Camp is anaesthetic and sensibility that regards something as appealing or amusing because of its heightened level of artifice, affectation and exaggeration,[1][2][3] especially when there is also a playful orironic element.[4][5]Camp is historically associated withLGBTQ culture and especiallygay men.[2][6][7][8] Camp aesthetics disruptmodernist understandings ofhigh art by inverting traditional aesthetic judgements of beauty, value, and taste, and inviting a different kind of aesthetic engagement.[6]
Camp art is distinct from but often confused withkitsch. The big difference between camp and kitsch is mainly that camp is aware of its artificiality and pretense.[9]
The American writerSusan Sontag emphasizedcamp's key elements as embracing frivolity, excess and artifice.[10] Art historianDavid Carrier notes that, despite these qualities, it is alsosubversive and political.[11]Camp may be sophisticated,[12] but subjects deemedcamp may also be perceived as being dated, offensive or inbad taste.[13][5]Camp may also be divided intohigh andlowcamp (i.e., camp arising from serious versus unserious matters), or alternatively intonaive anddeliberate camp (i.e., accidental versus intentional camp).[3][12][14][15] While author and academic Moe Meyer definescamp as a form of "queer parody",[7][8] journalistJack Babuscio argues it is a specific "gay sensibility" which has often been "misused to signify the trivial, superficial and 'queer'".[16]
Camp, as a particular style or set ofmannerisms, may serve as a marker of identity, such as incamp talk, which expresses a gay male identity.[17] Thiscamp style is associated withincongruity orjuxtaposition, theatricality, andhumour,[18] and has appeared in film,cabaret, andpantomime.[19][20][21] Bothhigh andlow forms of culture may becamp,[3][22][8] but where high art incorporates beauty and value,camp often strives to be lively, audacious and dynamic.[6]Camp can also betragic,sentimental and ironic, finding beauty orblack comedy even in suffering.[19] The humour ofcamp, as well as its frivolity, may serve as acoping mechanism to deal withintolerance andmarginalization in society.[5][23]
TheOxford English Dictionary notes that the wordcamp was used as a verb since at least the 1500s.[24] Writer Bruce Rodgers also traces the termcamp to the 16th century, specifically to British theatre, where it referred to men dressed as women (drag).[5][25]Camp may have derived from the gay slangPolari,[26] which borrowed the term from the Italiancampare,[27][22] or from the French termse camper, meaning "to pose in an exaggerated fashion".[28][29] A similar sense is also found in French theatre inMolière's 1671 playLes Fourberies de Scapin.[15]
WriterSusan Sontag and linguistPaul Baker place the "soundest starting point" for the modern sense ofcamp, meaningflamboyant, as the late 17th and early 18th centuries.[30][31] WriterAnthony Burgess theorized it may have emerged from the primary sense of the word, as in a military encampment, where gay men would subtly advertise their sexuality in all-male company through a particular style and affectation.[32]
By 1870, BritishcrossdresserFrederick Park referred to his "campish undertakings" in a letter produced in evidence at his examination before a magistrate atBow Street, London, on suspicion of illegal homosexual acts; the letter does not make clear what these were.[33] In 1874, theManchester Courier printed the description of a ticket for a Salforddrag ball, called the "Queen of Camp" ball.[34][35][a] According to theOxford English Dictionary, the first definitive use ofcamp as an adjective in print occurred in the writing of J. R. Ware in 1909.[24] In the UK's pre-liberationgay culture, the term was used as a general description of the aesthetic choices and behavior of working-classgay men.[36][37] The termcamp is still sometimes used in the UK to describe a gay man who is perceived as outwardly garish or eccentric, such asMatt Lucas' characterDaffyd Thomas in the English comedy skit showLittle Britain.[38]
From the mid-1940s, numerous representations ofcamp speech orcamptalk, as used by gay men, began to appear in print in America, France and the United Kingdom.[17] By the mid-1970s, camp was defined by the college edition ofWebster's New World Dictionary as "banality, mediocrity, artifice, [and] ostentation ... so extreme as to amuse or have a perversely sophisticated appeal".[39]
