Camp is a social, cultural, and aesthetic style and sensibility based on deliberate and self-acknowledged theatricality. Camp is commonly associated with and attributed to gay male subculture(s), but its basis and practice extends further. Camp aesthetics disrupt many modernists' 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.
Camp can also be a social practice. For many it is considered 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.
The concept is related to kitsch, and things with camp appeal may also be described as being "cheesy". When the usage appeared in 1909, it denoted: ostentatious, exaggerated, affected, theatrical, and effeminate behavior, and by the middle of the 1970s, the definition comprised: banality, artifice, mediocrity and ostentation so extreme as to have perversely sophisticated appeal. American writer Susan Sontag's essay "Notes on 'Camp'" (1964) emphasized its key elements as: artifice, frivolity, naive middle-class pretentiousness, and 'shocking' excess. Camp as an aesthetic has been popular from the 1960s to the present.
Camp aesthetics were popularised by filmmakers George and Mike Kuchar, Jack Smith and his film Flaming Creatures, Andy Warhol, and John Waters, including the last's Pink Flamingos, Hairspray, and Polyester. Celebrities that are associated with camp personas include drag queens and performers such as Dame Edna Everage, Divine, RuPaul, Paul Lynde, and Liberace. Camp was a part of the anti-academic defense of popular culture in the 1960s and gained popularity in the 1980s with the widespread adoption of postmodern views on art and culture.
Origins and development
- 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.
According to the dictionary, this sense is "etymologically obscure".
Later, it evolved into a general description of the aesthetic choices and behaviour of working-class homosexual men. Finally, it was made mainstream, and adjectivised, by Susan Sontag in a landmark essay (see below).
The rise of post-modernism made 'camp' a common perspective on aesthetics, which was not identified with any specific group. The attitude originally was a distinctive factor in pre-Stonewall gay male communities, where it was the dominant cultural pattern. It originated from the acceptance of gayness as effeminacy. 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 female female impersonators, 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".
Television shows such as The Munsters, The Addams Family, CHiPs, The Wild Wild West, Star Trek, Batman, The Avengers, Charlie's Angels, Get Smart, Lost in Space, Gilligan's Island and Fantasy Island are enjoyed into the 21st century for what are now interpreted as their "camp" aspects. Much of the cult following of camp today grew rapidly during the transition from black and white to color television in the early 1960s. Network programming during that time was seeking entertainment content that would display the new medium with the use of bright colors and high stylization. Some of these shows were developed 'tongue-in-cheek' by their producers. TV soap operas, especially those that air in primetime, are often considered camp. Even the villains of shows as divergent as Batman and The Mod Squad were costumed as to take advantage of new colors and changing fashion styles, in ways that took advantage of camp. The over-the-top excess of Dynasty and Dallas were popular in the 1980s.
The ESPN Classic show Cheap Seats features two Generation-X, real-life brothers making humorous observations while watching televised camp sporting events, which had often been featured on ABC's Wide World of Sports during the 1970s. Examples include a 1970s sport that attempted to combine ballet with skiing (ski ballet), the Harlem Globetrotters holding a televised exhibition game at the notorious Attica State Prison in upstate New York, small-time regional professional wrestling, and roller derby.
The ABC Afterschool Specials, which tackled topics such as drug use and teen sex, are an example of camp educational films; in turn, the Comedy Central television show Strangers with Candy, starring comedienne Amy Sedaris, was a camp spoof of the genre.
In a Monty Python sketch (Episode 22, "Camp Square-Bashing", repeated in their 1971 film And Now for Something Completely Different), the British Army's 2nd Armoured Division has a Military "Swanning About" Precision Drill unit in which soldiers "camp it up" in unison.
The concept of the comicbook superhero (an individual in a highly stylised, outlandish and possibly impractical costume avenging otherwise serious matters such as murder) could be interpreted as camp. However, since it was aimed initially at children, it is camp only in an abstract sense. It was not until the 1960s television version of Batman (one of the more famous examples of camp in pop culture) that the link was made explicit, with the inherent ridiculousness of the concept exposed as a vehicle for comedy. Ironically, even Batman fell victim to contemporaneous parodies, with the release of Captain Nice and Mr. Terrific, which layered extra camp onto the overladen superhero concept. The stylized content of Batman may have possibly jump-started television campiness, to circumvent the strict censorship of comics at this time (after Dr. Fredric Wertham's essay Seduction of the Innocent which led to the comics' industry-sponsored Comics Code), as the Batman comic books were very dark and Noirish until the 1950s and from the 1970s onwards.
