What’s going on underneath her elaborate wigs?
May 5, 2019 6:38 PM   Subscribe

"In 1964, Susan Sontag defined camp as an aesthetic “sensibility” that is plain to see but hard for most of us to explain: an intentional over-the-top-ness, a slightly (or extremely) “off” quality, bad taste as a vehicle for good art. “Notes on ‘Camp,’” her 58-point ur-listicle, builds on that inherent sense of something being “too much,” and also fences it in. Camp is artificial, passionate, serious, Sontag writes. Camp is Art Nouveau objects, Greta Garbo, Warner Brothers musicals and Mae West. It is not premeditated — except when it is extremely premeditated. [...] The essay is also the founding document of this year’s Met Costume Institute exhibit and its attendant gala." The New York Times asks: Is It Camp?
posted by everybody had matching towels (39 comments total) 25 users marked this as a favorite
 
NYT missing the critical distinction between "camp" and "kitsch." There was a great Hermenaut issue dedicated to the topic (excerpted here) that mined the seam between the two.
posted by the sobsister at 6:54 PM on May 5, 2019 [9 favorites]


There's something very meta-camp about the fact that the best definition of camp provided in a New York Times article is an Urban Dictionary quote you come to near to the bottom of the page.
posted by zachlipton at 7:25 PM on May 5, 2019 [5 favorites]


She was a scamp,
A camp,
And a bit of a tramp,
She was a V-A-M-P, vamp!
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:26 PM on May 5, 2019 [7 favorites]


It also really confuses the issue of camp and campy. I think Vox does a better job exploring the various subtypes of camp and campiness.
posted by muddgirl at 7:32 PM on May 5, 2019 [2 favorites]


"Delighted contempt" might perfectly describe the existence of MST3K.
posted by Brocktoon at 7:41 PM on May 5, 2019 [2 favorites]


Contra Vox, Donald Trump is not camp, low or high.

"Camp" is as dumb a theme for the Met Gala as whatever the "punk" one was. I suppose there's a kind of evil/dark camp when a powerful entity run by the wealthy plays at playing at queer sensibility, but it's definitely a sign that we're in the bad timeline.
posted by Frowner at 7:42 PM on May 5, 2019 [23 favorites]


There is something weirdly circular about "uber-rich narcissists" -> "the grotesque effects of extreme wealth" -> Met Gala -> NYT article about Camp -> Moira Rose -> "the grotesque effects of extreme wealth" -> "uber-rich narcissists."
posted by zachlipton at 8:39 PM on May 5, 2019 [4 favorites]


I think fashion watchers (I am one) are going to be largely disappointed by the red carpet tomorrow, yes, though I am truly tickled by the idea that it's basically a trap, given that Sontag herself said that "Camp that knows itself to be Camp is usually less satisfying." It's going to be...something to see who can pin it down, who can't, and who won't even try.

But it's a bold and promising choice for the Costume Institute exhibit. Looking through the list of past themes, this one has a lot of opportunity. I've read a few interviews where the curator, Andrew Bolton, references how camp is grounded in queerness, and how the assimilation of gay culture has changed the concept. I think the exhibit is going to be pretty solid, but the Gala is going to be a minefield.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 9:31 PM on May 5, 2019 [6 favorites]


I can't remember the last time I liked a Costume Institute exhibit. And I'm into textiles!
posted by praemunire at 9:53 PM on May 5, 2019


The gala may well be a full-on mess, but I can’t wait!
posted by mochapickle at 12:26 AM on May 6, 2019 [3 favorites]


"Camp" is as dumb a theme for the Met Gala as whatever the "punk" one was. I suppose there's a kind of evil/dark camp when a powerful entity run by the wealthy plays at playing at queer sensibility, but it's definitely a sign that we're in the bad timeline.
posted by Frowner 5 ½ hours ago [5 favorites +] [!]

