Camp (style)

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Camp is an aesthetic in which something has appeal because of its bad taste or ironic value.

A part of the anti-academic defense of popular culture in the sixties, camp came to popularity in the eighties with the widespread adoption of Postmodern views on art and culture.

Contents

[edit] Origins and development

“Camp” is derived from the French slang term camper, which means “to pose in an exaggerated fashion.” 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."

According to writer and queer theorist Samuel R. Delany, the term "a camp" originally developed from the practice of female impersonators and other prostitutes following military encampments to service the soldiers. Later, it evolved into a more general description of the aesthetic choices and behavior of working class gay men. Finally, it was brought into mainstream use (and transformed into an adjective) by Susan Sontag in her landmark essay (see below).

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 (ibid) argues that 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 (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. 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 still defines camp as "queer parody."

[edit] Components of camp

[edit] Drag

As part of camp, drag typically consists of feminine apparel, ranging from slight make-up and a few feminine garments, typically hats, gloves, or high heels, to a total getup, complete with wigs, gowns, jewellery, and full make-up.

[edit] Dishing

Another part of camp is dishing, a conversational style including retorts, vicious putdowns, and/or malicious gossip, associated with the entertainment industry and also called "chit chat" .

[edit] Attitude

Camp has been from the start an ironic attitude, embraced by anti-Academic theorists for its explicit defense of clearly marginalized forms. As such, its claims to legitimacy are dependent on its opposition to the status quo; camp has no aspiration to timelessness, but rather lives on the hypocrisy of the dominant culture. It does not present basic values, but precisely confronts culture with what it perceives as its inconsistencies, to show how any norm is socially constructed. This rebellious utilisation of critical concepts was originally formulated by modernist art theorists such as sociologist Theodor Adorno[citation needed], who were radically opposed to the kind of popular culture that consumerism endorsed.

[edit] Humor and Illusion

Camp is a critical analysis and at the same time a big joke. Camp takes “something” (normally a social norm, object, phrase, or style) does a very acute analysis of what the “something” is then takes the “something” and presents it humorously. As a performance, camp is meant to be an illusion. A person being campy has a generalization they are intentionally making fun of or manipulating. Though camp is a joke it's also a very serious analysis done by people who are willing to make a joke out of themselves to prove a point. It's about being pretentious and contentious; It is a heterodox bouleversement all wrapped up in a tongue-in-cheek pose, which elicits shock and is meant to be offensive.

[edit] In modern culture

[edit] Television

Television shows such as Lost in Space, Hee Haw, Batman, Gilligan's Island, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, Saved by the Bell, Saturday Night Live, Wonder Woman, The Drew Carey Show, Super Friends, Space Ghost, The Greatest American Hero, and Desperate Housewives are often cited[citation needed] as examples of camp when viewed in the context of today's society. When many of these shows were made, they were intended as serious attempts at TV production; others were developed tongue-in-cheek by their producers.

TV soap operas, especially those that air in primetime, are also considered camp. The over-the-top excess of Dynasty and Dallas were hugely popular in the 1980s. Mentos television commercials during the 1990s developed a cult following due to their camp Eurotrash humour.

The ESPN Classic show Cheap Seats features two Generation-X, hipster, 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, the Harlem Globetrotters putting on a show in the gym of a maximum security prison, small-time professional wrestling, and roller derby.

In the 1990s, a similar television show titled Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K) featured a young man trapped aboard a 1950s science fiction style spacecraft accompanied by two robots made from common household artifacts, all of whom sat in front of a giant movie screen and made running sarcastic comments about low-budget educational, science fiction, and horror films they watched.

The Comedy Central television show Strangers with Candy, starring comedienne Amy Sedaris, was a camp spoof of such after school specials.

In a Monty Python sketch (Episode 22, "Camp Square-Bashing"), the British Army's 2nd Armoured Division apparently has a Military "Swanning About" Precision Drill unit in which soldiers "camp it up" in unison. In Episode 30, "Mary Recruiting Office", a man who is applying to join the Army intending to study interior design is told that the services, apart from the Royal Marine Commandos, are rather "dead butch" but that the Durham Light Infantry are doing wonderful things with "savage tans, [and] great slabs of black set against aggressive orange.".

