Greenberg's respective definitions), lies the first serious glimmer of camp. Komins evaluates the connections between the phenomenon of kitsch and the phenomenon of camp through a theoretical discussion and the cinematic language of Percy Adlon's Rosalie Goes Shopping (1989-90). Critics like Susan Sontag and Andrew Ross, as well as Adlon's film, ask us to consider if camp is a pretentious expression of kitsch that belongs to the "artsy" demimonde. As Komins argues, two questions lie at the heart of the camp phenomenon: How does the camp sensibility contribute to contemporary interpretations of art and what promise of change does it playfully conceal?