Psych and the Camp Detective
Psych is one of my favourite shows. Its one of those shows stands out vaguely in its premise, and mostly in its presentation. Psych aired on the USA Network in 2006, around the time that many police procedurals, buddy cop shows, and other detective shows were proliferating. Shows like House, Monk, and the Mentalist were also incredibly popular shows in a similar genre. Where Psych differentiated itself was in its presentation of the genre, it’s writing leaning far into the comedy to present characters, crimes, and premises as, frankly, absurd.
Psych’s main character, Shawn Spencer, has been trained to be an incredible detective from a young age from his father who was a well respected and skilled homicide detective. When his observational skills, which he uses to earn a bit of money calling in anonymous tips, begins to get him in trouble, he claims to be a psychic to explain his ability to quickly and efficiently solve crimes.
Psych, therefore, is a series of lies as a premise. It forces the primary characters to solve crimes in silly ways, and present their evidence in even more absurd fashions. Absurdity, exaggeration, and humour is at the core of Psych. I would argue that this is a presentation of camp, and the show utilises camp to introduce writing that is, at the same time, nuanced, subversive and also flips aspects of a familiar genre to present it in new and interesting ways.
Psych ultimately plays with tropes of the detective genre. It has many familiar elements, such as the group reveal in which all suspects are gathered and the detective unveils the secrets of each one, leading to the culprit. The detective has superior deductive reasoning or observation skills, which often puts them as somehow above the other characters and figures in the story. The detective also has a friend or assistant who accompanies them, sometimes offering specialist advice and sometimes simply being the sounding board or the voice of the audience.
Psych has all of these features, though often in more camp forms. Most finales of episodes include the group reveal, though often in a much more absurd and over the top way, playing with the idea that Shawn is supposed to be pretending to be a psychic. His observation skills are highlighted to the audience so they know, but his act of observing, and his communication of these, are presented as absurd. In relation to other observers, his skill is presented as far superior, which is what led to his position of pretending to be a psychic. His friend and companion, Burton Guster, is his childhood friend whose in on the lie. He’s a pharmaceutical sales rep with a skilled nose, who is able to give expert advice on what he knows, stands in for the audience in places, and gives Shawn a confidedant. The relatinoship between the two, however, also plays with the way others see or rumour more classic duos, like Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Their relationship is a bromance that soemtimes borders on actual romance, allowing also the dynamics between them to live in the same absurdity as the rest of the show.
Psych utilises archetypes of characters as well, not just genre archetypes, which are also played for artifice. Lassiter plays the harsh and brash, yet ultimately inferior detective. Jules is the attractive female, rookie detective. The primary detective figure is outside social structure, something important to the genre that I’ve talked about before, but here it is done on purpose. He’s made to be childish and sometimes off putting, rather than being ostricised for any social reasons. For example, Poirot is outside social structure due to being a foreign refugee. Sherlock Holmes is clearly neurodivergent and potentially asexual. Shawn, on the other hand, fits most social standings but plays himself outside of them through his own doing.
I keep mentioning the idea of the show being “camp”, but maybe lets talk about what exactly that means. Andy Medhurst wrote that “[t]rying to define Camp is like attempting to sit in the corner of a circular room. It can’t be done, which only adds to teh quixotic appeal of the attempt”. Camp, therefore, is something that eludes very strict or obvious definitions. In many ways, its fits the anecdotal definition of pornography: “I’ll know it when I see it” definition.
But obviously, this isn’t going to suit the purposes here, we need something to grab onto to decide whether Psych is actually camp. Susan Sontag was one of the first to academically attempt to parcel out what camp is and isn’t. There are a few problems with her approach, however. In her discussion of camp, she differentiated betwen the artifice and the authentic. Authenticity was described as “high camp” while artifice was was of a lower taste. In fact, this type of high culture/low culture, good taste/bad taste type of discussion was the primary backbone of her work, pitting some aspects of culture against others.
I’m not a big fan of this, and not just because I have a love for things that are considered terrible taste. If we think about taste through a more sociological lens, we can see that things are a lot more complicated. Taste is often something that is inherently tied to other social conditions, such as economic class, gender, and even race, because these things are inherently tied to social order - what is considered a lower social order is inherently connected to that which is of lower taste. Pierre Bourdieu described taste as an “acquired disposition” - it is not something which is inherently given to someone as a gift or as a natural element, but rather something that is constructed through the various systems of social order.
However, thinking of this kind of social order is actually important in thinking about camp. Camp works as a system of destabilisation, one which collapses the typical distinctions of object and subject until they become one another. Put in less academic terms, camp pushes boundaries and definitions, forcing us to think of things that have typical boundaries between them as no longer having those boundaries. Camp plays with expectation and result, forcing the viewer to question their expectations and why they had them to begin with.
