While Betty Luster’s diamond of fame shone brightest as 1957’s Mr. B Natural, she was off to an auspicious start in 1955’s Cindy Goes to a Party, in which she played an equally commanding (and magical) character—that of a fairy godmother to the “Cinderella” of the film, Cindy (who goes to said party).

The fact that Mr. B Natural would later become better known for being mocked than watched (on the television show Mystery Science Theater 3000) should say something about that film, and it’s certainly an indicator of where to find a treasure trove of “Camp,” especially as defined by Susan Sontag with the phrase “urban pastoral.” Sontag seems to be describing Cindy Goes to a Party perfectly: “All Camp objects, and persons, contain a large element of artifice. Nothing in nature can be campy . . . Rural Camp is still man-made, and most campy objects are urban.” Thus the source of the Camp-iness of Cindy Goes to a Party is pinned down—the explicitly artificial behavior patterns and aesthetic of 1950’s American suburbia.

However, a distinction must first be made—1950’s American suburbia was not really like Cindy Goes to a Party; but the behavior patterns present in this segment of society are certainly reflected in the text. These include a strict sense of behavioral coding:

BE CLEAN
BE NEAT
BE ON TIME
LEAVE ON TIME
DON’T BE TOO NOISY OR ROUGH
DON’T BREAK THINGS
DON’T MAKE FUN OF OTHERS
OBEY THE RULES OF THE GAME
BE A GOOD LOSER
BE A GOOD WINNER
LEAVE ON TIME
THANK THE HOSTESS

Placing the Old Testament command “thou shalt” or “thou shalt not” before each of these phrases makes them truly seem like “Party Commandments,” brought down from Mount Good Manners by the film’s “Moses,” Betty Luster in a fairy costume. The problem, of course, is that this tone completely contrasts with the way people party in reality—rather than helping kids “let off steam,” restrictions like these bring human tensions to a boiling point. The camp value of Cindy Goes to a Party is amplified by the usual suspects of any camp film—poor acting, cheap production values, and worse filmmaking; however, the “kind of [camp] love” for “human nature” mentioned by Sontag is tempered. The film is not only a reflection of human fallibility in film, but also in restriction of our own selfish natures.

The profuse campiness of Cindy Goes to a Party (1955) is immediately
assumed, and can be proven by looking at the way the film uses form.
In "Notes On 'Camp'" Susan Sontag writes, "To emphasize style is to
slight content" (2). In this film, the formal style completely
distracts from the content and also gives the message a disservice.

The characters all react to the film's formal manipulations with a
sense of surprise and awe, but the manipulations are so incredibly bad
that the audience cannot help but laugh and fall out of the realm of
believability within the diegesis. Whenever the Fairy Godmother
'magically' changes something, an obvious jump cut occurs before the
resulting change is revealed. The fact that a jump cut is noticed
shows that the film fails at these simple stylistic challenges. A
technique that could have prevailed in this case would be for the
camera to cut on some form of action—the wand swinging for instance—and then rotate at least thirty degrees so that the exact position of the actors no longer remains important. Incorporating these typical formal manipulations would help make the film more seamless.

Some of the work is so bad that it makes the film look incompetent.
When the Fairy Godmother transports herself and Cindy to the party,
the fade-in occurs before the scene actually changes, so the cut
becomes extremely noticeable; again the effect becomes noticeable
as an effect instead of as the intended magic.

The expressed purpose of Cindy Goes to a Party is to let kids know
how to have fun at a party, but it ultimately fails at that task. With
all the films mistakes and self-reflexive formal manipulations it
becomes impossible to take seriously. The film should make parties
look cool and trendy if the rules expressed in the film are followed.
Instead it makes those kinds of parties seem extremely campy and lame.
The rules are "magically" transported onto the screen in huge letters
that look as though they were typed by a typewriter. The rigid, bland,
and conformist looking font adds nothing to the messages the words
convey. The form does a disservice to the content by being laughable
and incompetent, thus creating the same feelings toward the elements
of the content. This film gives off the impression that, if one is to
succeed at partying, they need to do absolutely everything they can to
make sure they are nothing like the ideal partier described by the
Fairy Godmother.

In Cindy Goes to a Party, the “fairy godmother” character typifies camp by way of delightful failure to produce the aesthetics required for such a role. The traditional fairy godmother paradigm has a certain set of signifiers that are required to create this necessarily articulate, yet soothing character. For example, a fairy godmother should at the very least be pretty, if not angelic. Cindy’s fairy godmother is not exactly a visually revolting subject, yet she certainly does not hold any of the features prized in tradition as “attractive.” She has short, brown, unstyled hair. Brown hair alone does not necessarily mean the subject will be ugly, quite the opposite. However, in this paradigm it would seem an inappropriate choice to have an angel-like figure with brown hair. Color aside, the woman’s hair is just barely longer than the boy’s in the film. This is neither motherly (i.e. godmother) nor angelic. In fact, short hair connotes “sophisticated” which is the exact opposite of what a fairy godmother is. By nature, a fairy godmother is something from a fairy tale, a story likely written hundreds of years ago. As if to compensate for these two “flaws” in the fairy godmother paradigm, the costume designer decides to cover her hair with sparkles. This is precisely when the bad becomes camp. Susan Sontag writes on camp: “the essential element is seriousness, seriousness that fails.” It is as if the people making this film actually said, “ok well, just put sparkles in her hair; there, now she looks great!”