[edit] Film

Movie versions of camp TV shows have made the camp nature of these shows a running joke throughout the movies.

Some critics denote John Huston's Beat the Devil (1953, starring Humphrey Bogart) as the first camp film (an over-the-top send-up of the film noir genre)[citation needed]. The film was indeed ahead of its time, the audiences of its day not able to recognize the director's intent, and achieved recognition only via cult status enjoyed many years thereafter.

Filmmaker John Waters has made a lucrative career directing camp films, such as Pink Flamingos, Hairspray, Female Trouble, Polyester, Desperate Living, A Dirty Shame, and Cecil B. Demented. In the eighth season of The Simpsons he appeared in the episode Homer's Phobia as the owner of a memorabilia store and described camp to Homer as the "tragically ludicrous" or the "ludicrously tragic" — such as "inflatable furniture or Last Supper TV trays."

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 11-year-old female protagonist kisses a boy while Debbie Gibson's "Lost in Your Eyes" is played on a Fisher-Price tape recorder.

Educational and industrial films form an entire sub-genre 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). ABC After School Specials, which tackled topics such as drug use and teen sex, are another example of camp educational films. The Comedy Central show Strangers with Candy, was a parody of ABC After School Specials.

[edit] Fashion

Retro-camp fashion is an example of modern hipsters' employing camp styles for the sake of humor.

[edit] Home décor

Yard decorations, popular in some parts of suburban and rural America, are examples of kitsch and are sometimes displayed as camp expressions.[citation needed] 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 whitetail deer are also prevalent camp lawn decorations.

[edit] Music

Examples of camp music include The Supremes, Cyndi Lauper, Claude Francois, The Village People, Nancy Sinatra, Menudo, Geri Halliwell, Little Peggy March, Madonna, Bette Midler, Wayne Newton, Drafi Deutscher, Debbie Gibson, Tiffany, Barbra Streisand, Yma Sumac, Air Supply, Barry Manilow, Stryper, Boxcar Willie, Scissor Sisters, Christina Aguilera, Hanson, TLC, The B-52's, Queen, Arling and Cameron, Pinkard and Bowden, Prince, and Cher. Meco and his Star Wars disco albums would also fall into the category. In fact, entire genres of music, such as show tunes, disco, polka and German Schlager music, can at times be considered camp. Some musicians, such as Madonna and Christina Aguilera, The Kooks, My Chemical Romance are either unaware of their own campiness, or deny it altogether, thus adding to their camp appeal (see Unintentional Camp below). However, Aguilera has come to somewhat accept her campiness, by releasing her current single "Candyman," which is the campiest song of her entire career, yet also one of her personal favorites. Others, such as David Bowie, embrace their camp status wholeheartedly. In the 1970's Bowie and other Glam artists often called themselves "Queens of Camp", the term queen being a play on their feigned homoeroticism. Terms like "camp as a row of tents" were often used to describe them, a thing which they always took as a compliment.

[edit] Retail

The Carvel chain of soft-serve ice cream stores is famous for its camp style, campy low-budget TV commercials and campy ice-cream cakes such as Cookie Puss and Fudgie The Whale.

[edit] Roadside attractions

South of the Border is a roadside attraction on the North Carolina-South Carolina border with a camp faux-Mexican theme and is also known for its campy billboards stretching along Interstate 95 from Washington, D.C., to Florida. Branson, Missouri, is a popular tourist destination that features camp entertainment with pseudo-patriotic or otherwise jingoistic themes, overtones and messages. The gambling meccas of Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada, are famous for the camp architecture of the casinos and hotels. In recent years, Wisconsin Dells has developed a camp reputation for its waterparks, waterpark resorts and motel swimming pools featuring foam-and-fibreglass sculptures of dolphins and killer whales.