In America, the concept of camp was also described byChristopher Isherwood in 1954 in his novelThe World in the Evening, and later bySusan Sontag in her 1964 essay 'Notes on "Camp"'.[40] Two key components of the "radical spectacle of camp" were originally feminine performances:swish anddrag.[27] With swish's extensive use of superlatives and drag's exaggerated female impersonation, camp occasionally became extended to all things "over the top", including women posing as female impersonators (faux queens) such asCarmen Miranda, while also retaining its meaning as "queer parody".[7][8][41]
In her study ofdrag, cultural anthropologistEsther Newton argued thatcamp has three major features: incongruity, theatricality, and humour.[18] In his 1984, writer George Melly argued that the camp sensibility allowed almost anything to be seen as acamp, and that this was a way of projecting one's own queer sensibility upon the world to therefore reclaim it. Conversely, he argued, the biggest threat to camp wasn't heterosexuals ("who tend to accept it, although usually at a fairly broad and superficial level"), but "a neo-puritanism, a received conformism" emerging among gay people at the time.[42]
The rise ofpostmodernism andqueer theory has madecamp a common perspective on aesthetics, not solely identified with gay men.[6][43] Women (especiallylesbians), trans people, and people of colour have described new forms ofcamp, such asdyke camp (including subcategories such ascubana andhigh-femme dyke camp)[44][45] andqueer of color camp.[45][46]
Camp has also been a subject ofpsychoanalytic theory, where it has been portrayed as a form of performance ormasquerade. Scholar Cynthia Morrill has argued that the conception of "camp-as-masquerade" ignores the specifically queer sensibility ofcamp by interrogating queerness through aheteronormative lens (i.e., solely in relation to thesymbol of the phallus).[43]
Camp has become prevalent in mainstreampopular entertainment such as theatre, cinema, TV and music.[47][41] In reaction to its popularisation, critics such asJack Babuscio and Jeanette Cooperman have argued thatcamp requires thealienation of LGBTQ+ people from the mainstream to maintain its edge.[48][49] Poet and scholar Chris Philpot, like Cooperman, nevertheless argues thatcamp can still be a viable "survival strategy" formarginalized queer people, so long as it evolves with them.[48] Curator Andrew Bolton, after his showCamp: Notes on Fashion at the New YorkMetropolitan Museum of Art, explains that context is also important for understanding the power and relevance of camp: "Camp tends to come to the fore through moments of social and political instability, when our society is deeply polarized. The 1960s is one such moment, as were the 1980s, so, too, are the times in which we're living."[49]
Patrick Kelly's designs have been described as camp and "Radical Cheek" for his ironic use of bold colours, antiquated or incongruous styles, and reclaimed racist symbols.[50][51] He designed a banana dress in reference toJosephine Baker and dedicated a whole collection to her. He used mismatched buttons when creating his own take on aChanel suit. By the time he died in 1990, he had dressed noted queer icons such asGrace Jones andIsabella Rossellini. His grave is marked with a stylizedgolliwog—a reclaimed symbol for his label—featuring big gold earrings and bright red lips.[52][53][50]
.jpg)
The 2019Met Gala's theme wasCamp: Notes on Fashion, co-chaired byAnna Wintour,Serena Williams,Lady Gaga,Harry Styles, andAlessandro Michele.[54] The show featured tributes toqueer and camp figures, including a bronze statue ofthe Vatican'sBelvedere Antinous, portraits ofLouis XIV andOscar Wilde, and celebrations of Black and Latinxball culture and theHarlem Renaissance.[49]Dapper Dan—whose luxurious fashion has been credited with camping up thehip-hop genre—designed seven camp outfits forGucci, worn at the gala by21 Savage,Omari Hardwick,Regina Hall,Bevy Smith,Ashley Graham andKarlie Kloss (he wore the seventh).[52][55]
Lady Gaga's entrance took 16 minutes, as she arrived to the gala alongside an entourage of five dancers carrying umbrellas, a make up artist, and a personal photographer to snap pictures of Gaga's poses.[56] Gaga arrived in a hot pinkBrandon Maxwell gown with a 25-foot train[57] and went through a series of four "reveals," paying homage todrag culture,[56] debuting a new outfit each time, until reaching her final look: a bra and underwear with fishnets and platform heels.[58] Other notable ensembles includedKaty Perry wearing a gown that looked like a chandelier, designed byMoschino; andKacey Musgraves appearing as a life-sizeBarbie, also by Moschino.[59]