The Channel 4 series Eurotrash was a television programme produced using the inherent ridiculousness of its subject matter for comedic effect, often using camp dubbing in regional accents and overexaggerated stereotypical characterisations (such as an aristocratic artist based on Brian Sewell) to puncture the interviewees' pretence of seriousness. However, an obituary to Lolo Ferrari was given straight dubbing as a mark of respect at odds with its irreverence. However, the subject matter would have offended many British viewers and fallen foul of OFCOM if it was done with any seriousness. Again, this is an example of doing a programme in a camp manner to get around the likelihood of censorship.
The television series Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! is a current example of camp, using inspiration from Public-access television productions, early morning infomercials, and the use of celebrity status in telethons and other televised charity appeals.
In the Season 8 episode 'Homer's Phobia' of American animated comedy series The Simpsons, gay secondary character John (played by gay director John Waters) defines to Homer Simpson the meaning of the word 'camp' to be tragically ludicrous, or ludicrously tragic: Homer gives a misinterpreted example of 'camp' as 'when a clown dies'.
Movie versions of camp TV shows in recent years have made the camp nature of these shows a running gag throughout the films.
Some classic films noted for their camp tone include:
- John Huston's Beat the Devil (1953, starring Humphrey Bogart), an exaggerated film noir send-up..
- Filmmaker John Waters directed a number of camp films such as Pink Flamingos, Hairspray, Female Trouble, Polyester, Desperate Living, A Dirty Shame, and Cecil B. Demented.
- Filmmaker Todd Solondz uses camp music to illustrate the absurdity and banality of bourgeois, suburban existence. In Solondz's cult film Welcome to the Dollhouse, the eleven-year-old girl protagonist kisses a boy while Deborah Gibson's "Lost in Your Eyes" plays on a Fisher-Price tape recorder.
Films such as Mommie Dearest, Valley of the Dolls, and Burlesque gained camp status primarily due to the filmmakers' attempting to produce a serious film that wound up unintentionally comedic. Award-winning actresses, like Patty Duke in Dolls and Faye Dunaway in Dearest, gave such over-the-top performances that the films became camp classics, especially attracting fanfare from gay male audiences.
Educational and industrial films form an entire subgenre of camp films, with the most famous being the much-spoofed 1950s Duck and Cover film, in which an anthropomorphic, cartoon turtle explains how one can survive a nuclear attack by hiding under a school desk. Its British counterpart Protect and Survive could be seen as kitsch, even though it is very chilling to watch (it was never shown on grounds of National security and would only be broadcast if an attack was deemed likely within 72 hours). Many British Public Information Films gained a camp cult following, such as the famous Charley Says series. Interestingly, Charley's voice is performed by the camp surrealist comedian and Radio DJ Kenny Everett, who came from an advertising background as a copywriter.
Some films are intentionally and consciously camp, such as The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. In British cinema the archetypal camp film cult is the outrageous long-running, 30-film "Carry On" series. Another cult is built around The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Preaching to the Perverted, written and directed by Stuart Urban, broke out of traditional British comedy style to portray the fetish and BDSM scene under assault from Christian crusaders and the authorities. It portrayed both the fetish scene and the Establishment in a cartoon, stylised visual manner. Lambasted by most traditional critics, lauded by gay, music and fashion press, it went on to build a lasting cult reputation.
Inspired by the work of George Kuchar and his brother Mike Kuchar, ASS Studios, launched in 2011 by Courtney Fathom Sell and Reverend Jen Miller, began making a series of short, no-budget camp films. Their feature film Satan, Hold My Hand features many elements recognized in camp pictures.
Retro-camp fashion is an example of modern hipsters employing camp styles for the sake of humor. Yard decorations, popular in some parts of suburban and rural America, are examples of kitsch and are sometimes displayed as camp expressions. The classic camp yard ornament is the pink plastic flamingo. The yard globe, garden gnome, wooden cut-out of a fat lady bending over, the statue of a small black man holding a lantern (called a lawn jockey) and ceramic statues of white-tailed deer are also prevalent camp lawn decorations.
Dusty Springfield is a camp icon. 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. 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. 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. 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". 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.
