Whimsy

you know whimsy ?

Is Whimsy sort of like Frivolity, but more innocent?

acting enirly on whim

ohhhhh, Whimsy! I had to stifle him, back yesteryear in '77.

The English disease?

I saw Amelie yesterday, and I think that's full of whimsical things - like just taking a bit of time off work to skim stones. By the way - the film is an absolute CLASSIC.

I think whimsy is like impetuousness, only gentler.

I'm not so sure about this identification of whimsy with simple impetuousness. Spontaneity and impetuousness are great whereas I associate whimsy with a kind of giggly slackness, and it seems to be to be a short step from whimsy to Chicken-Soup style homily, especially where things like taking time off work to skim stones are concerned.

Also it strikes me that like surrealism and camp, what started as a positive and neccessary aesthetic impulse has become pandering and an easy way out.

Easy way out of what? Camp is fun!

I think I just dislike the notion of people enjoying themselves.

OK no, I will try to expand before I get a sandwich. I was watching Moulin Rouge and not enjoying the spectacular-ness of it, and the over-the-topness and yes also the camp. And I was thinking, why am I not enjoying it? Mostly because it seems predictable - you could tell from the first frames that it was the kind of film which was going to make people gush about the glorious over-the-topness of it, but it seemed to be to be a shorthand for actual over-the-topness (whatever that might be). It seemed to play things very safe - and also to play itself safe against criticism.

Attack something that is 'camp' and you tend to be accused at best of being humourless or missing the point - the notion of 'good' camp and 'bad' camp doesn't seem to be there. Campness just is, sealed away beyond criticism somehow. When I see things that are camp (or whimsical or surreal) they tend also to be things that the dreaded phrase "you either love it or you hate it" gets applied to - that kind of them-and-us response which pre-empts further dialogue, further response. Camp and whimsy have gone from being neutral properties of art to being either compliments or insults. They've become traits the dislike of which is assumed to cast more light on you than on the work, refuges for that other great critical negator - "you don't get it".

Sorry, this is rambling. There's a point I'm trying to make and I can't quite pin it down.

Tom, you just don't get it, do you?

I think Nicole Kidman's "One Day I'll Fly Away" should be in the focus group.

i was thinking that, but sadly it's not (yet?) been issued as a single. Instead we have that absurd eurodance remix of that ropey theme song.

Incidentally, NK's rendition of 'One Day I'll Fly Away' isn't remotely camp. At least not when taken out of the film.

Invasion of the cockfarming gabber robots wasn't a single and that didn't stop the selectors.

Yes, but "Invasion Of The Gabber Robots" was great.

Yeah! It is!! Yeah! Dan! Wooh!

(Please kill me)

if you search for circus tent whimsy the only thing you get is charles mingus. i found this out independent of the googlewhacking phenomenon. but then i am quite tall