Camp (style)

The term camp—normally used as an adjective, even though earliest recorded uses employed it mainly as a verb—refers to the deliberate and sophisticated use of kitsch, mawkish or corny themes and styles in art, clothing or conversation. A part of the anti-Academic defense of popular culture in the sixties, camp came to academic prominence in the eighties with the widespread adoption of the Postmodern views on art and culture.

Today, camp falls into two distinct categories: intentional camp and uninitentional camp. Intentional camp, as the name suggests, constitutes the deliberate use of camp for humour. Unintentional camp is arises from naïveté or poor tastes. Unitentional camp can thus be considered "true camp." A hipster may appreciate something for its camp value, while a lamester perceives the same thing to be inherently cool.

Much like the closely related notion of kitsch, camp has traditionally been viewed as hard to define. The terms "camp" and "kitsch" are often used interchangeably, but the term "kitsch" refers spefically to art, music or literature, while "camp" is a much broader term. All things kitsch are also camp, but not all things camp are kitsch. It is easier to grasp the concept of camp through the use of examples than through a definition. Numerous examples of camp are cited later in this article.

Camp appears to be most prevelant in societies where disposable income has grown at a much faster pace than the general level of sophistication and education. The United States of the 1950s is a classic example of this phenomenon and 1950s America is probably the most camp time period in human history. During the 1950s, the standard of living and disposable income of the American people exploded, as the post-war economy boomed. Yet at the same time, most people were incredibly naïve and sheltered, and only a small minority of people had attended college. In essence, people had money to spend, but often excercised poor tastes due to their lack of sophistication.

As the Japanese economy began to boom in the 1970s and 1980s, Japan became a major producer of camp. As in America of the 1950s, Japanese disposable income had outpaced the general level of sophistication within Japanese society.

One of the first people to give the concept of camp an academic treatment was the American intellectual Susan Sontag. In her famous 1964 essay "Notes on 'Camp' ", Sontag emphasised artifice, frivolity, and shocking excess as key elements of camp. Most of the popular culture references in Sontag's essay are fairly obscure and would be lost on most of today's readers. While the common use of the concept includes these, usually the element of naïve middle-class pretentiousness is highlighted. Typical examples of this latter use are Carmen Miranda's tutti frutti hats, low-budget science fiction movies of the 1950s and 1960s and the multi-genre pop culture of the 1970s and 1980s. It has been argued that this view oversimplifies the camp phenomenon in an undesirable way, as it tends to equate the camp with popular culture, viewed with condescending irony, while the original concept included works definitely outside the realm of popular culture (Sontag herself mentions Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, which may be considered a minor work by musicologists but is hardly in the same range with soap operas or superhero comics).

The first 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."

Origins and development

The OED gives 1909 as the first citation of "camp" in print, with the sense of "ostentatious, exaggerated, affected, theatrical; effeminate or homosexual; pertaining to or characteristic of homosexuals. So as n., ‘camp’ behaviour, mannerisms, etc. (see quot. 1909); a man exhibiting such behaviour." According to the OED, this sense of the word is "etymologically obscure."

Though the rise of Postmodernism has made camp a common take on aesthetics, 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 (Altman 1982, 154-155). Altman (ibid) argues that it originated from the acceptance of gayness as effeminacy. Two key components of camp were originally feminine performances: swish and drag (Newton 1972, 34-37; West 1977; Cory 1951). With swish featuring extensive use of superlatives, and drag being (often outrageous) female impersonation, camp became extended to all things "over the top", including female female impersonators, as in the exaggerated Hollywood version of Carmen Miranda (Levine, 1998). It was this version of the concept that was adopted by literary and art critics and became a part of the conceptual array of sixties culture. Moe Meyer (1994, p.1) still defines camp as "queer parody."