There is something weirdly circular about "uber-rich narcissists" -> "the grotesque effects of extreme wealth" -> Met Gala -> NYT article about Camp -> Moira Rose -> "the grotesque effects of extreme wealth" -> "uber-rich narcissists."
posted by zachlipton 4 ½ hours ago [+] [!]


Heh. I think both of these are likely true, and that the Met Gala might end up as campy for how badly the uber-wealthy misunderstand the concept and make fools of themselves, bringing it full circle, a bit like the "punk" theme but more on point in a roundabout way.
posted by gusottertrout at 1:19 AM on May 6, 2019 [1 favorite]


Personally though I fear "camp" has lost most of its definition for now expanding to cover almost any instance of "so bad its good" or excessive counter aesthetic in addition to still having a hold in its queer aesthetic base where it is sometimes still used purposefully as a reference to its older incarnation. Think, for example, of something like Baz Luhrman's movies. Strictly Ballroom has the notion of camp at its core, but uses it as a reference to an idea of older movies where it was an accidental byproduct of the times and stories. Intentionality changes the relationship between viewer and "camp".

Camp was once was once something of a nod to the unnoted excesses of straight culture that went beyond their purpose towards something subversive, then it added the aping of those excesses for purposeful subversion, and now is claimed for almost everything that is enjoyable for being "too much" or off from the norm whether on purpose or by accident or whether it really is outside convention at all given how widely camp is accepted as just another aesthetic to explore. Sontag's essay was a fine attempt to capture an aesthetic that hadn't been given much notice, but I think it fell a bit short of the mark for not really being something Sontag would entirely "get" on her own, and since then I think it's become really outdated for how things have changed and even that essay itself has become absorbed into the notions surrounding the subject.
posted by gusottertrout at 1:34 AM on May 6, 2019 [13 favorites]


If you look at what was original camp as something that was taken by the straights and turned into irreverently cool irony and then assume that everyone is talking about the irreverently cool irony, NOT original camp then it becomes pretty clear what’s being discussed.

Camp is a form of power which is based on maximalist grotesque expressionism where the source material comes from the overprivileged and is repackaged as an offensive weapon and form of armor for the underprivileged.

Irreverently cool irony is camp stolen back by the mainstream and turned into a sellable good as a way of taking that power back.

Just look at pride. How fucking rude.
posted by nikaspark at 2:07 AM on May 6, 2019 [10 favorites]


There are some sublime early movies that rely on excess of feeling and visual to create a layered set of meaning for audiences. The surface layer is, of course, straight, where the story has a standard romantic couple as the focus, but underneath that layer there is a second reading available, where the seeming straightness of the story is called into question. They do this by providing "too much" to the movie for the surface story to bear on its own, which can lend an air of ridiculousness to the proceedings if one doesn't account for the second, underlying, story that informs and really drives the events of the surface.

One of my favorite films of this sort is the 1936 movie The Garden of Allah, which earns mostly scorn for being, well, campy by most critics who only address the surface plot and its "excesses" while missing entirely the secondary text that is as equally present if one cares to notice it. That sort of "camp" is the other important aspect of it that shouldn't be lost as it was a way to tell one's desired story and have it seen by both the desired closeted audience and a straight one who wouldn't understand what they were seeing. Treating it all as just another way for everyone (straight folk) to get their yucks really misses the history and point of the aesthetic.
posted by gusottertrout at 2:34 AM on May 6, 2019 [9 favorites]


Yes, gusottertrout, This is also how YMCA by the village people is camp. And how the village people express camp.

And back the article:
Donald Trump is not fucking camp. Narcissistically fragile white tears are not camp, but a massive social disorder resultant from an imbalance of power, wealth and lack of concern which has coalesced into a voting block.
posted by nikaspark at 3:16 AM on May 6, 2019 [3 favorites]


This is also how YMCA by the village people is camp. And how the village people express camp.

