It’s the last day of summer camp. It’s the 80s. You’re a counsellor in the twilight of your teens and you’re a bit of a loser. But basically you’re a good guy, and you’re trying to win over the girl of your dreams from her dickhead bad-boy of a boyfriend. Or you’re the horny charlatan sex-bomb who’s secretly still a virgin, despite what he says. Or maybe you’re the Camp Director, having a hard time keeping control of her counsellors and campers, whilst trying to win the affections of a nerdy but warm-hearted astrophysics professor. Everything will come to a head tonight at the talent show, that one last chance to make this the best summer of your life.
That’s more or less the plot of Wet Hot American Summer, a 2001 comedy film written by Michael Showalter, who also stars as said ‘good guy’ and romantic lead. Whether you’ve seen it or not (and if you haven’t then it’s time to do something about it), this should all be sounding pretty familiar. The film is a parody of summer teen flicks, and nails their predictable formula of drugs, sex and talent shows, hamming it all up and exaggerating the character tropes to outrageous comedic effect: make out scenes are always tongue-heavy, not to mention the unbelievable intoxication montage. In terms of how it draws out and mocks the conventions of an overdone genre, the premise is a bit like Scary Movie, released a year before, but it’s in significantly better taste and definitely more PG-13.
When Wet Hot American Summer came out, it was pretty poorly received (with the exception of a couple of glowing reviews), but it has since gone on to become cult watching. A lot of the hype about it revolves around its awesome cast, most of whom are a lot more famous now than when it came out — Paul Rudd, Amy Poehler, Bradley Cooper and Elizabeth Banks all put in hilarious performances as their delightfully two dimensional characters. Netflix caught on to the film’s sudden popularity and commissioned a miniseries prequel that aired earlier this year, with most of the cast reprising their roles, as well as the stunning additions of Jason Schwartzman, John Hamm and Kristen Wiig. The series recounts the first day of camp — it’s a prequel to the film, but absolutely no effort is made to conceal the obvious fact that the main cast have aged 15 years. Over the eight episodes it explains, in pretty surreal ways, a lot of the more off-the-wall humour in the film, and still manages to culminate in a bizarre confrontation between the campers and the US armed forces, led by Ronald Reagan in person. But this is only one more way of poking fun at summer- camp films: it’s that strange feeling — that camp, for the length of summer, is the centre of the universe — brought to its illogical conclusion.
And this is really what’s great about WHAS: its way of evoking feelings that are second hand, but so familiar. I’ve never been to summer camp, but I still know what it means to score on the last night. I don’t even think I’ve seen many other summer camp films, but the camp experience is something I know by osmosis – maybe just from seeing the video for ‘Here (In Your Arms)’ by Hellogoodbye and the start of The Parent Trap. Authenticity and originality are not the interests here. Summer camp films have always been parodic and funny: even the parody is rehashed. That the film is so contrived gives it a quality of vicarious experience, which gives an emotional cohesion to the movie and series through the dominant feeling of nostalgia — the very distinct feeling that accompanies remembering and associating events, always at one remove from real experience. So it doesn’t matter that I’ve never been to summer camp in the 80s – this film, I would wager, has exactly as much meaning for me as it does to someone who’s actually been there and done that.
What’s more, even though this film is ultimately a piss-take of everything I get emotional about when I watch it, that self-satire only works to heighten the feeling of nostalgia we get when we watch it. Because what is parody if not pointing out just how contrived the genre it’s parodying is? We’re constantly being reminded of the gap between real life and this film’s presentation of it, which is essentially governed by the conventions of its genre, and this gap occupies the same space in the film that the nostalgic feeling does in the viewier. It constantly exposes itself as a film that’s nostalgic about nostalgic summer camp films by laying into the genre. The final scene (spoiler alert) is a stroke of genius: the morning after the last night of camp, Showalter’s character goes to talk to Katie (Marguerite Moreau), the girl he’s been chasing after and hooked up with last night, to talk about their relationship. Katie snubs him, says it was a fun night but she’s going back to her jock boyfriend, Paul Rudd: “Andy’s really hot. I’m sixteen, and right now I’m entirely about sex”. It’s a total coup de theÌaÌ‚tre. Suddenly all the ostentatious gestures towards its genre, the 80s haircuts and short shorts, the log cabins in the background, look like costumes and sets again as the happy ending we thought we had explodes in our faces. We realise it was just the rose tint of nostalgia all along and in the end that’s more important than whatever the summer camp experience really is. And it’s really funny.
Maybe that sounds wishy washy, but there’s some substance behind this. Wet Hot American Summer exemplifies what Fredric Jameson says about the nostalgia mode in postmodern culture. Nostalgic films like this one are pastiches of an idea of a time and demonstrate the way in which our understanding of the historical past is so often determined by pop images and stereotypes about that past, which itself remains forever out of reach. Our present is coloured by this pastiche, flooding it with warm nostalgic feelings. I can’t wait for next summer either.
