Last night we attended “BarBarella-Q”, a screening of Barbarella, Queen of the Galaxy which was part of the “Summer Camp” movie series at the Hirshhorn Museum. While the movie was terrifically camp from the zero-g spacesuit strip with music by Burt Bacharach to the floor, wall and ceiling shag carpet of her space ship to Dr. Durand Durand’s Excessive Machine (yes, Duran Duran took their name from the movie), what I found much more interesting was that hundreds of very interesting people would stand in line to see a forty year old film that was a box office flop. And never since I moved to the DC metro area have I seen such an un-diverse group of people. It was almost uncomfortable. Out of the 200 or so people that they fit in the theater, I counted two black men and an Asian guy. Is there something uniquely white about camp humor or about science fiction? Also interesting to note is that nearly all of the men in the audience were either older straight men or young gay men.
“What’s that screaming? A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.” -Jane Fonda as Barbarella
“Our password is… ‘LlanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwIIllantysiliogogogoch.” -Dildano
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