Camp (style)

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"Campy" redirects here. For other uses, see Campy (disambiguation).

Camp is an aesthetic style and sensibility that regards something as appealing because of its bad taste and ironic value.[1] Camp aesthetics disrupt many of modernism's notions of what art is and what can be classified as high art by inverting aesthetic attributes such as beauty, value, and taste through an invitation of a different kind of apprehension and consumption.[2]

Camp can also be a social practice and function as a style and performance identity for several types of entertainment including film, cabaret, and pantomime. Where high art necessarily incorporates beauty and value, camp necessarily needs to be lively, audacious and dynamic. "Camp aesthetics delights in impertinence." Camp opposes satisfaction and seeks to challenge.[2]

Camp art is related to—and often confused with—kitsch, and things with camp appeal may also be described as "cheesy". When the usage appeared in 1909, it denoted "ostentatious, exaggerated, affected, theatrical", or "effeminate" behavior, and by the middle of the 1970s, camp was defined by the college edition of Webster's New World Dictionary as "banality, mediocrity, artifice, [and] ostentation ... so extreme as to amuse or have a perversely sophisticated appeal".[3] The American writer Susan Sontag's essay Notes on "Camp" (1964) emphasized its key elements as: "artifice, frivolity, naïve middle-class pretentiousness, and shocking excess".[4]

Origins and development[edit]

In 1870, in a letter produced in evidence at his examination before a magistrate at Bow-street, London, on suspicion of illegal homosexual acts, crossdresser Frederick Park referred to his "campish undertakings"; but the letter does not make clear what these were.[5] In 1909, the Oxford English Dictionary gave the first print citation of camp as

ostentatious, exaggerated, affected, theatrical; effeminate or homosexual; pertaining to, characteristic of, homosexuals. So as a noun, 'camp' behaviour, mannerisms, et cetera. (cf. quot. 1909); a man exhibiting such behaviour.

Carmen Miranda in the trailer for The Gang's All Here (1943)

According to the dictionary, this sense is "etymologically obscure". Camp in this sense has been suggested to have possibly derived from the French term se camper, meaning "to pose in an exaggerated fashion".[6][7] Later, it evolved into a general description of the aesthetic choices and behavior of working-class homosexual men.[8] The concept of camp was described by Christopher Isherwood in 1954 in his novel The World in the Evening, and then in 1964 by Susan Sontag in her essay and book Notes on "Camp".[9]

The rise of post-modernism made camp a common perspective on aesthetics, which was not identified with any specific group. The attitude was originally a distinctive factor in pre-Stonewall gay male communities, where it was the dominant cultural pattern. It originated from the understanding of gayness as effeminacy.[8] Two key components of camp were originally feminine performances: swish and drag. With swish featuring extensive use of superlatives, and drag being exaggerated female impersonation, camp became extended to all things "over the top", including women posing as female impersonators (faux queens), as in the exaggerated Hollywood version of Carmen Miranda. It was this version of the concept that was adopted by literary and art critics and became a part of the conceptual array of 1960s culture. Moe Meyer still defines camp as "queer parody".[10][11]

Contemporary culture[edit]

Television[edit]

The Comedy Central television show Strangers with Candy (1999–2000), starring comedian Amy Sedaris, was a camp spoof of the ABC Afterschool Special genre.[12][13][14] Inspired by the work of George Kuchar and his brother Mike Kuchar, ASS Studios, launched in 2011 by Courtney Fathom Sell and Jen Miller, began making a series of short, no-budget camp films. Their feature film Satan, Hold My Hand (2013) features many elements recognized in camp pictures.[15][16]

Music[edit]

Cher performing during her Living Proof: The Farewell Tour

American singer and actress Cher is often called the "Queen of Camp" because of her outrageous fashion and live performances.[17] She gained that status in the 1970s when she launched her variety shows in collaboration with the costume designer Bob Mackie and became a constant presence on American prime time television.[18][19]

