Camping the Kitsch: Moulin Rouge! is Camp
My task in one of my classes this week is to decide if Moulin Rouge! is camp or kitsch. Here’s what I decided…
Is one person’s kitsch another person’s camp? Is one person’s experience of anachronistic blasphemy another’s source of aesthetic delight? Yes and yes. Kitsch differs from camp in the sense that the person who designates something kitsch asks the question, “What kind of debased creature could possibly be the right audience for this spectacle?” (Sedgwick 156). The camp aficionado looks at said object and declares, “What if the right audience were exactly me?” (Sedgwick 156). Is the musical Moulin Rouge! kitsch or camp? I argue it is camp. Knowing that the absinthe fairy is Kylie Minogue — not just any random, tawdry fairy — makes the film’s big budget, mainstream appeal, and tendency to resemble something on MTV easier to bear. If Rufus Wainwright singing “Complainte de la Butte” is not enough to convince skeptical spectators that Moulin Rouge! has camp appeal, then imagine Freddie Mercury belting out “The Show Must Go On” in place of Satine (Nicole Kidman). The line “My make-up may be flaking, but my smile still stays on” is compelling precisely because the song from which it originates is a testament to Mercury’s determination to perform in the face of his declining health. It is precisely these kinds of knowing moments and gestures that redeem Moulin Rouge! for spectators who wish to queer it through fan fiction or some other “perverse angle” (Sedgwick 219).
The exclamation mark in Moulin Rouge! is only slightly less delightful than the exclamation point in Tennessee Williams’ expensive box office failure Boom! However, the gayer, more Dionysian elements, found in Williams’ Sissy Goforth are buried deep beneath the surface in Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge! This is likely a result of the fact that 21st century musicals have lost their appeal to mainstream heterosexual audiences as the gay labor behind them comes out of the closet. Interestingly, what Broch says about kitsch looking like Christ, acting and speaking like Christ, but being the same Lucifer under the skin is applicable to Tennessee Williams’ oeuvre (Broch 63). Consider, for example, “Desire and the Black Masseur,” “Kingdom of Earth,” and “One Arm” — wherein Williams transforms Christian symbols into libertine initiation rituals involving cannibalism, prostitution, and broken Apollonian messiahs. In Moulin Rouge! the only faux Father figure we get is a comical Monsieur Zidler, who bats his eyes in veiled deference to the Duke in the all male musical number “Like a Virgin.” It’s really only a slight stretch to imagine this spirited rendition of the classic Madonna song, resplendent with jiggling jello breasts, as a peace offering to spectators looking for a gay old time. Lest we forget though Christian (Ewan McGregor) is the narrator through whom the story of the historic Moulin Rouge is told. Christian’s story is one of the “tragic early death” of his beloved and the threats their concealed love just barely escaped (Sedgwick 210). Christian is not a macho brute, but a sensitive artist complying with his beloved’s dying wish to “tell their story.” Sedgwick argues that the display of emotion on the part of heterosexual men in popular books and movies “has the projective potency of an open secret” (211). It thus makes sense that Moulin Rouge! is able to escape the label of ‘sentimental kitsch’, as it is women and gay men who have historically been the most likely targets charged with exaggerated, self-indulgent, overly emotional expression (Sedgwick 211).
Some might argue that Moulin Rouge! is more kitsch than camp because the main narrative thread is a shopworn cliché about the triumph of romantic love in the face of worldly obstacles. While I agree that the plot is cut from predictable stock, the film is also smart enough to poke fun at the shibboleths of fairy tale endings, sappy love songs, and art for art’s sake — said differently, the film is self-conscious of the fact that artists must sell themselves. Hence, it is not the Bohemian ideals of “freedom, beauty, truth, and love” that are vulgar, but rather the Duke’s patronage of Satine and his subsequent insistence that he has the right to possess her as if she were an item on a menu. The Duke’s libertine taste for “creatures of the underworld” is best exemplified in his rape attempt. This scene could have all too easily devolved into “rose-coloured” kitsch or even slapstick, were it set in Satine’s ornate elephant boudoir (Borch 73). In some ways, the elephant boudoir itself absolves Moulin Rouge! from accusations of kitsch — Luhrmann seems so flagrant about his desire for the film to not be taken too seriously that viewers are hard-pressed to be swept away when the actors gesture toward emotional depth.
Sedgwick’s discussion of the world of kitsch recognition and attribution makes it clear that a system that exempts those who label objects ‘kitsch’ from reader relations and projective fantasy is a “major scandal” (219). In this way, Sedgwick’s insights dazzle and blind me only to give me back my sight (Broch 67). And, who among us does not relish seeing Nietzsche’s aphoristic style queered by Sedgwick through the logic of its own “fatal devaluations” (218). If art is no longer good “when your neighbour takes it into his mouth”, then it must be the slash and fan fiction that continue to crop up around Moulin Rouge! that are the true kitsch (Sedgwick 219). Give me the “Evil” of radical aestheticism in periods of declining values, red neon windmills, and a shiny plastic lobster in the Chateau de Versailles (Broch 76). Art is about cultural exchange and thus questions about which “spaces and practices of cultural production” have value will be a source of continued controversy — and, ripe ground upon which to camp (Sedgwick 219).
Works Cited
Hermann Broch’s “Notes on the Problem of Kitsch” (1950) [starts out well enough, but ends up declaring kitsch the anti-christ and siding with Protestantism...]
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s “Wilde, Nietzsche, and the Sentimental Relations of the Male Body” (1990) [from the Epistemology of the Closet]
Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge! (2001) [did well in Europe, but less well in North America]
If anyone is so inclined to read them, I’m happy to pass along the Sedgwick and the Broch texts.