So let’s look at it without Psych for a second. We can think of three primary aspects of camp that I think may lead to recognising it when we see it, or to defining it, whichever you may wish to do. These elements are: exaggeration, artifice, and extremity. Aspects of the subject of the camp is exaggerated, made to feel way less authentic, and given a level of extreme that causes the viewer to question the reality of what they are seeing, and therefore to push our own expectations.
Camp is typically used to describe elements of predominately gay male culture, and often that which is also primarily white. Old school drag shows, for example, is a camp demonstration of femininity. By presenting the absurd female from the point of view male gayness, it creates a strange version of femininity which exists on the boundaries. Though, according to some scholars, this form of drag specifically may help to reinforce gendered hierarchies - but maybe that’s a topic for a different day.
Anyway, the almost exclusive holding of camp as one for white gay men has meant that other performances of camp have long gone unstudied. One recent study of camp helped to change this by centring the discussion on Dolly Parton - who is an example of camp from women. Her presentation of typical femininity is done to such an exaggerated extreme that we often separate these aspects of her as something that is so obviously false as to almost become meaningless. Therefore, aspects of the femininity which often come to define women, have defined Dolly Parton to such an extent that it almost becomes silly to continue to do so. Because of course the big hair and big boobs are there - its Dolly. So what else do you have to say?
Psych, I believe, is camp as is presented from the point of view of straight men. I know some people may have a problem with camp, something so long associated with gay culture, being presented as something possible to have a straight angle, but I think it’s important to see what happens with camp in these new social hands. As straight drag queen Maddy Morphosis has said, we get to see the spectrum of queer, but there is also a spectrum of straight which is often not allowed in straight people - particularly of straight men. Straight men are often told exactly what straight maleness looks like, and are forbidden from straying from that unless they are not straight. As a show, Psych utilises the familiarity of a genre and its archetypes to create over the top writing and acting to demonstrate what camp looks like from the perspective of straight masculinity.
Shawn Spencer embodies the two primary character archetypes: the detective, and the playboy. As a detective, his absurdity in the position creates a mockery of typical police work, the police force, and also what it means to be a genius. As he points out in the pilot episode, the facade of Shawn as a psychic is perfect, because the only way to prove that he is not a psychic is for him to say he’s not. There is no other way to prove it. And therefore, Shawn’s role as psychic also plays with our social understanding of truth, evidence, and what is possible in our reality - all of which are incredibly important elements to stay firm in a mystery story.
Shawn’s archetype as the playboy is one that morphs and finds solid grounding as the show continues, though always present from the pilot episode. Shawn directly plays with his role of attractive masculine playboy by playing with the expectations of what this may look like. He does not remain strictly firm in his heterosexuality, but allows the same flowing of attraction and admiration to be present on many people, regardless of gender. In fact, the two primary masculine figures - Shawn and the oppposing police detective Lassiter - are both set up to be present to be the typical masculine heterosexual leads, but neither are played strictly so. While Shawn plays with his expectation of his sexuality, so much so that many fans believe Shawn to possibly be bi, Lassiter has been confirmed canonically by the show’s creator as being pansexual. Therefore, the only figure that maintains a strong stereotypical straight masculine presentation is actually the only chracter who is canonically not straight.
If we can strictly define anything, it would be the show Psych itself as one that is probably best described as a show about artifice. The entire premise is based on lies and presentations of falsehood as reality, and this is how the show reads even to the audience. Everything is played to an absurd level - it is not meant to be serious or gritty or realistic. It’s meant to be funny and silly and ridiculous. While it has deeper episodes, even those have punchlines played for laughs in the middle of things too serious.
Psych’s camp is meant to question the dynamics of the detective genre, to consider the power dynamics at play and the ways that certain character types and archetypes are typically played. Psych’s absurdity also leads to a collapsing of some of the rooted structural necessities we have come to understand both in media and outside of media - like how knowledge is gained, and what can be both real and fake simultaneously. We question how knowledge is garnered and understood, and how layered lies can create a reality that is, perhaps, more real than what it was before the lies entered. As the theme song goes, I know you know that I’m not telling the truth, and yet the artifice of the situation remains in place, regardless.
I love Psych - perhaps because of its absurdity above all else. But despite its goofy presentation, it’s also a more quiet absurdity than one may think. It’s more subtle in its camp, focusing more on the premise to do the heavy lifting for it. And, maybe - just maybe - this is also why the show did not garner as much praise as its less campy counterparts like Monk. Because camp is meant to question the status quo, to show the problems with the mainstream society. And I think Psych did do this, and did this to a wonderful, and forever funny, extent.