Distinguishing between kitsch and camp
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."
However, Sontag also distinguishes the difference between "naive" and "deliberate" camp. Kitsch, as a form or style, certainly falls under the category "naive camp" as it is unaware that it is tasteless; "deliberate camp", on the other hand, can be seen as a subversive form of kitsch which deliberately exploits the whole notions of what it is to be kitsch. (Sontag, 1964)
Around the world
Thomas Hine identified 1954–64 as the campiest period in modern U.S. history. During this time, Americans had more money to spend, thanks to the post-war economic boom; but they often exercised poor taste.
In the UK, on the other hand, camp is an adjective, often associated with a stereotypical view of feminine gay men. The term has been in common use for many decades. 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." 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. The British tradition of the "Last Night of the Proms" has been said to glory in nostalgia, camp, and pastiche.
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 stylised Marlene Dietrich, and the musical arrangements feature Noël Coward and Cole Porter. Kosky's use of camp is also effectively employed to satirise 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 practise 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.
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 American writer Susan Sontag's 1964 essay "Notes on 'Camp'", Sontag emphasised 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, stylisation, theatricality, naivety, sexual ambiguity, tackiness, poor taste, stylishness, or portray camp people, and thus appeal to them. He considers Susan Sontag's definition problematical because it lacks this distinction.
- Babuscio (1993, 20), Feil (2005, 478), Morrill (1994, 110), Shugart and Waggoner (2008, 33), and Van Leer (1995, 60).
- Mallan, Kerry, McGills, Roderick (2005) "Between a Frock and a Hard Place: Camp Aesthetics and Children's Culture", Canadian Review of American Studies Vol.35 №1 pp. 1–19
- Mallan, Kerry, McGills, Roderick. "Between a Frock and a Hard Place: Camp Aesthetics and Children's Culture". Canadian Review of American Studies (2005) 35:1 (1)
- 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
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. Dictionnaire de l'Académie française, 9e édition
(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.)
- Esther Newton (1978) Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America, University Of Chicago Press
Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
- Moe Meyer (2010) An Archaeology of Posing: Essays on Camp, Drag, and Sexuality, Macater Press ISBN 978-0981492452
- Moe Meyer (2011) The Politics and Poetics of Camp, Routledge ISBN 978-0415514897
- Peter Silverton. "Dusty Springfield (British singer) - Encyclopedia Britannica". Britannica.com. Retrieved 17 August 2013.
- Annie J. Randall (Fall 2005). "Dusty Springfield and the Motown Invasion". Newsletter Vol.35 №1. Institute for Studies In American Music, Conservatory of Music, Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. Retrieved 17 August 2013.
- Laurense Cole (2008) Dusty Springfield: in the middle of nowhere, Middlesex University Press. p. 13.
- Charles Taylor (1997). Mission Impossible: The perfectionist rock and soul of Dusty Springfield, Boston Phoenix.
- "Springfield, Dusty". glbtq – An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Trangender and Queer Culture. 2005. Retrieved 17 August 2013.
- Annie J. Randall, Associate Professor of Musicology Bucknell University (2008). Dusty! : Queen of the Post Mods: Queen of the Post Mods. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 17 August 2013.
- Bob Gulla (2007) Icons of R&B and Soul: An Encyclopedia of the Artists Who Revolutionized Rhythm, Greenwood Publishing Group ISBN 978-0313340444
- 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 978-0415921695
- "Exploring Psy's Digital Dandy Appeal In 'Gangnam Style' " (October 3, 2012) Rolling Stone (retrieved 21 April 2013)
- Psy Unveils His New ‘Gentleman’ Video and Dance at Extravagant Seoul Concert, Time, 13 April 2013, retrieved 21 April 2013
- Susan Sontag (2 July 2009). Against Interpretation and Other Essays. Penguin Modern Classics. ISBN 978-0-14-119006-8. Retrieved 6 September 2011.
- Russell Davies (1993) The Kenneth Williams Diaries, Harper-Collins Publishers ISBN 978-0002550239
- Compare: Miller, W. Watts (2002), "Secularism and the sacred: is there really something called 'secular religion'?", in Idinopulos, Thomas A.; Wilson, Brian C., Reappraising Durkheim for the study and teaching of religion today, Numen book series 92, Brill, pp. 38–39, 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.
- 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
- 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.