Well, there's 'camp' as in "effete" behaviour, which the Original Trilogy didn't do much of.
But it did in places. Han's(/Harrison's) improvised intercom conversation with Death Star control after the "accidental weapons discharge" is the prime exception. C3P0's entire filmic demeanour is an arguable case, given the likelihood that a non-confrontational personality might be deemed a useful trait in an intermediary (and might also be the spur-of-the-moment reasoning behind Ford's/Solo's choice of how to voice his apologetic inflections in the former case), although it also does translate into a 'lifelong' temerity - as a direct opposition to R2's bold "when something needs doing, it needs doing" attitude which has to be a benefit for a droid created to be in the astromech 'profession' when quick and timely repairs (quite possibly in a combat situation) are of necessity.
However, camp in the dual (and often inseparable) 'theatrical' sense of a smattering of both effeminacy and (urgent/sincere) amateurism might well crystallise in the depiction of wartime 'concert parties', morale-raising productions for troops in camps (NPI!) of men either just a hairs-breadth from the front-line (imminently going in/just come out) or digging their heals with nothing to do (further back, or in prison camps). The utter lack of 'natural' females brings forth a sense of natural or inclined femininity (exaggerated/stereotyped, in either case, to officially indicate the sense of parody), and 'touring' concert parties might well consist of conscripts/recruits deemed more valuable as morale-boosters than active fighters.
(As an example, see "It Aint Half Hot Mum", BBC TV series from the... '70s..? about a rag-tag and mis-matched bunch of British soldiers in (post-VEDay, pre-VJ-day) WW2, in the India/Burma theatre of war. Mostly staying out of combat and muddling through the process of putting on shows... It's a show 'of its day', and rarely rebroadcast for various reasons, but that's definitely a depiction of "camp performance" in multiple uses of the term!)
So a "campy" production could be considered low-budget/on-a-shoestring, an ensemble cast of those easily available (rather than the most experienced character-players) and 'girly-girly' characters being OTT (if not outright faked/unreal) feminisms. A New Hope (most of all) was very much like that, less so as the OT progressed (Jabba's dancers came later on and were 'exotic eye candy') and didn't really translate to PT.
To elaborate on one of those points, Leia definitely gets classed as Action-Girl (apart from the half-glimpsed love-interest element of the original hologram-recording McGuffin), rather than full on girly-girl. It's almost a pantomime 'principal boy' position, Luke in some ways taking on the plucky 'principal girl' character, and C3P0 lacking in being a full on traditional 'dame' by only some minor conditions - e.g. the lack of conspicuous (and padded-up) corpulance. And I'm going to class R2 is the 'pantomime animal' (usually a two-person cow/camel suit performance, here a 'half person' tin-can one), often serving as a living-McGuffin for various necessary scene progressions and transitions.
(Also now look at Spaceballs - The Movie. Dot Matrix combines Dame and Panto-animal roles but sent in more an American/I Love Lucy direction, which is a distant cousin from the British artform. But that's probably mostly because of Mel Brooks's grounding in that differing branch of fun'n'farce theatre.)
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Topic: Star Wars: The Force Awakens Discussion Thread (spoilers, obviously) (Read 58176 times)