ABSTRACT
This chapter describes that Muriel's Wedding and Mamma Mia! films use ABBA music as the cornerstone of a distinct campy theatricalism. Both Muriel's Wedding and Mamma Mia! are imbued with a camp sensibility, not in the queer sense but as aesthetic choice, with ABBA songs as the driving force behind both films. ABBA reached its popularity peak in the 1970s, as Malcolm Womack notes, and then went through a number of shifts in audience reception before it gained a new acceptance as nostalgia. Using Heather Love's interpretation of camp as cultural nostalgia, Muriel experiences ABBA songs as nostalgia for the cultural past, allowing her to remain stuck in a childhood fantasy of fairy tale weddings. Naomi Graber notes how nostalgia allows consumers and spectators to re-assess original content and put new meaning and value onto it, allowing non-political material like ABBA music to be reframed for its socio-cultural value.
