Nora Yoon ’27 is a chemistry major. They enjoy writing poetry for the campus literary magazine, The Gallery and reading whatever books have a good vibe to them. They also like sitting by large bodies of water, drinking lots of coffee and overthinking movies, songs and things in general. Contact them at giyoon@wm.edu.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own.
I have been told by my editor that savagely criticizing and satirizing articles from the past year that were reviewed and edited by me personally as The Flat Hat’s Opinions editor would somehow be “unprofessional.” Thus, replicating my wonderful article “Review of Flat Hat Opinions camp” is sadly impossible for the time being. Fortunately, as I have seen old friends, watched movies and generally wasted time during my winter break, I have felt something like that sudden, divine light of camp entering into my heart, inspired during the course of these everyday events. Camp, to put it simply, is a sort of ironic enjoyment of something because of its unintentional comedy. I provide a bit of a longer definition in my previous article. However, there’s a bit of a caveat: everyday moments don’t have the same lasting, sustained intent as a work of art, and so can’t fail beautifully in the exact same way. Thus, these small moments themselves cannot be camp. With that in mind, I present three moments of profound stupidity that glanced briefly at being camp from my winter break, interrupting the conventional pace of life with wonderful stupidity. In keeping with YouTube Shorts standards, I will be saving the best for last (and you will not believe it).
3. Coming in at number three is my experience watching “A Minecraft Movie.” Unlike most people, who are responsible enough to finish their work before returning home, I spent my first few days of winter break hard at work finishing a 10-page final paper that I had barely started (and that was already late). After two full days of referencing recent scholarship on the literary analysis of Shakespeare’s early (and most gruesome) tragedy “Titus Andronicus,” I turned in the paper and plopped down on my couch, resolved to watch something light and fun to help me settle into the stupor of winter break. When HBO Max suggested “A Minecraft Movie,” which I had been too busy to watch in theaters, I figured I might as well, since I’d heard the movie was camp: so bad it was good. But either from burnout or from the utter failure of that movie to be anything other than a repulsive product of the brackish excess capital of the entertainment industry, I stared into the blank screen after the movie, feeling legitimately depressed. I won’t waste any space describing its events. Suffice it to say that after a soul-crushing semester where I had overextended myself again and again, “A Minecraft Movie” proved the mysterious power of art by crushing my soul down even further and sending me into a depressive episode that made me question the value of life itself.
2. After I had recovered from the trauma of the aforementioned “movie” and enjoyed the holidays, I had a funny experience not watching a movie, but watching someone I knew pretty well who I thought was reasonable buy into the “Conformity Gate” conspiracy, arguing with everyone that a secret ninth episode of “Stranger Things” was coming and that it was a brilliant marketing strategy by Netflix to have such a meta, involved finale turn out to be a fake — the kind of writing that made previous seasons of “Stranger Things” so compelling. Even more funny was that this person didn’t even watch season five, saying that “it got too dumb to watch after the last season” and was forming this opinion entirely based on the detective work of Instagram Reels creators. The worst part was that, even though I could see how silly this all was, I can’t even distance myself too far from this person, because it was actually me.
1. I’m going to have to be a little vague about this one to protect some people’s feelings. I know two people that are in a relationship (or something like it!) and, hanging out with one, I listened for a while as she complained about how her boyfriend never listened to her concerns or took her seriously enough to talk about what they were, etc., etc. Hanging out with her boyfriend a few days later, I saw a pretty long message from the girl show up on his phone’s home screen, at which he sighed, unlocked his phone, and then opened Clash Royale and queued up for a game.
Especially after a tough semester, I find it easy to get stressed about my past, present and future, preferably all at once. What I love about things that are camp is that they elegantly remove that veneer of dreadful seriousness by making you laugh at how terrible something is. With that in mind, it’s important to let camp into your heart and really see these dumb, beautiful moments that life will unexpectedly present one with, and hold on tight; whether it be feeling disheartened by a fundamentally unserious movie, getting converted into something even dumber than a cult or watching your friend avoid talking to his girlfriend by playing a game made for middle schoolers, these moments might just teach you something essential about the world that will change your life forever. Or they might do nothing, besides get brought up to mock someone with (which happened with all of these) and get you out of a negative spiral by making you laugh again. Hmm. Probably the latter.
