On camp and the caped crusader

Holy getting up there, Batman! Happy birthday to Burt Ward, the original Robin in the 1966 TV series, who turned 60 last week. Now that was a joyful parody that brought gay camp to a mainstream audience that didn't quite get it.

Big Brain Susan Sontag had discussed it in her essay, "Notes on Camp," two years earlier: "A sensibility (as distinct from an idea) is one of the hardest things to talk about; but there are special reasons why Camp, in particular, has never been discussed," Sontag opined in stentorian cadences. "Indeed the essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration. And Camp is esoteric -- something of a private code, a badge of identity, even, among small urban cliques." The famous but closeted Sontag couldn't manage the word homosexual; her own painful coding continued with its insider hints, such as mention of author Chistopher Isherwood.

"Camp is a certain mode of aestheticism. It is one way of seeing the world as an aesthetic phenomenon. That way, the way of Camp, is not in terms of beauty, but in terms of the degree of artifice, of stylization." Zzzzzzz. I once made it to number 34 in Sontag's endless list ("Camp taste turns its back on the good-bad axis of ordinary aesthetic judgment. Camp doesn't reverse things. It doesn't argue that the good is bad, or the bad is good. What it does is to offer for art (and life) a different -- and supplementary -- set of standards").

Sontag was wrong on some of it, or perhaps camp has just changed. Certainly so-called gay portrayals in Batman have. Take comic books.

Back in 1954, the infamous Dr. Fredric Wertham's "Seduction of the Innocent" gave six pages of delicious worry over to homosexuality: "Wertham does not claim that Batman and Robin are homosexual, but that 'the Batman type of story' -- meaning an adult plus youth crime-fighting team -- could stimulate 'children' to have homosexual fantasies in adolescents who have already developed homosexual feelings," wrote queer columnist Paul Varnell recently in Philadelphia Gay News.

The four Wertham worries were "the pederastic structure" of the relationship, which helps fixate homoerotic tendencies into a "Ganymede-Zeus type of love relationship;" the dandified home that's "like a wish dream of two homosexuals living together;" the "ostentatious genital display" (the hyper masculine Batman, and Robin's constant posing legs apart to show off his "genital region"); and finally, the evilness of all the women, because gay men hate chicks.

(Wertham's anti comics rant spawned an age of censorship -- even in Canada, where a ban on "crime comics" is still on the books.)

The pressure changed Batman cartoons, but gay content arrived as camp in the TV series... and the modern Batman film franchise tried to keep it up. Take last decade's "Batman Forever" (please!), a flick that tweaked those in the know. "When asked about the homo-erotic tension between Batman and Robin, Boy Wonder Chris O'Donnell told Movieline magazine he'd never thought about it."

Ha. In the movie, "O'Donnell wants to stick his dick in the seats of the antique cars and motorcycles in millionaire Bruce Wayne's garage.

"And when he discovers that Wayne is also Batman, the would-be sidekick wants in. Bruce Wayne (played by the pouty Val Kilmer, who must have had silicone injected into his lips), rejects his ardent suitor. But O'Donnell pursues the millionaire, and screams, "'I want to be with you!'" (This is all from the review I penned at the time.)

"Batman relents, and Robin is born. His suit includes [perky molded] nipples, and both look slinky in their muscle-bound rubber body armour. Mondo cod pieces all 'round. Batman even wears a hood..." (It's the bad guys who deliver the sex upfront: the Riddler's a screamer, and Two-Face leads a double life [ahem].)

Ah for the good old days of 1995.

This summer's "Batman Begins" is the most camp-free Dark Knight flick ever. Earnest, action-filled, folding in hits of goodie-goodieness to preach against vigilantism. Entertaining, sure (except for TomKat Katie Holmes, who should've just stayed home). But not camp.

"Batman Returns" stars a massive Christian Bale, who's said he wanted the character to truly look like he fought for a living. Too much damned realism for the caped crusader, not enough warped fun.

Hollywood reflects the moment, and -- memo to activists -- Middle America isn't interested in camp right now. They finally get it, and they're tired of us making fun of them.

Or maybe Batman just needs a Robin.