[edit] Celebrities

Many celebrities have camp personas, although some tend to possess these traits unintentionally (see Unintentional Camp below). Some celebrities even capitalize on their camp appeal through commercials and in TV and movie cameo appearances (for example, TV commercials for Old Navy clothing stores).

Celebrities with camp personas include Adam West,John Waters, Pee-wee Herman, William Shatner, Elton John, Freddie Mercury, Gary Coleman, Fabio, Richard Simmons, Dame Edna, Divine (Glen Milstead), RuPaul, Man Parrish, Tiny Tim, Wayne Newton, Boy George, Liberace, David Lee Roth, Dennis Rodman, David Hasselhoff, Bette Midler, Klaus Nomi, Graham Norton, Madonna, the Dixie Chicks, Toby Keith, David Walliams, Mr. T., Nick Rhodes, Chuck Norris and Brian Molko.

Celebrities in the camp community who are gay icons include Diana Ross, Liza Minnelli, Elizabeth Taylor, Brigitte Bardot, Danni Minogue, Bette Midler, Cher, Cyndi Lauper, Joan Collins, Madonna, Christina Aguilera and Joan Rivers.

[edit] Camp vs. Kitsch

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; both may relate to art, literature, music, or any object that carries an aesthetic value. However, "kitsch" refers specifically to the object proper, whereas "camp" is a mode of performance. Thus, a person may consume kitsch intentionally or unintentionally. Camp, however, as Susan Sontag observed, is always a way of consuming or performing culture "in quotation marks."

[edit] Camp around the world

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Camp appears to be most prevalent in societies where disposable income has grown at a much faster pace than the general level of cultural sophistication, awareness and education. The popular culture of the USA during the late 1950s and early '60s (Author Thomas Hine identified it as the period 1954-64) is considered by some to be the most camp modern period. During this era, the overall average standard of living and the amount of disposable income of the American people rose rapidly and significantly as the post-World War II economy (which was rapidly taking up a great deal of slack from the Depression and World War II) boomed. Yet, at the same time, many people in that era were somewhat naïve and provincial, with relatively few people having attended college. Aside from WWII veterans (who constituted about 10% of the US population during the 1950s), few people had been exposed to other cultures or traveled overseas. In sum, many people suddenly had much more money to spend, but often exercised poor taste due to their lack of sophistication, education or experience.

[edit] UK

In the UK, camp is an adjective to describe a 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, the television series Absolutely Fabulous, as well as personages like John Inman, Lawrence Llewelyn Bowen, Lulu, Graham Norton, Lesley Joseph, Dale Winton, Cilla Black, and the music hall theatre tradition of the pantomime are considered to be camp elements in popular culture (by the general populace).

[edit] Australia

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 (Kosky’s production of King Lear featured a pregnant Cordelia and Knights wearing strap on penises), Wagner, Moliere, Seneca, Kafka and most recently – 9 September 2006 - his 8 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 Noel 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 whereabouts 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”.

[edit] Literature about camp

[edit] Susan Sontag

One of the first people to give the concept of camp an academic treatment was the American activist Susan Sontag. In her famous 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 singer/actress Carmen Miranda's tutti frutti hats and low-budget science fiction movies of the 1950s and 1960s.

[edit] Christopher Isherwood

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.”

[edit] Mark Booth

In his 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 discerns carefully 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.

[edit] Camp as a cultural challenge

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 the gay liberation movement, which used camp to confront society with its own preconceptions and their historicity. Female camp actresses such as Mae West, Marlene Dietrich, and Joan Crawford also had an important influence on the development of feminist consciousness: by exaggerating certain stereotyped features of femininity, such as fragility, open emotionality or moodiness, they attempted to undermine the credibility of those preconceptions. The multiculturalist stance in cultural studies therefore presents camp as political and critical.

Conversely, political theorists like Theodor Adorno saw camp as a means of maintaining the status quo by misdirecting the workers away from the cause of their oppression: the capitalist system. Also, camp's ephemerality was deemed to engender unthinking consumerism, which relies on novelty and frivolity.

