I take camp very seriously
So camp is on everyone’s minds because of the yearly Met Gala where celebs come and try to get the most attention. In other words, the most important event of the year.
So the question on everyone’s minds is: what is camp?
To ask what is camp is not camp.
The go-to explanation is Susan Sontag’s “Notes on Camp”, which, a purest, like myself, sees it as an erasure of the original use, of the subtext of queerness hiding in plain site. Camp doesn’t HAVE to be queer. But it is still queer.
Confused? Allan Pero explains it best in “A Fugue on Camp”
Contrary to popular belief, camp is not hysterical, but hilarious.
Camp is the authenticity of affectation.
The anxiety that camp may be dead is a category mistake. Camp is not dead; it is undead.
Unlike tragedy, which makes the sublime accessible and immanent in the dazzling, aloof figure of the tragic hero or heroine, and unlike comedy, which makes the sublime accessible and transcendent in the complex play of appearances, camp’s encounters with the sublime make it inaccessible and immanent at the same time.
Was camp appropriated from black drag queens? Perhaps. We can’t say for sure. lot of what is designated as camp has its roots in black expression. When was camp invented? Was it always there? Does camp only exist when a scholar writes a book on it?
Ask someone to name the ultimate camp film, Rocky Horror Picture Show will be mentioned. Plan 9 From Outer Space. Douglas Sirk’s melodramas. But here’s one that is not often mentioned: Wat Disney’s 1961’s Babes in Toyland with Annette Funicello, and the campiest performance that ever camped: Ed Wynn as the toymaker. Believe me, this is the most bonkers thing you will ever see. There’s a villain named Barnaby Barnicle. That’s only the tip. This should be shown in every culture studies class ever.
[Spoiler: my dissertation is going to be about camp. Probably. Maybe.]
Before camp became the talk of the town, occasionally the popular press would write about it. Here are two of the best:
Avital and Nimrod: Sexual Harassment and ‘Campy Communications’ at NYU
To know camp is an exclusive group that does not need to identify itself. But here’s a trick: there is some great stuff written on camp, and I’m just being idiotically cryptic to make a point. Here is some of the best stuff I’ve come across. The Sontag essay is useful, but not the gospel on camp.
Bergman, David. Camp Grounds: Style and Homosexuality. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993. Print.
Christian, Aymar Jean. “Camp 2.0: A Queer Performance of the Personal.” Communication, Culture & Critique 3, no. 3 (August 24, 2010): 352–76.
Cleto, Fabio, ed. Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject: A Reader. Triangulations. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999. [This is one of the best and most comprehensive book of essays.]
Farmer, Brett. Spectacular Passions: Cinema, Fantasy, Gay Male Spectatorships. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000.
Feil, Ken. Dying for a Laugh: Disaster Movies and the Camp Imagination. Middletown, Conn: Wesleyan University Press, 2005.
Garelick, Rhonda K.”Outrageous Dieting: The Camp Performance of Richard Simmons.” Postmodern Culture, vol. 6 no. 1, 1995
Herring, Scott. “The Sexual Objects of ‘Parodistic’ Camp.” Modernism/Modernity 23, no. 1 (2016): 5–8.
Horn, Katrin. “Camp: A New, More Complex Relation to the Serious.” In Women, Camp, and Popular Culture, by Katrin Horn, 253–56. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2017.
Juliane Rebentisch. “Camp Materialism.” Criticism 56, no. 2 (2014): 235.
Pero, Allan. “A Fugue on Camp.” Modernism/Modernity 23, no. 1 (2016): 28–36.
Robertson, Pamela. Guilty Pleasures: Feminist Camp from Mae West to Madonna. Durham: Duke University Press, 1996.
Wolf, John M. “Resurrecting Camp: Rethinking the Queer Sensibility: Resurrecting Camp.” Communication, Culture & Critique 6, no. 2 (June 2013): 284–97.