Queers of Steel: Camp in John Williams's Superman (1978) and Jerry Goldsmith's Supergirl (1984)

Abstract

AbstractWhen Richard Donner's blockbuster Superman arrived in theaters in 1978, critics praised the filmmakers for avoiding camp in their adaptation of the comic book, comparing the film positively to the Batman television series (1966–68) of the previous decade. Several sequels later, critics attributed the series’ diminishing financial returns to its growing investment in camp, an investment that peaked in Jeannot Szwarc's Supergirl spinoff (1984), a critical and commercial misfire. Drawing on the work of camp theorists Susan Sontag, Moe Meyer, and Andrew Ross, I argue that critics have misrepresented the place of camp within the franchise, a misunderstanding stemming from their neglect of the film scores. There are two different yet overlapping forms of camp operating within these films. In their reviews, critics expressed disdain for pop camp, a highly legible form of camp, characterized by overblown performances, that the Batman show popularized in the 1960s. My analyses of Superman and Supergirl center on a subtler camp aesthetic present from the very start that critics celebrated: a playful mismatching of gender signifiers and an undercutting of heteronormative romantic relationships that I refer to as queer camp. I offer queer readings of John Williams's and Jerry Goldsmith's leitmotivic scores for Superman and Supergirl—supposedly the least campy and the campiest films in the franchise—to bring into focus the overlooked political work the series accomplishes. In a bold reclamation of the comic books’ suppressed queer legacy, the films’ queer camp aesthetic subverts the heteronormativity of the protagonists to construct Superman and Supergirl as queers of steel.