My parents liked The Village People 100% unironically. Mom used to sing "YMCA" around the house.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 3:49 AM on May 6, 2019 [1 favorite]


I suspect that, if you’ve never wished you could speak Polari on a daily basis, you are not camp, no matter how much money you’ve spent.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:17 AM on May 6, 2019 [5 favorites]




There is something weirdly circular about "uber-rich narcissists" -> "the grotesque effects of extreme wealth" -> Met Gala -> NYT article about Camp -> Moira Rose -> "the grotesque effects of extreme wealth" -> "uber-rich narcissists."

Philip Core defined camp as “the lie that tells the truth,” which makes this Gala either a black hole of camp or a black hole of anti-camp, I can’t decide.
posted by octobersurprise at 7:23 AM on May 6, 2019 [4 favorites]


The best definition of kitsch was positing that if Christ was a man he must have shit, but we recoil at the idea of god shitting, so kitsch is a world without shit.

I would further argue Camp as we understand it impossible in a world lacking a rigid, totalizing cultural order. Postmodernism, thag zombie, makes camp impossible.

A true camp response to the Met gala would be dress as poorly suited republicans.
posted by The Whelk at 7:46 AM on May 6, 2019 [9 favorites]


A true camp response to the Met gala would be dress as poorly suited republicans.

(Which would be great, and a great refusal of/exposure of terms.)

Since camp is intrinsically oppositional, people who are not subordinated or who are not doing-art-things from a place of subordination can't be camp. That's not to say that every act of camp opposition is therefore radical/wonderful/etc or even particularly political at all, but camp is about someone who is subject to a regime not taking it at face value or amplifying its absurdities or having fun where fun is not supposed to be had, etc. When you're rich and powerful and always-already centered, you call the shots; you can't be camp, because anything you touch turns to orthodoxy. (Camp is not the only way to subvert, as it were, the dominant paradigm, and not all aesthetic subversion is camp.)

Donald Trump is not himself camp. One could envision a response to or a reading of Donald Trump which would be camp. (An awful lot of eighties anti-Reagan anti-arms-race weird radical puppetry stuff was informed by camp and sort of haunted by a queer sensibility, for instance)

Camp is a dumb theme for the Met Gala because at best it's going to generate historicism - even if it will also be rich grounds for ridicule. I mean, it's a subversive theme because the stupid and clumsy historicism which will result will itself expose the power/aesthetics regime, but it's not like that's news and if rich people are going to spend a gazillion dollars on costumes while the world burns, I'd like the costumes at least to be appealing.
posted by Frowner at 8:48 AM on May 6, 2019 [9 favorites]


"Filmmaker Bruce Labruce condemned Sontag’s depoliticization of Camp, lamenting that its infusion into mainstream culture has diluted its power and significance. Without its original context, Camp has been separated from its roots in rebellion, survival, and subversion. Historically, I see Camp as a way in which those who were “othered” could play with the boundaries and rules of the very structures that they excluded from.

Today, the Met Gala guest list doesn’t reflect that sentiment. Wintour confirmed that RuPaul will be attending, and we might see Bob Mackie and Cher. Lena Waithe plans to honour the New York ball scene. “It all began with the black queens in inner cities looking for a way to be themselves, and then the culture got co-opted, so I really want to pay tribute to them. I think we might play with color and really lean into the drama.” The Ball scene demonstrated that Drag wasn’t just about gender, but about impersonation, embodiment, and performance.

So far, that gives us three LGBTQ members at the gala. I’m a little disappointed, although we’ll have to see for sure tonight." LaineyGossip, A Queer History of Camp
posted by everybody had matching towels at 9:04 AM on May 6, 2019 [5 favorites]


I mean they’re all just gonna do drag looks since drag aesthetics are so popular and mainstream now, why not just do a history of Drag?
posted by The Whelk at 9:08 AM on May 6, 2019 [2 favorites]


I believe Billy Porter is also confirmed to be attending, so there is a little more hope. I'm excited for specifically Black camp looks to provide a contrast, and perhaps even a lesson for the children.

