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WhetherAJ and the Queenis a good or bad television show isnt really up for debate.
It is a bad television show.
Its bad in a variety of equally painful ways.
It looks and feels chintzy.
Its politics are loud, proud, and as simplistic as a childs My First Read-Aloud book.
The acting is not great.
The trickier and more curious question is whetherAJ and the Queenknows itself for what it is.
There are elements ofAJ and the Queenthat seem blithely, deliriously unaware.
Other parts ofAJ and the Queen, though, are bad in ways that are plainly deliberate.
Surely this kind of terribleness only happens as a purposeful send-up?
Surely itstryingto be this absurd?
Theres one scene in particular that made me suddenly reassess whetherAJ and the Queenknows exactly what its doing.
But not onAJ and the Queen.
I laughed at least partly in dismay, but it was definitely laughter.
Lady Danger, Rubys blind roommate who yells Im blind!
And regardless,AJ and the Queencannot quite meet Sontags definition of pure.
There are too many knowing moments, strewn haphazardly throughout the long stretches of (deliberate?)
Finally, though, a later line from Sontag helped clear my fog.
She ends the essay by saying that the ultimate camp statement is its goodbecauseits awful.
Whatever its intention,AJ and the Queenis indeed awful.
But its not good because of it.