Dusty Springfield in 1966

Dusty Springfield is a camp icon.[20] In public and on stage, Springfield developed a joyful image supported by her peroxide blonde beehive hairstyle, evening gowns, and heavy make-up that included her much-copied "panda eye" mascara.[20][21][22][23][24] Springfield borrowed elements of her look from blonde glamour queens of the 1950s, such as Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve, and pasted them together according to her own taste.[25][26] Her ultra-glamorous look made her a camp icon and this, combined with her emotive vocal performances, won her a powerful and enduring following in the gay community.[24][26] Besides the prototypical female drag queen, she was presented in the roles of the "Great White Lady" of pop and soul and the "Queen of Mods".[22][27] More recently South Korean rapper Psy, 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.[28][29]

Lady Gaga, a contemporary exemplar of camp, uses musical expression and the body motions of dance to make social commentary on pop culture, as in the Judas video. Her clothes, makeup, and accessories, created by high-end fashion designers, are integral to the narrative structure of her performances.[30]

Fashion[edit]

Camp: Notes on Fashion exhibit at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2019

The theme for the 2019 Met Gala was Camp: Notes on Fashion, which referenced Susan Sontag's 1964 essay, Notes on "Camp".[31]

Distinguishing between kitsch and camp[edit]

The words "camp" and "kitsch" are often used interchangeably; both may relate to art, literature, music, or any object that carries an aesthetic value. However, "kitsch" refers specifically to the work itself, whereas "camp" is a mode of performance. Thus, a person may consume kitsch intentionally or unintentionally. Camp, as Susan Sontag observed, is always a way of consuming or performing culture "in quotation marks".[32]

Sontag also distinguishes between "naive" and "deliberate" camp,[33] and examines Christopher Isherwood's distinction between low camp, which he associated with cross-dressing practices and drag performances, and high camp, which he considered as part of a cultural heritage that included "the whole emotional basis of the Ballet, for example, and of course of Baroque art".[34]

Around the world[edit]

Gay comedian Kenneth Williams wrote in a diary entry for 1 January 1947: "Went to Singapore with Stan—very camp evening, was followed, but tatty types so didn't bother to make overtures."[35] Although it applies to gay men, it is a specific adjective used to describe a man that openly promotes the fact that he is gay by being outwardly garish or eccentric, for example, the character Daffyd Thomas in the English comedy skit show Little Britain. "Camp" forms a strong element in UK culture, and many so-called gay-icons and objects are chosen as such because they are camp. People like Kylie Minogue, John Inman, Lawrence Llewelyn Bowen, Lulu, Graham Norton, Mika, Lesley Joseph, Ruby Wax, Dale Winton, Cilla Black, and the music hall tradition of the pantomime are camp elements in popular culture.[citation needed] The British tradition of the "Last Night of the Proms" has been said to glory in nostalgia, camp, and pastiche.[36] Thomas Dworzak published a collection of portrait photographs of Taliban soldiers, found in Kabul photo studios. The Taliban[37][38] book shows a campy esthetics, quite close to the gay movement in California or a Peter Greenaway film.[39]

The Australian theatre and opera director Barrie Kosky is renowned for his use of camp in interpreting the works of the Western canon including Shakespeare, Wagner, Molière, Seneca, Kafka and his 2006 eight-hour production for the Sydney Theatre Company The Lost Echo, based on Ovid's Metamorphoses and Euripides' The Bacchae. In the first act ("The Song of Phaeton"), for instance, the goddess Juno takes the form of a highly stylized Marlene Dietrich, and the musical arrangements feature Noël Coward and Cole Porter. Kosky's use of camp is also effectively employed to satirize the pretensions, manners, and cultural vacuity of Australia's suburban middle class, which is suggestive of the style of Dame Edna Everage. For example, in The Lost Echo Kosky employs a chorus of high school girls and boys: 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 on Australian Idol." See also the works of Australian writer/director Baz Luhrmann, in particular "Strictly Ballroom".

