The Campy TV World of Ryan Murphy – what is appealing about Murphy’s shows: his Tourettic impulse to offend, even in the midst of the sweetest love story. Camp originated as a private language, in an era when survival as a gay man meant learning to break codes—of male and female behavior, of normality and status. Murphy has taken this vernacular of the closet, and bent it, hard, toward an era of outness. It’s a mighty queer gambit, and one that aligns Murphy with a subset of gay showrunners whom I’ve rarely seen lumped together in critical conversation, perhaps for fear of risking offense.
How The Film Class Of 1998 Has Fared – Wrote Sarris, “Throughout the sound era, the forest critic has been singling out the timely films and letting the timeless ones fall by the wayside. Unfortunately, nothing dates faster than timeliness.” He was writing in 1968, but not much has changed.