Melodrama films have been celebrated for their unintentional camp content bygay male culture long before critics and academics first defined the genre in the 1970s.[60][61] Some writers have even considered the genre to be "cinema made for and bygay men."[60] In addition to the films ofDouglas Sirk (the greatest exponent of melodrama), several works byVincente Minnelli,Nicholas Ray,George Cukor,Billy Wilder andJoseph Losey acquiredcult status among gay men because of the "very excessiveness, extreme emotionality, mannered performances, style and very direct sentimental form of address that these films demonstrate".[60] Several features of the family melodrama, later emphasized by film theorists as integral to the subversive and progressive essence of the genre, were precisely the attributes that gay men found humorous.[60] Several later exponents ofgay cinema, likeJohn Waters,Pedro Almodóvar,Rainer Werner Fassbinder andTodd Haynes, among others, have cited campy melodramas as a major influence.[60]
Famous representatives of camp films are, for example,John Waters(Pink Flamingos, 1972) andRosa von Praunheim(The Bed Sausage, 1971), who mainly used this style in the 1970s, and who created films which achievedcult status.[21][62] The 1972 musicalCabaret is also seen as an example of the aesthetic, with film critic Esther Leslie describing the camp in the film thus:
Camp thrives on tragic gestures, on lament at the transience of life, on an excess of sentiment, an ironic sensibility that art and artifice is preferable to nature and health, in a Wildean sense.[19]
Australian writer/director Baz Luhrmann'sRed Curtain Trilogy, in particular the filmStrictly Ballroom (1992), has been described as camp.[63]
The term camp is also used prominently in the horror genre, with examples includingKiller Klowns from Outer Space andThe Evil Dead franchise.
Dandyism is often seen as a precursor to camp, especially as embodied inOscar Wilde and his work.[15][64] The character of Amarinth inRobert Hichens'sThe Green Carnation (1894), based on Wilde, uses "camp coding" in his "effusive and inverted" use of language.[18]
The scene where Anthony Blanche arrives late to Sebastian Flyte's lunch party inEvelyn Waugh'sBrideshead Revisited, has been described by writer George Melly as an example ofcamp's "alchemical ability" to project aqueer sensibility upon the world and unite one's peers in that sensibility.[42]
The first post-World War II use of the word in print may beChristopher Isherwood's 1954 novelThe World in the Evening, where he comments: "You can't camp about something you don't take seriously. You're not making fun of it; you're making funout of it. You're expressing what's basically serious to you in terms of fun and artifice and elegance."[65]
In the American writerSusan Sontag's 1964 essayNotes on "Camp", Sontag emphasized the embrace of artifice, frivolity, naivety, pretentiousness, offensiveness, and excess as key elements of camp. Examples cited by Sontag includedTiffany lamps, the drawings ofAubrey Beardsley, Tchaikovsky's balletSwan Lake, and Japanese science fiction films such asRodan andThe Mysterians of the 1950s.[66] However, critics of Sontag's description, such as art historianDavid Carrier, say that it is outdated and that "her celebration of its ecstatic marginality downplays its implicit subversiveness".[11]
In Mark Booth's 1983 bookCamp, he defines camp as "to present oneself as being committed to the marginal with a commitment greater than the marginal merits".[67] He makes a distinction between genuinecamp, andcamp fads and fancies — things that are not intrinsically camp, but display artificiality, stylization, theatricality, naivety, sexual ambiguity, tackiness, poor taste, stylishness, or camp people, and thus appeal to them.[68]
In his 1984 bookCamp: The Lie That Tells The Truth, writer and artistPhilip Core describesJean Cocteau's autobiography as "the definition of camp".[69]
In 1993, journalistRussell Davies published comedianKenneth Williams's diaries. Williams's diary entry for 1 January 1947 reads: "Went to Singapore with Stan—very camp evening, was followed, but tatty types so didn't bother to make overtures."[70]
.jpg)
American singer and actressCher is one of the artists who received the title of "Queen of Camp" through her colourful on-stage fashion and live performances.[71] She gained this status in the 1970s when she launched hervariety shows in collaboration with the costume designerBob Mackie and became a constant presence on American prime-time television.[72][73]Madonna is also considered camp and according to educatorCarol Queen, her "whole career up to and includingSex has depended heavily on camp imagery and camp understandings of gender and sex".[74] Madonna has also been named "Queen of Camp".[75]