Since 2000, the Eurovision Song Contest, an annually televised competition of song performers from different countries, has shown an increased element of camp—since the contest has shown an increasing attraction within the gay communities—in their stage performances, especially during the televised finale, which is screened live across Europe. As it is a visual show, many Eurovision performances attempt to attract the attention of the voters through means other than the music, which sometimes leads to bizarre onstage gimmicks, and what some critics have called "the Eurovision kitsch drive", with almost cartoonish novelty acts performing.

Japanese street fashion is known for its mix-match of different styles and genres, and there is no single sought-after brand that can consistently appeal to all fashion groups, the huge demand created by the fashion-conscious population is fed and supported by Japan's vibrant fashion industry. Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto and Comme des Garçons are often said to be the three cornerstone brands of Japanese fashion. Together they were particularly recognized as a Japanese fashion force in the early 1980s for their intensive use of monochrome color and cutting-edge design.

Literature[edit]

The first post-World War II use of the word in print, marginally mentioned in the Sontag essay, may be Christopher Isherwood's 1954 novel The 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 fun out of it. You're expressing what's basically serious to you in terms of fun and artifice and elegance." In the American writer Susan Sontag's 1964 essay Notes on "Camp", Sontag emphasized artifice, frivolity, naïve middle-class pretentiousness, and shocking excess as key elements of camp. Examples cited by Sontag included Tiffany lamps, the drawings of Aubrey Beardsley, Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake, and Japanese science fiction films such as Rodan, and The Mysterians of the 1950s.

In Mark Booth's 1983 book Camp he defines camp as "to present oneself as being committed to the marginal with a commitment greater than the marginal merits". He carefully discerns the distinction between genuine camp, and camp fads and fancies, things that are not intrinsically camp, but display artificiality, stylization, theatricality, naivety, sexual ambiguity, tackiness, poor taste, stylishness, or portray camp people, and thus appeal to them. He considers Sontag's definition problematical because it lacks this distinction.

Analysis[edit]

According to sociologist Andrew Ross, camp engages in a redefinition of cultural meaning through a juxtaposition of an outmoded past alongside that which is technologically, stylistically, and sartorially contemporary. Often characterized by the reappropriation of a "throwaway Pop aesthetic", camp works to intermingle the categories of "high" and "low" culture.[40] 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".[41] Those who identify objects as "camp" commemorate the distance mirrored in the process through which, "unexpected value can be located in some obscure or exorbitant object."[42] The effect of camp's irony is problematic, insofar as the agents of cultural redefinition are often of upper- or middle-class standing who could, "afford, literally, to redefine the life of consumerism and material affluence as a life of spiritual poverty".[43]

In Ross's analysis, camp aesthetics became the site of personal liberation from the stranglehold of the corporate, capitalist state.[44] Within the capitalist environment of constant consumption, camp rediscovers history's waste, bringing back objects thought of as refuse or of bad taste. Camp liberates objects from the landfills of history and reinvokes them with a new charisma. In doing so camp creates an economy separate from that of the state. In Ross's words, camp "is the re-creation of surplus value from forgotten forms of labor".[45]