[edit] 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 cultural 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 serious academic analysis. This is not, however, the kind of seriousness that Sontag advocated for camp, to which deliberate 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.

[edit] Camp as a destructive or misleading concept

As applied to Hollywood movies of the Golden Age -- roughly from the beginning of the movie era up through the 1950’s -- “camp” may be a destructive or misleading concept.

In film criticism, the term “camp” has frequently been used to disparage well-liked movies of the Hollywood Golden Age which are claimed to be in bad taste and therefore unintentionally funny, or "so awful they are good." Such criticisms rely on the notion that there are generally accepted standards for great art of any type, by reference to which so-called camp movies are deemed to be inane, in spite of their enormous popularity, or perhaps because of it (a "masses are asses" aesthetic). Some elitist critics of the camp school have even implied that such criticisms should have general application to the entire output of Golden Age Hollywood, which they claim too often caters to the "lowest common denominator" of the audience. Elitist camp critics most often prefer the European and arthouse cinema to Golden Age Hollywood fare. The influence of these critics is widespread, including upon film-makers in Hollywood today, and may be seen reflected in a large number of comments posted over the Internet that attack some of the best-loved Hollywood movies of all time for seeming artificial, out-of-date and historically inaccurate, or simply for being in bad taste, destroying their appeal to later generations of viewer. (Walt Disney's "Bambi" and Frank Capra's "Lost Horizon" have both made it onto camp "Worst Movies of All Time" lists. See also the many camp oriented reviews of older films among the user comments on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).)

[edit] Criticizing the critics

Critics who condescend to American popular culture, and particularly Hollywood films of the Golden Age, may themselves be criticized for being heavy-handed, snobbish or overly sophisticated. Many of the movie makers whose works these critics have dissected were not unintentionally, but intentionally, funny and deliberately took liberties with artistic style, realism and fact to achieve humorous effects. Whenever an old time movie seems unusually artificial, the film-maker is usually winking at the audience, like the rib-tickler in a vaudeville comedy. Critics who claim that such effects are not intended to be funny run the risk of being thought too sophisticated to appreciate obvious joking. Their comments may also be misleading. (E.g., Susan Sontag on the musical comedy choreographer and director Busby Berkeley, whom she claims was entirely serious and only unintentionally comic.)

Some camp writings, especially movie articles that attack older Hollywood films for being cheap, vulgar and low-brow productions, seem to belong to an academic school of thought that traditionally has condescended to American and popular culture. Critics who favor old-world values have often unfairly claimed that the new world has no high-art culture of its own and that American and popular culture, especially Hollywood movies, are invariably second-rate and vulgar when compared to the classic high-art culture of the old world. (See the Wikipedia article on "Anti-Americanism" and particularly the paragraphs entitled "The Degeneracy Thesis" and "Snobbery.")

[edit] Camp and malicious gossip

Camp critics have often made underhanded and scurrilous remarks about the personal and private lives of Hollywood stars in order unfairly to pan the movies in which the stars have appeared. Fans who idolize the celebrities who were featured in their favorite movies are often horrified at the defamatory remarks which some critics have made about their idols. Writers who “dish the dirt” on well known stars have sarcastically alleged against them all types of vice, corruption, unlawful and unethical conduct, often unsubstantiated or based only on hearsay or rumor, preceded by the cant phrase “everyone knows that [Hollywood star] was a [depraved criminal].” Such malicious gossip seems to give a wicked pleasure to its camp practitioners and those who follow them, but may be distressful to its victims, their relations and their admirers, and may in many cases be a form of libel. (There are no specific instances cited here since it may be libelous even to repeat them. But see the Wikipedia articles on Kenneth Anger and his book “Hollywood Babylon” for the general category of activity described.)

[edit] See also

[edit] Sources

  • Levine, Martin P. (1998). Gay Macho. New York: New York University Press. ISBN 0-8147-4694-2.

[edit] Further reading

  • 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.
  • 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.

[edit] External links

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