In public and on stage,Dusty Springfield developed an image supported by her peroxide blondebeehive hairstyle,evening gowns, and heavy make-up that included her much-copied "panda eye" look.[76][77][78][79][80] Springfield borrowed elements of her look from blonde glamour queens of the 1950s, such asBrigitte Bardot andCatherine Deneuve.[81][82] This, her singing style and her sexuality made her a "camp icon" and won her a following in the gay community.[80][82] Besides the prototypical femaledrag queen, she was presented in the roles of the "Great White Lady" of pop and soul, and the "Queen ofMods".[78][83]
Rappers such asLil' Kim,Nicki Minaj andCam'ron have all been described as camp, often because of the opulence and winking humour of their personas.Dapper Dan has been credited with introducing high fashion and camp to hip hop. In pop and rock, musiciansPrince andJimi Hendrix have also been called camp because of their flamboyance and playful use of artifice.[52]
South Korean rapperPsy, known for his viral internet music videos full of flamboyant dance and visuals, has come to be seen as a 21st-century incarnation of camp style.[84][85]Geri Halliwell is recognized as a camp icon for her high camp aesthetics, performance style and kinship with the gay community during her time as a solo artist.[86][87]
Dancer, singer and actressJosephine Baker has been described ascamp. Her famous banana dress has been noted as particularly camp for its flamboyant, humorous and ironic qualities, as well as the way it makes a political point using outdated but reclaimed imagery.[88][89][31]
Lady Gaga, a contemporary exemplar of camp, uses music and dance to makesocial commentary on pop culture, as in the"Judas" music video. Her clothes, makeup, and accessories, created by high-end fashion designers, are integral to the narrative structure of her performances.[90]Katy Perry has also been described as camp, with outlets likeVogue describing her as another "Queen of Camp".[91]
The British tradition of the "Last Night of the Proms" has been said to glory in "nostalgia, camp, and pastiche".[92]Camp still forms a strong element in UK culture, and many so-calledgay icons and objects are chosen as such because they are camp, including musicians such asElton John,[93]Kylie Minogue,Lulu, andMika.[citation needed]
Musicologist Philip Brett has highlighted campness in the work ofBenjamin Britten and has also argued for a camp reading of French composerFrancis Poulenc'sConcerto for Two Pianos in D minor, noting its combination of a Balinesegamelan with a sense of "musical resignation and longing".[23]
Musicologist Raymond Knapp has comparedmusical camp to jazz, especially in camp's playfulness and admiration for its subjects, which can seem mocking but often borders on veneration. He argues that musical camp draws attention to its performativity and inspirations, while engaging the audience interactively in the process of creating meaning.[94]
Thomas Dworzak published a collection of "last portrait" photographs of youngTaliban soldiers about to depart for the front, found in Kabul photo studios. The book, titledTaliban,[95][96] attests to a campy aesthetic, quite close to thegay movement in California or aPeter Greenaway film.[97]
TheComedy Central television showStrangers with Candy (1999–2000), starring comedianAmy Sedaris, was a camp spoof of theABC Afterschool Special genre.[98][99][100] Inspired by the work ofGeorge Kuchar and his brotherMike Kuchar,ASS Studios began making a series of short, no-budget camp films. Their feature filmSatan, Hold My Hand (2013) features many elements recognized in camp pictures.[101][102]
Since 2000, theEurovision Song Contest, an annually televised competition of song performers from different countries, has shown an increasing element of camp—since the contest has shown an increasing attraction within the LGBTQ+ communities—in their stage performances. This is especially true during the televised finale, which is screened live across Europe. As it is a visual show, manyEurovision performances attempt to attract the attention of voters through means other than the music, which sometimes leads to bizarre onstage gimmicks, and what some critics have called "the Eurovisionkitsch drive", with almost cartoonish novelty acts performing.[103]