Ross suggests that camp often faces criticism from other political and aesthetic perspectives. For example, the most obvious argument is that camp is just an excuse for poor quality work and allows the tacky and vulgar to be recognized as valid art. In doing so, camp celebrates the trivial and superficial and form over content. The power of the camp object may be found in its ability to induce this reaction. In a sense objects that fill their beholders with disgust fulfill Sontag's definition of the ultimate camp statement, "it's good because it's awful."[46] From flea markets to thrift stores, the 'bad taste' of camp has been increasingly reinculcated with the cultural capital that it had intended to break away from. In an attempt to "present a challenge to the mechanisms of control and containment that operate in the name of good taste", the camp aesthetic has been appropriated by artists.[47] Their fame is only enjoyed at the expense of others, as Ross writes, "it [the pleasure of camp] is the result of the (hard) work of a producer of taste and 'taste' is only possible through exclusion and depreciation."[47]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Babuscio (1993, 20), Feil (2005, 478), Morrill (1994, 110), Shugart and Waggoner (2008, 33), and Van Leer (1995)
  2. ^ a b Kerry Malla (January 2005). Roderick McGillis (ed.). "Between a Frock and a Hard Place: Camp Aesthetics and Children's Culture". Canadian Review of American Studies. 35 (1): 1–3. Retrieved 10 October 2019.
  3. ^ Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language, 1976 edition, sense 6, [Slang, orig., homosexual jargon, Americanism] banality, mediocrity, artifice, ostentation, etc. so extreme as to amuse or have a perversely sophisticated appeal
  4. ^ Harry Eiss (11 May 2016). The Joker. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 26. ISBN 978-1-4438-9429-6.
  5. ^ 'My "campish undertakings" are not meeting with the success they deserve. Whatever I do seems to get me into hot water somewhere;...':The Times(London), 30 May 1870, p. 13, 'The Men in Women's Clothes'
  6. ^ Harper, Douglas. "camp (adj.)". Online Etymology Dictionary. Archived from the original on 14 September 2016. Retrieved 21 August 2016.
  7. ^ Entry "camper" Archived 14 May 2011 at the Wayback Machine, in: Dictionnaire de l'Académie française, ninth edition (1992). "2. Fam: Placer avec fermeté, avec insolence ou selon ses aises.] Il me parlait, le chapeau campé sur la tête. Surtout pron. Se camper solidement dans son fauteuil. Se camper à la meilleure place. Il se campa devant son adversaire. 3. En parlant d'un acteur, d'un artiste: Figurer avec force et relief. Camper son personnage sur la scène. Camper une figure dans un tableau, des caractères dans un roman." (Familiar: To assume a defiant, insolent or devil-may-care attitude. Theatre: To perform with forcefulness and exaggeration; to overact; To impose one's character assertively into a scene; to upstage.)
  8. ^ a b Esther Newton (1978): Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America, University of Chicago Press. Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America in libraries (WorldCat catalog).
  9. ^ Susan Sontag (14 June 2019). Notes on "Camp". Picador. p. 4. ISBN 978-1-250-62134-4.
  10. ^ Moe Meyer (2010): An Archaeology of Posing: Essays on Camp, Drag, and Sexuality, Macater Press, ISBN 978-0-9814924-5-2.
  11. ^ Moe Meyer (2011): The Politics and Poetics of Camp, Routledge, ISBN 978-0-415-51489-7.
  12. ^ Maasik, Solomon, Sonia, Jack (2011). Signs of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers. Bedford/St. Martin's. ISBN 9780312647001. Retrieved 9 August 2017.
  13. ^ "'Strangers with Candy': After-school special, Sedaris style". www.ocregister.com. Orange County Register. Archived from the original on 6 August 2017. Retrieved 19 May 2019.
  14. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 6 August 2017. Retrieved 6 August 2017.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  15. ^ filmmakermagazine.com/27295-courtney-fathom-sells-hi-8-hi...
  16. ^ "COURTNEY FATHOM SELL: SO YOU WANNA BE AN UNDERGROUND FILMMAKER?". Filmmaker Magazine. Archived from the original on 27 June 2015. Retrieved 23 March 2015.
  17. ^ "She's Reigned Pop Land since the 70s, She's the Queen of Camp, She Believes in Life after Love. She's Cher, and She's Still Fantastic". Sunday Mirror. Archived from the original on 29 May 2016. Retrieved 21 April 2016.
  18. ^ "Cher is Love magazine's latest cover 'girl' at 69". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 18 November 2018. Retrieved 21 April 2016.
  19. ^ "Cher-ishing the Queen of Camp". Daily News. New York. Archived from the original on 4 November 2017. Retrieved 21 April 2016.
