Abstract
This presentation will analyze and conceptualize the Instagram meme account Co obléká Saskia (What Saskia Wears). The shared content follows the legendary Czech TV hostess Saskia Burešová who presents her history show Kalendárium for thirty years now and is a beloved part of Czech popular culture. Known for her "post-socialist chic" outfits, hairdo and makeup, as well as her unique style of speech, Burešová can be easily considered a camp icon, combining glamour and abjection, and emphasizing the performativity of femininity (Halperin 2012, p. 159 and 183). The Kalendárium show adds to her campy appeal by using ridiculous greenscreen postproduction. However, the intended reading of the show is 'straight', the hostess herself is not deliberately camping and constitutes naïve cultural text (Sontag 1999, p. 58). The camp reading of her is 'in the eye of the beholder' and was private or shared by word of mouth in subcultural groups.
This changed with the advent of the Internet and user-generated content (Eichhorn 2022), which is often made from remixed older media (Manovich 2015, p. 144). The Instagram meme account Co obléká Saskia is exemplary of this cultural praxis, the memes reappropriate (Milner 2016, p. 5) scenes from the TV show, choosing the most campy ones. In sharing them, the account highlights the campy reading of naïve text and provides a material trace of it. The analysis of the content can provide an insight into the camp appeal of Saskia Burešová, and, more importantly, introduce a new approach to studying naïve camp reading using internet memes as evidence of it.