Andrew Holleran's 1988 book of essays,Ground Zero, includes an analysis of "smoldering anarchist of kitsch"Charles Ludlam—a theatre artist who produced whatGarth Greenwell describes as "extravagant drag epics" with Ridiculous Theatrical Company, until his death of AIDS-related pneumonia in 1987. Greenwell writes: "Holleran's essay is the most concise and profound discussion of camp aesthetics I know."[104]
The Australian theatre and opera directorBarrie Kosky is renowned for his use of camp in interpreting the works of theWestern canon, includingShakespeare,Wagner,Molière,Seneca andKafka. His 2006 eight-hour production for the Sydney Theatre CompanyThe Lost Echo was based onOvid'sMetamorphoses andEuripides'sThe Bacchae. In the first act ("The Song of Phaeton"), for instance, the goddessJuno takes the form of a highly stylizedMarlene Dietrich, and the musical arrangements featureNoël Coward andCole Porter. Kosky's use of camp is also effectively employed to satirize the pretensions, manners, and cultural vacuity of Australia's suburbanmiddle class, which is suggestive of the style ofDame Edna Everage. For example, inThe Lost Echo, Kosky employs a chorus ofhigh school students: one girl in the chorus takes leave from the goddess Diana, and begins to rehearse a dance routine, muttering to herself in a broad Australian accent, "Mum says I have to practice if I want to be onAustralian Idol."[105]
In the UK, themusic hall tradition ofpantomime, which often uses drag and other features ofcamp, remains a popular form of entertainment for families and young children. Most towns and cities in the UK stage at least one pantomime between November and February, drawing in an estimated £146 million in 2014.[20]
The wordscamp andkitsch are often used interchangeably, though they are distinct.Camp is rooted in a specifically queer sensibility, informed byqueer identity andculture,[13][43] whereaskitsch is rooted in the rise of mass-produced art andpopular culture for the mainstream.[106] Both terms may relate to an object or work that carries aesthetic value, butkitsch refers specifically to the work itself, whereascamp is a sensibility as well as a mode of performance. A person may consumekitsch intentionally or unintentionally, butcamp, as Susan Sontag observed, is always a way of consuming or performing culture "in quotation marks".[30]
Sontag also distinguishes betweennaïve anddeliberatecamp,[66] and examines Christopher Isherwood's distinction betweenlow camp—which he associated with cross-dressing and drag performances—andhigh camp—which included "the whole emotional basis of the Ballet, for example, and of course of Baroque art".[107]High camp has also been used to describe drag that is more subtle or ironic, as opposed to drag that is more parodic and obvious (and thuslow camp).[108][109]
According to sociologistAndrew Ross,camp combines outmoded and contemporary forms of style, fashion, and technology. Often characterized by the reappropriation of a "throwaway Pop aesthetic", camp works to intermingle the categories of "high" and "low" culture.[110] Objects may become camp objects because of their historical association with a power now in decline. As opposed to kitsch, camp reappropriates culture in an ironic fashion, whereas kitsch is indelibly sincere. Additionally, kitsch may be seen as a quality of an object, while camp "tends to refer to a subjective process".[111] Those who identify objects as "camp" note the distance often apparent in the process through which "unexpected value can be located in some obscure or exorbitant object."[112]
In its subversiveness and irony, camp can also suggest the possibility of overturning thestatus quo, making it a far more "radical spectacle" thankitsch.[27] MusicologistPhilip Brett has described camp as:
a strategy which confronts un-queerontology [states of being] andhomophobia with humor and which by those same means may also signal the possibility of the overturn of that ontology—as when, on a famous night in 1969, the evening of the funeral ofJudy Garland, the mood of a group of gays and drag queens reveling in the spectacle of their own arrest by members of the New York City Vice Squad at theStonewall Bar turned to one of rage and produced the event that solidified the lesbian and gay movement.[23]
An English example of how the life has gone out oflieux de memoire concerns William Blake's hymn about the building of a New Jerusalem. it is still sung every year in London 's Albert Hall on the Last Night of the Proms. But it is in a fervor without faith. It brings tears to the eyes, only it is in a mixture of nostalgia, camp, 'post-modernism,' and pastiche.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
