Is this camp?
I take my designation as the arbiter of camp and satire seriously. So it’s important for me to make a call on the new “camp” entry, the opening credits to The Peacemaker. I never intended to watch the show, but more than once I have been told by the internet headlines that the credits are the best thing that has happened to culture. I appreciate an artful opening credit.
In the opening credits, John Cena and the rest of the cast perform a choreographed routine completely stone-faced, as if they have a gun to their head. Some of them are bad and some of them are intentionally bad. This is a breaking of the 4th wall in that they are together in this dance only because they are characters on a show, so it’s a nesting doll of actors playing characters playing actors who are characters who know they are characters.
The song is “Do You Want to Taste It” by Wig Waman which is a camp nostalgia in itself, as it sounds like a metal hair band. Although The Darkness already did this in early 2003, so I suppose it’s time for the trend to come back. Not to even mention choosing to name your band Wig Wam.
I hate this. It’s cringe no matter how you look at it. Their serious faces are either a satire of elaborate choreography, or they take it seriously. Otherwise, both are cringe. On the other hand, if it is done with the acknowledgment that it is cringe, this wink-wink is like cringe insurance- if people don’t like it, the backup is that “it’s meant to be silly.”
I know from watching Suicide Squad that Peacemaker is already a satire of patriotism, so I don’t know the general tone of the show. But there is a trend of comic book films trying the “we’re not like other comic book movies, we’re self-aware,” but it’s come back around that—it takes itself seriously.
I turned myself inside out with cringe at the end when the cast poses as the music stops, waiting for a few beats past when it should end, for yet more forced irony.
Why not make this an earnest, fun time with dancing? Maybe showing the pure silliness of it? Sincerity is dead.
Final verdict: CRINGE
IS IT CAMP: No