As part of camp, drag meant (Newton, 1972, 34-36; Read 1980) "womanly apparel, ranging from slight makeup and a few feminine garments, typically hats, gloves, or high heels, to a total getup, complete with wigs, gowns, jewelry, and full makeup" (Levine, 1998, p.22). Also camp were feminine interests such as fashion (Henry, 1955; West, 1977), decoration (Fischer, 1972, 69; White, 1980; Henry, 1955, 304) "with fancy frills, froufrou, bric-a-brac and au courant kitsch," opera and theater (Karlen 1971; Hooker 1956; Altman 1982, 154), bitchy humor (Read 1980, 105-8), old movies (Dyer 1977), and celebrity worship (Tipmore 1975). (Levine 1998, p.23-4)

Another part of camp was dishing, a conversational style including, "bitchy retorts, vicious putdowns, and malicious gossip," (Levine 1998, p.72) associated with the entertainment industry (Leznoff and Westley 1956; Hooker 1956; Hoffman 1968; Read 1980) and also called "fag talk" or "chit chat" (Read 1980, p.106-8). Clones adapted dish, often keeping the feminine pronouns, expanding it to dirt, gossip and rumors, bitchiness and viciousness. (Levine 1998, p.72)

Camp has been from the start an ironic attitude, embraced by anti-Academic theorists for its explicit defense of clearly subordinate forms. As such, its claims to legitimacy are dependent on its opposition to current views of normality; camp has no aspiration to timelessness, but rather lives parasitically on the strength of dominant culture. It does not want to present basic values, but precisely to confront culture with its waste, to show how any norm is historical. This rebellious utilisation of critical concepts originally formulated by modernist art theorists such as Theodor Adorno, who were radically opposed to the kind of popular culture that camp endorses, can be understood as a deeply reflexive problematisation of the problematisation of taste itself that modernism represented.

As a cultural challenge, camp can also receive a political meaning, when minorities appropriate and ridicule the images of the dominant group, the kind of activism associated with multiculturalism and the New Left. The best known instance of this is of course the gay liberation movement, which used camp to confront society with its own preconceptions and their historicity. Female camp actresses such as Bette Davis also had an important influence on the development of feminist consciousness: by exaggerating certain stereotyped features of femininity, such as fragility or moodiness, they undermined the credibility of those preconceptions. The multiculturalist stance in cultural studies therefore presents camp as political and critical.

Academic appropriation or proliferation of camp

While the success of postmodernism granted camp a place in mainstream art and literature analysis, as well as a certain weight in contemporary social theory, it also meant that its extended sphere of influence was likely to affect the use of the concept. As a part of its adoption by the mainstream, camp has undergone a softening of its original subversive tone, and is often little more than the condescending recognition that popular culture can also be enjoyed by a sophisticated sensibility. Comic books and Westerns, for example, have become standard subjects for academic analysis. This is not, however, the kind of seriousness that Sontag advocated for camp, to which exaggeration and outlandishness was essential. This uncomfortable situation—the normalisation of the outrageous, common to many Vanguardist movements—has led some to believe that the notion has lost its usefulness for critical art discourse.

In the UK, camp is an adjective to describe naughty seaside-postcard sense of humour combined with sharp wit, and is often associated with a stereotypical view of feminine gay men. "Camp" forms a strong element in UK culture, and many so-called gay-icons and objects are chosen as such because they are camp. In the UK, Absolutely Fabulous, Lawrence Llewelyn Bowen, Graham Norton, Lesley Joseph and the theatre tradition of the pantomime are considered to be camp elements in popular culture (by the general populace).

Examples of Camp

Camp is best explained to those unfamiliar with the concept of camp through the use of examples. Television shows such as The Brady Bunch, Leave It to Beaver, Dragnet, The Lawrence Welk Show, Hee Haw, Sing Along with Mitch, Batman, The Love Boat, Saved by the Bell, The Monkees, and The Dukes of Hazzard are often cited as examples of camp.

TV soap operas, especially those that air in primetime, are also considered camp. The excess of Dynasty has made it one of the shows most considered campy. Another camp classic is Melrose Place.