  20. ^ a b Peter Silverton. "Dusty Springfield (British singer) – Encyclopædia Britannica". Britannica.com. Archived from the original on 28 September 2013. Retrieved 17 August 2013.
  21. ^ Annie J. Randall (Fall 2005). "Dusty Springfield and the Motown Invasion". Newsletter. Institute for Studies in American Music, Conservatory of Music, Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. 35 (1). Archived from the original on 25 June 2012. Retrieved 17 August 2013.
  22. ^ a b Laurense Cole (2008) Dusty Springfield: in the middle of nowhere, Middlesex University Press. p. 13.
  23. ^ Charles Taylor (1997). Mission Impossible: The perfectionist rock and soul of Dusty Springfield, Boston Phoenix.
  24. ^ a b "Springfield, Dusty". glbtq – An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Culture. 2005. Archived from the original on 15 July 2012. Retrieved 17 August 2013.
  25. ^ Annie J. Randall, Associate Professor of Musicology Bucknell University (2008). Dusty! : Queen of the Post Mods: Queen of the Post Mods. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199716302. Archived from the original on 16 January 2017. Retrieved 17 August 2013.
  26. ^ a b Bob Gulla (2007) Icons of R&B and Soul: An Encyclopedia of the Artists Who Revolutionized Rhythm, Greenwood Publishing Group ISBN 978-0-313-34044-4
  27. ^ Patricia Juliana Smith (1999) "'You Don't Have to Say You Love Me': The Camp Masquerades of Dusty Springfield", The Queer Sixties pp. 105–126, Routledge, London ISBN 978-0-415-92169-5
  28. ^ "Exploring Psy's Digital Dandy Appeal In 'Gangnam Style' " Archived 22 January 2014 at the Wayback Machine (3 October 2012) Rolling Stone (retrieved 21 April 2013)
  29. ^ "Psy Unveils His New 'Gentleman' Video and Dance at Extravagant Seoul Concert", Time, 13 April 2013, archived from the original on 17 April 2013, retrieved 21 April 2013
  30. ^ Stan Hawkins (3 January 2014). "I'll bring You Down, Down, Down'". In Martin Iddon; Melanie L. Marshall (eds.). Lady Gaga and Popular Music: Performing Gender, Fashion, and Culture. Routledge. pp. 17–18. ISBN 978-1-134-07987-2.
  31. ^ "What Does Camp Mean Exactly? A Comprehensive Guide to the 2019 Met Gala Theme". Time. Archived from the original on 9 May 2019. Retrieved 9 May 2019.
  32. ^ Susan Sontag (2 July 2009). Against Interpretation and Other Essays. Penguin Modern Classics. ISBN 978-0-14-119006-8. Archived from the original on 2 June 2013. Retrieved 6 September 2011.
  33. ^ Susan Sontag. "Notes On "Camp"". faculty.georgetown.edu. Archived from the original on 1 October 2019. Retrieved 10 October 2019.
  34. ^ Anna Malinowska (26 September 2014). "1, section 1: Bad Romance: Pop and Camp in Light of Evolutionary Confusion". In Justyna Stępień (ed.). Redefining Kitsch and Camp in Literature and Culture. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 11. ISBN 978-1-4438-6779-5.
  35. ^ Russell Davies (1993) The Kenneth Williams Diaries, Harper-Collins Publishers ISBN 978-0-00-255023-9
  36. ^ Compare: Miller, W. Watts (2002), "Secularism and the sacred: is there really something called 'secular religion'?", in Idinopulos, Thomas A.; Wilson, Brian C. (eds.), Reappraising Durkheim for the study and teaching of religion today, Numen book series, 92, Brill, pp. 38–39, ISBN 9004123393, archived from the original on 2 June 2013, retrieved 21 November 2010, An English example of how the life has gone out of lieux 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.
  37. ^ Traff, Thea (29 March 2014). "Thomas Dworzak's Taliban Glamour Shots". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on 27 November 2014. Retrieved 15 November 2014.
  38. ^ "2000, Thomas Dworzak, 1st prize, Spot News stories". World Press Photo. Archived from the original on 29 November 2014. Retrieved 15 November 2014.
  39. ^ "Vom Nachttisch geräumt nachttisch 10.6.03 vom 10 June 2003 von Arno Widmann – Perlentaucher". perlentaucher.de. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 27 November 2015.
  40. ^ Ross, Andrew (1989). No Respect: Intellectuals and Popular Culture. New York: Routledge. p. 136.
  41. ^ Ross, Andrew (1989). No Respect: Intellectuals and Popular Culture. New York: Routledge. p. 145.
  42. ^ Ross, Andrew (1989). No Respect: Intellectuals and Popular Culture. New York: Routledge. p. 146.
  43. ^ Ross, Andrew (1989). No Respect: Intellectuals and Popular Culture. New York: Routledge. p. 137.
  44. ^ Ross, Andrew (1989). No Respect: Intellectuals and Popular Culture. New York: Routledge. p. 144.
  45. ^ Ross, Andrew (1989). No Respect: Intellectuals and Popular Culture. New York: Routledge. p. 151.
  46. ^ Ross, Andrew (1989). No Respect: Intellectuals and Popular Culture. New York: Routledge. p. 154.
  47. ^ a b Ross, Andrew (1989). No Respect: Intellectuals and Popular Culture. New York: Routledge. p. 153.

