Camp* depends on a glittering surface that often resists penetration. Carmen Miranda is one of camp’s enduring icons, the flamboyant outsider who makes us love her through sheer force of personality. The “lady in the tutti-fruitti hat” brought to American wartime audiences an extravagantly seductive surface: the exoticism of South America, a sensuality tempered by caricature, and outlandish costumes and fruit-laden “hats” that have an unsuspected origin in the black slums of Brazil.
Carmen Miranda’s story is far more complex and heart-wrenching than one would expect of a woman who flashed to prominence in Hollywood in the early 1940s and ended up fixed forever in the public mind as the inspiration for Chiquita Banana and for countless drag queen revues.
She was a huge recording and film star in Brazil long before she arrived in the U.S. Though middle-class herself, she was in fact a pioneer of the black slum music known as samba. Her color-blindness — perhaps derived from the fact that she was not “native” herself, being a Portuguese who never gave up her passport — extended to her physical image as well.
Carmen Miranda was born in Portugal! Yes, the archetypal Brazilian who put Brazil on the map and introduced the Samba to the consciousness of the world was a native of Portugal…
Born Maria do Carmo Miranda da Cunha in 1909, her family moved to Rio de Janeiro shortly after her birth. In the beginning of her career she dressed in contemporary modes of the day and became famous for her beautiful interpretations of the samba. Her international fame exploded after she played in the 1939 musical revue “Streets of Paris” on Broadway. A one-woman Good Neighbor Policy, Miranda quickly began her American film career playing herslef in a musical sequence from the 1940 Fox film Down Argentine Way. From then on, she was about as famous for her costumes as she was for her voice.
The gaudy turbans, bangles, and exposed midriffs were based on the costumes of the Baiana, the poor black women who sold fruit in Bahia. Her beautiful phrasing and sensual dancing could not be hidden under the mile-high turbans that she wore but she will always be remembered for her extreme presentation of “bahiana” style. It seems a sacrilege to relegate Miranda to anything but Technicolor but several of her film were in black and white??!! Some of her get-ups, many designed by Miranda herself, were so ridiculous that even Donald Trump would have a difficult time questioning her wacky tacky credentials.
Carmen, born in 1909, was 20 when a test demo she made for Victor Records became a hit. After ten years of success in Brazil, she was lured to Broadway to star in Lee Shubert’s revue The Streets of Paris, where audiences were enthralled by her unique style. When she returned to Brazil, she was attacked as “Americanized.” Embittered, she returned to the U.S. to join Twentieth Century-Fox, where she starred in a series of goofy “south-of-the-Border” Technicolor musicals. Carmen’s image established a stereotype that lingers today — the vulgar, flashy, hyperkinetic, language-mangling Latin.
Rita Moreno defines it succinctly for us: “We were oversexed, always left by the guy … you had to be vivacious, fiery! an exaggeration…” This image paid off in the most tangible terms: in 1945, Carmen Miranda was the highest-paid woman in the U.S. But she was also increasingly trapped, as the roles grew more caricaturish and the hats reached unparalleled heights of camp craziness in films like The Gang’s All Here, where no earthly stage could accommodate the skyscraper of bananas. (At roughly five-feet-tall, Miranda’s diminutive stature was obviously overshadowed by her huge presence, enhanced exponentially by the crazy platform shoes that she popularized during the 1940’s).
Opinions differ on whether Carmen could have challenged this. Cesar Romero says she was out of step with the times, a novelty that wore off. But Alice Faye and others deny that she could have changed her image and still been employed: “You could argue [with the studio],” she says, “but then you were suspended.” Above all, Carmen longed to express herself, even as a gaudy cartoon in Hollywood movies.
Brazil continued to hold her accountable for what they saw as ridiculing their country for the pleasure of American audiences. The woman whose lyrics “Her skin is hot and dark, her heart beats for Brazil” seemed autobiographical was no longer welcome there, a fact that may have contributed to her drug problems, abusive marriage, clinical depression, and electroshock treatments. Her cooperation with the U.S. “Good Neighbor Policy,” really just a way of replacing the lost European movie audiences of wartime with South American ones, sealed her image as a dupe and sellout.
Still, Carmen had moments of protest that showed her charming wit, style, and sensitivity. The phrase “bananas is my business” comes from a self-mocking protest song she did in the 1940s, to address the perception of being stereotyped. In 1945 she bought out her Fox contract and attempted more serious roles — including playing a dual role in a Marx Brothers movie — with limited success. Newsreel clips show her as an accomplished painter.
A key part of her legend was fixed during her first success here in headlines reading, “Carmen Miranda Conquers America.” But, as so often happens with the absorption of the “exotic” — i.e., ethnic — by American culture, it was the other way around. Carmen’s luminous, upbeat personality was smashed under the mask. Hollywood twisted her unique personal style, her sense of humor, and her dazzling use of black styles into grim, gaudy excess and then discarded her. The “Brazilian Bombshell” collapsed onstage during a live Jimmy Durante show (1955) and died of a heart attack that night at age 46.
Nota:
* Camp derives from the French slang term se camper, meaning “to pose in an exaggerated fashion”.
The rise of post-modernism made ‘camp’ a common perspective on aesthetics, which was not identified with any specific group. The attitude originally was a distinctive factor in pre-Stonewall gay male communities, where it was the dominant cultural pattern. It originated from the acceptance of gayness as effeminacy.
Two key components of camp were originally feminine performances: swish and drag.
With swish featuring extensive use of superlatives, and drag being exaggerated female impersonation, camp became extended to all things “over the top”, including female female impersonators, as in the exaggerated Hollywood version of Carmen Miranda. It was this version of the concept that was adopted by literary and art critics and became a part of the conceptual array of 1960s culture. Moe Meyer still defines camp as “queer parody.”
Camp is an aesthetic sensibility that regards something as appealing or humorous because of its ridiculousness to the viewer.
The concept is related to kitsch, and things with camp appeal may also be described as being “cheesy”. When the usage appeared, in 1909, it denoted: ostentatious, exaggerated, affected, theatrical, and effeminate behaviour, and, by the middle of the 1970s, the definition comprised: banality, artifice, mediocrity, and ostentation so extreme as to have perversely sophisticated appeal.
American writer Susan Sontag’s essay Notes on “Camp” (1964) emphasised its key elements as: artifice, frivolity, naïve middle-class pretentiousness, and ‘shocking’ excess.
Camp aesthetics were popularised by filmmakers George and Mike Kuchar, Andy Warhol, and John Waters, including the latter’s Pink Flamingos, Hairspray and Polyester. Celebrities that are associated with camp personas include drag queens and performers such as Dame Edna Everage, Divine, RuPaul, and Liberace.
Camp was a part of the anti-academic defense of popular culture in the 1960s and gained popularity in the 1980s with the widespread adoption of postmodern views on art and culture.
