History Main / SummerCampy

* ''Film/FridayThe13th2009': Jenna tells Clay that she never liked the camp she went to as a kid because it had bad food, cheap toilet paper, and too many bugs.

Summer camps in fiction are usually run like the company from ''ComicStrip/{{Dilbert}}''. The environment seems to be sentient and out to get you (mosquitoes chase you across camp, perfectly-timed inconvenient rain, etc.). The food is as bad as cafeteria food. In sports, there's a handful of super-jocks who treat it as SeriousBusiness and reduce everyone else to terror. Arts and crafts are so boring you want to be back in school. The bathrooms are outhouses that require a full nature hike to reach. The teenage counselors are either awesomely stupid and actually take the "camp spirit" and "camp traditions" seriously (often bordering on PointyHairedBoss), or treat the camp as their own personal vacation spot with the campers' welfare as an afterthought, or in some cases are out-and-out bullies who sadistically terrorize their younger charges. Usually, though, there's at least one counselor who tries to make some of the awkward kids feel better.

Summer camps in fiction are usually run like the company from ''ComicStrip/{{Dilbert}}''. The environment seems to be sentient and out to get you (mosquitoes chase you across camp, perfectly-timed inconvenient rain, etc.) The food is as bad as cafeteria food. In sports, there's a handful of super-jocks who treat it as SeriousBusiness and reduce everyone else to terror. Arts and crafts are so boring you want to be back in school. The bathrooms are outhouses that require a full nature hike to reach. The teenage counselors are either awesomely stupid and actually take the "camp spirit" and "camp traditions" seriously (often bordering on PointyHairedBoss), or treat the camp as their own personal vacation spot with the campers' welfare as an afterthought, or in some cases are out-and-out bullies who sadistically terrorize their younger charges. Usually, though, there's at least one counselor who tries to make some of the awkward kids feel better.

* The 1961 film ''Film/{{The Parent Trap|1961}}'' starts out at a semi-utopian version of one of these. Fortunately for the audience, things get more amusing.

** A darker-than-usual example in Kamp Krusty. The counselors are actively abusive, the arts-and-crafts projects are thinly-disguised sweatshop labor, the only food source for the campers is imitation gruel, every single building except the staff one is in disrepair, and letters have to be smuggled out. Oh, and they say Krusty the Clown will come to visit, but he won't.

** A darker-than-usual example in Camp Krusty, where the kids are used as slave labor. The tie-in video game ''[[VideoGame/BartSimpsonsEscapeFromCampDeadly Escape From Camp Deadly]]'' featured, among other things, a hide-and-seek game where Bart is Team A and Team B consists of everybody else (that, as well as a very lethal FoodFight).

* ''Videogame/{{Afterlife}}:'' The generic Hell punishment of "Camp Mennihackatorso" puts damned souls in one of these, where the demonic counselors are overbearing and sadistic, the activities go from dull to painful, and entire hordes of hockey-masked killers prowl the hills.

** A darker-than-usual example in Camp Krusty, where the kids are used as slave labor. The tie-in video game ''Escape From Camp Deadly'' featured, among other things, a hide-and-seek game where Bart is Team A and Team B consists of everybody else (that, as well as a very lethal FoodFight).

* Too many ''Literature/{{Goosebumps}}'' books to list.

* Camp [[MeaningfulName Wannaweep]] in ''WesternAnimation/KimPossible'' is a SummerCampy in flashbacks (and is responsible for pretty much every one of Ron's neuroses and phobias). By the time of the show, it's no longer SummerCampy and has become an abandoned camp of horrors.
** In a later episode we see Camp Wannaweep reopened and is back to its SummerCampy status, this time as a cheerleading camp [[spoiler:which Ron discovers is ''still'' a camp of horrors]].

* "Flappy Bob's Happy Camp Learnatorium" from ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddparents'' is this, with two overly-eager counselors that are obsessed with making normally fun things as boring as possible.

In older stories, the camp was always some outdoorsy place with a fake-Native American name (for American camps, at least). Modern stories are more likely to have a specialized camp (like weight-loss camp), which is just as awful as the old camps.

* ''ComicStrip/{{Peanuts}}'' did this every summer, sometimes with insane specialized camps like Sally's "Beanbag Camp" (where all you do is lie in a beanbag, watch TV, and eat junk food) and even a fundamentalist Bible camp.

* This is the premise of the animated series ''Camp Candy'', which was created by comedian and actor, Creator/JohnCandy (who also voiced the head counselor).[[note]]He also [[DoItYourselfThemeTune sang the show's theme song]].[[/note]]

* The 1961 film ''Film/TheParentTrap'' starts out at a semi-utopian version of one of these. Fortunately for the audience, things get more amusing.

Usually, boredom drives all the campers to insanity (if they weren't that way to begin with, as the hero's bunk-mate always seems to be). The only fun they have is messing with each other, leading to an EscalatingWar in no time (and brutal hazing if some of the kids are new). If the camp is co-ed, the kids will all wind up with crushes on each other that serve as object lesson in how LoveMakesYouDumb (and nobody ever manages to hook up).

In older stories, the camp was always some outdoorsy place with a fake-Indian name (for American camps, at least). Modern stories are more likely to have a specialized camp (like weight-loss camp), which is just as awful as the old camps.

* ''Indian Summer'' has a group of adults returning to the summer camp of their childhoods at the invitation of the camp's retiring director.

* The premise behind the Creator/RoosterTeeth series ''WebAnimation/CampCamp''. Camp Campbell started out as a normal (if somewhat poorly-run) camp, but the rising popularity of modern technology led founder Cameron Campbell to diversify the camp's activities, running the camp's budget into the ground. The series itself focuses on the exploits of campers Max, Neil, and Nikki, as well as their annoyingly cheerful counselor David.

* Camp Whispering Rock in ''VideoGame/{{Psychonauts}}'' has the bad food (Ford ''really'' can't cook), cheesy arts-and-crafts, the JerkJock bully, and more preteen hormones running rampant than you can shake a stick at... But since the counselors are frackin' super spies out to teach the children how to utilize their psychic powers, that pretty much makes up for everything. Including the pyrokinetic cougars and [[BearsAreBadNews telekinetic bears]] in the woods.

* Bobby wants to avoid one of these in ''Literature/OneFatSummer'' because he's too old for most of their activities and will be relegated to being a [[TheIntern "Junior Assistant Councilor"]] made to look after the younger campers. Becomes the setting of the sequel when he qualifies for a paid position at the camp and winds up in charge of a quartet of BrattyHalfpints.

** In a later episode we see Camp Wannaweep reopened and is back to it's SummerCampy status, this time as a cheerleading camp [[spoiler:which Ron discovers is ''still'' a camp of horrors]].

* ''Magazine/{{MAD}}'' has also done this every summer. One old piece from the 70s had a camp where the only medical supplies are aspirin and calamine lotion, so every sick and injured camper goes untreated...until we meet a lucky boy who's "got poison ivy, and a terrible headache from worrying about it." The camp director seems to have no problem with the camp being run like a summer-long prison for children, but when he wife complains about their own children acting unruly and recommends that he puts them in the same summer camp, he objects, stating how terrible it is. A more recent strip had ButtMonkey Monroe sent to a camp that made him long for the CrapsackWorld back home.

* ''Magazine/{{MAD}}'' has also done this every summer. One old piece from the 70s had a camp where the only medical supplies are aspirin and calamine lotion, so every sick and injured camper goes untreated...until we meet a lucky boy who's "got poison ivy, and a terrible headache from worrying about it." A more recent strip had ButtMonkey Monroe sent to a camp that made him long for the CrapsackWorld back home.