Mentos television commercials during the 1990s developed a cult following due to their intentionally camp Eurotrash humour.

Movie versions of camp TV shows have made the camp nature of these shows a running joke throughout the movies. Examples include Dragnet, The Brady Bunch Movie and The Dukes of Hazzard.

Filmmaker John Waters has made a career out of intentionally camp films, such as Pink Flamingos, Hairspray, Female Trouble, Polyester, Desperate Living, A Dirty Shame and Cecil B. Demented. Film maker Todd Solondz uses camp music to illustrate the absurdity and banality of bourgeois suburban existence. In Solondz' film Welcome to the Doll House, the 11-year-old female protagonist kisses a boy while Debbie Gibson's Lost in Your Eyes is played on a Fisher Price tape recorder.

Other examples of camp films include Japanese monster movies, such as Godzilla, German sexploitation films of the 1960s and 1970s such as bavarian porn, the Schulmädchen Report (Schoolgirl Report) series, and 1960s teen-oriented films such as Beach Blanket Bingo.

Camp hairstyles include the beehive, afro and the mullet.

Tacky yard decorations, popular in rural America, are examples of camp. 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 little, black boy holding a lantern and ceramic statues of deer are also prevalent camp lawn decorations.

Airbrushed custom-made license plates, which often feature the names of the couple who own the car, along with dolphins, hearts or unicorns are kitsch, and, therefore, by extension, camp.

The ESPN Classic show Cheap Seats features two Generation-X, hipster, real-life brothers making humourous observations while watching campy sporting events, which were often featured on ABC's Wide World of Sports during the 1970s. Examples include a 1970s "sport," which attempted to combine ballet with skiing, the Harlem Globetrotters putting on a show in the gym of a maximum security prison, low-budget professional wrestling and roller derby.

American educational films form a whole sub-genre of camp films. The "duck and cover films" of 1950s vintage, in which an anthropomorphic turtle tells school children that they can survive a Soviet nuclear attack by hiding under their desks is considered a classic of high camp. ABC After School Specials of the 1970s and 1980s addressing teen drug use and sex are considered camp. The Comedy Central show Strangers with Candy was an intentionally camp spoof of such after school specials.

Examples of camp music include The Village People, ABBA, The Bee Gees, The New Kids on the Block, Menudo, The Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys, Peggy March, Michael Bolton, Wayne Newton, Pat Boone, The Carpenters, Barry Manilow, Richard Clayderman, David Hasselhoff, Debbie Gibson, Tiffany, Twisted Sister, Placebo, Poison, Stryper, Zamfir, Yanni, Vanilla Ice, Boxcar Willie and Sonny and Cher. Entire genres of music, such as disco, polka and German Schlager music are considered camp. Intentionally camp musical acts include The B-52's, Queen and Arling and Cameron. It should be noted that camp music is not necessarily bad. For example, many people like bands such as ABBA and The Village People in large part because they are camp. Enjoying music which one also considers camp is especially prevalent in the gay community.

South of the Border is a road side attraction on the North Carolina-South Carolina border with a camp theme and is also known for its campy billboards stretching along Interstate 95 from Washington DC to Florida. Branson, Missouri is a tourist attraction, which features campy entertainment.

Celebrities with camp personas include, Liberace, Richard Simmons, Wink Martindale, Paul Lynde, Don Knotts, Phyllis Diller, Mr. T, Pee Wee Herman, Gary Coleman, Fabio, Dame Edna, Divine (Glen Milstead), RuPaul, Boy George, David Lee Roth, Charo, Carmen Miranda, Klaus Nomi, Tammy Faye Bakker, Dr. Ruth Westheimer, Brian Molko and Graham Norton.

Source

Levine, Martin P. (1998). Gay Macho. New York: New York University Press. ISBN 0814746942.
Ross, Andrew (1989). No Respect. Intellectuals and Popular Culture, New York/London: Routledge.

External links

Notes on Camp by Susan Sontag