Cindy’s fairy godmother always talks in an artificially high-pitched voice. The moment she starts to speak it is immediately comedic. This is obviously not her real speaking voice—someone told her to speak like this. Again the camp factor is raised. This could fall under Sontag’s concept of “being-as-paying-a-role,” or a concept in quotes. “Fairy godmothers” are angelic and sparkly, so she should speak with a high pitched voice and be covered in high-shimmer makeup. To make the situation with her voice even campier, it is apparent that the actress has a strong southern drawl. Perhaps the high-pitched voice was designed to cover this fact up. In any case, the campy qualities produced by this voice are quite apparent.

The film Safety: In Danger Out of Doors (1978), achieves the pinnacle of campiness, and indeed threatens to topple the campiest spectacle of all: Rocky Horror (link). Were those famous lips not so popular among polyamorous freshmen college students and bisexual drag queens, Safety could easily usurp its cult position. Instead of doing the Time Warp, we could all be flashing the “Aware, Alert, Alive” sign.

The nostalgia-packed film takes us back to a simpler time—one when an irrational fear of junk, junkyards, and old refrigerators ruled the minds of both parents and kids (that any kid ever died in a refrigerator was surely part of the childhood urban myth experience). The film would be fodder for entertainment among juveniles today; instead of these “corny” issues, kids worry about simply surviving in school without being beaten to a pulp by a bully, getting pregnant before age sixteen, or being peer-pressured into using drugs.

Not only is Karen Kingsley the ultimate good citizen, proven by her extra duties as a crossing guard, but she also doubles as “Safety Woman,” a modern-day superhero with the kick-ass costume to prove it. As a liberated woman of her day—with a career as an “architect,” she doesn’t need a man, although her income must not afford her many luxuries, being always on stand-by for the kiddos.

Many elements in Safety signify camp. The initial Twilight-Zonish voice-of-God narration accompanying Karen Kingsley’s bizarre psychedelic conversion to Safety Woman, the wild costume design (to us in the present), and the inherent ability to display the “Aware, Alert, Alive” gesture on demand (no training necessary) all announce cheesy with a capital “C.”

To the degree that we are disappointed that Queen is not in the soundtrack, this, is camp. A White child wearing a Huck Finnish topper (no matter that the hat was a contrived prop) and an African-American child dressing inappropriately for a fishing excursion in plaid-patterned pants and a differently plaid-patterned chapeau, this, is camp.

In the opening shot of Safety: In Danger Out of Doors, volunteer crossing guard Karen Kingsley is introduced as a “very special kind of woman.” She’s young, pretty, and chats up the kids at her crosswalk as if she’s really interested in their lives and well-being. She takes on the heavy responsibility of maintaining their safety—while encouraging them to learn to do the same—while any other female her age would probably leave it up to their parents or fate. These facts alone may resemble a campy quality. Add in the kids’ really cheesy dialogue (“we really goofed”) and a recited list of life warnings complete with visual examples (“learn to swim with an instructor,” and “don’t swim when overheated or after eating”) and you’re headed to camp city—or are you?

What pushes this short out of the bounds of the realm of campiness is the moment in which we learn of Karen Kingsley’s second identity—“Guardiana.” Suddenly this is not a simple educational tool. Menacing organ music accompanies a male voice-over, while across the darkened screen our protagonist drives toward her fated “extraordinary powers.” The choices made for this scene are particularly notable. Rather than facing toward the camera, Karen is situated next to and above it—as if the spectator is a small child in the passenger seat. Secondly, this shot is one of the darkest of the entire film, representing the clichéd “dark and stormy day.” This very moment, complete with these very details are considerably cheesy, yes—but because they add a laughable and ridiculous element to the initial idea of “safety video,” (see Sontag, #10—“Camp sees everything in quotation marks”) the necessary failing seriousness is thereby missing. A “safety video” does not stereotypically contain silly science-fiction characters in order to get across the seriousness of safety—therefore Safety: In Danger Out of Doors cannot fail at the seriousness it does not claim.

>  >  >  >   m  a  n  o  n  '  s     c  o  u  r  s  e     p  a  g  e  s 


Page layout and design ©2004 by Hugh S. Manon for the Oklahoma State University Film Program. Some images on this page are the property of a third party and are used with permission. The marks of Oklahoma State University are controlled under a licensing program administered by The Collegiate Licensing Company.

Last update: 1/22/2005