Sources[edit]

  • Babuscio, Jack (1993) "Camp and the Gay Sensibility" in Camp Grounds: Style and Homosexuality, David Bergman Ed., U of Massachusetts, Amherst ISBN 978-0-87023-878-9
  • Feil, Ken (2005) "Queer Comedy", in Comedy: A Geographic and Historical Guide Vol. 2. pp. 19–38, 477–492, Maurice Charney Ed., Praeger, Westport, CN ISBN 978-0-313-32715-5
  • Levine, Martin P. (1998) Gay Macho, New York UP, New York ISBN 0-8147-4694-2
  • Meyer, Moe, Ed. (1994) The Politics and Poetics of Camp, Routledge, London and New York ISBN 978-0-415-08248-8
    • Morrill, Cynthia (1994) "Revamping the Gay Sensibility: Queer Camp and dyke noir" (In Meyer pp. 110–129)
  • Helene A. Shugart and Catherine Egley Waggoner (2008) Making Camp: Rhetorics of Transgression in U.S. Popular Culture, U of Alabama P., Tuscaloosa ISBN 978-0-8173-5652-1
  • Van Leer, David (1995) The Queening of America: Gay Culture in Straight Society, Routledge, London and New York ISBN 978-0-415-90336-3

Further reading[edit]

  • Core, Philip (1984/1994). CAMP, The Lie That Tells the Truth, foreword by George Melly. London: Plexus Publishing Limited. ISBN 0-85965-044-8
  • Cleto, Fabio, editor (1999). Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-472-06722-2.
  • Padva, Gilad (2008). "Educating The Simpsons: Teaching Queer Representations in Contemporary Visual Media". Journal of LGBT Youth 5(3), 57–73.
  • Padva, Gilad and Talmon, Miri (2008). "Gotta Have An Effeminate Heart: The Politics of Effeminacy and Sissyness in a Nostalgic Israeli TV Musical". Feminist Media Studies 8(1), 69–84.
  • Padva, Gilad (2005). "Radical Sissies and Stereotyped Fairies in Laurie Lynd's The Fairy Who Didn't Want To Be A Fairy Anymore". Cinema Journal 45(1), 66–78.
  • Padva, Gilad (2000). "Priscilla Fights Back: The Politicization of Camp Subculture". Journal of Communication Inquiry 24(2), 216–243.
  • Meyer, Moe, editor (1993). The Politics and Poetics of Camp. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-08248-X.
  • Sontag, Susan (1964). "Notes on Camp" in Against Interpretation and Other Essays. New York: Farrer Straus & Giroux. ISBN 0-312-28086-6.

External links[edit]

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