I'm tentatively excited; I love the Met Gala and I love costume as drag as statement as art. I have zero faith that most of the attendees will actually be able to perform camp, and kind of agree that true Camp is impossible at an event held by a cultural powerhouse that's basically reknowned for not being particularly revolutionary. How are you Camp if you have an endowment, and everyone you invite to perform Camp is famous? I will settle for the women not showing up in pretty, forgettable gowns and the men not showing up in forgettable suits. Just a little effort, and then we can all ignore them in favor of RuPaul and Lena Waithe and Billy Porter and the people who actually have some kind of intrinsic understanding of the tension between clothing and performance and their fame and Sontag's definition of Camp and just...everything.
posted by kalimac at 9:49 AM on May 6, 2019 [3 favorites]


Arguably there’s “camp” and “camp”. One in the critical sense and one in the commercial.

The camp of Sontag is arguably a lot more serious and studied, while commercial camp is a cultural cash in.

Arguably given the ubiquity and cynicism of the latter you might consider stuff like the Real Housewives, daytime tv and Dolly Parton as “anti-camp”, perhaps even read these as examples of a new sincerity.

As such we might see the housewives as our own avatars, daytime tv as our own reality and Dolly’s forced folksiness as the one truly genuine sentiment.

It’s a camp world, we just live in it.
posted by Middlemarch at 11:25 AM on May 6, 2019




I believe Billy Porter is also confirmed to be attending, so there is a little more hope.

BILLY FUCKING PORTER OH MY GOD (second pic)

So that's it then. Nobody else needs to show up I guess.
posted by zachlipton at 3:04 PM on May 6, 2019 [9 favorites]


@AlannaBennett: Celine Dion is talking to E! right now about how she didn't understand what the word camp meant, which is perfect, because she is it in every moment of her life. Celine Dion eating toast is camp. Celine Dion holding a shoe to her face, Celine Dion biting the face off mannequins —

Celine Dion not understanding camp is extremely camp.
posted by zachlipton at 3:38 PM on May 6, 2019 [8 favorites]


The twitters inform me that there are many people attending in marvelously pretty clothes, but not really much camp. Frank Ocean has won my heart by adopting - apparently - a Whelkish strategy of understatement and vague security-staffishness and taking his own photos, showing that he has given some careful thought to the matter. Janelle Monae is wonderfully dressed but utopian and surreal rather than campy. Several people appear to be sending themselves up a bit, which is one of the only ways to be campy when you're wealthy and powerful at a wealthy and powerful event. Laverne Cox looks sweetly beautiful and perhaps just a tiny bit Mae West if Mae West were a goth mermaid, which seems like a pretty good way to handle the evening.

Many people seem to think that camp means "men who are not wearing especially masculine clothes".

I think that there's a bit more to camp and gender than has been discussed so far.
posted by Frowner at 5:28 PM on May 6, 2019 [2 favorites]


Lena Waithe's custom BLACK DRAG QUEENS INVENTED CAMP tux, complete with pinstripes that are the lyrics to "I’m Coming Out" and "I Will Survive," which I think plays with seriousness in exactly the way camp requires and makes the "camp and gender" point explicit.

I think Katy Perry read a line from Sontag and just literally did what it said, which I admire: "Camp sees everything in quotation marks. It's not a lamp, but a 'lamp'; not a woman, but a 'woman.'"
posted by zachlipton at 6:47 PM on May 6, 2019 [8 favorites]


Sorry, that should have said "INVENTEND." The typo is what makes it camp.
posted by zachlipton at 7:38 PM on May 6, 2019 [3 favorites]


I think that there's a bit more to camp and gender than has been discussed so far.

Oh god yes, but I almost hate to go there since its such a fraught topic without a clear line of demarcation to look to for the subject given how things have shifted over time. Camp is so much about an exaggerated femininity as viewed through a mass culture lens but often performed by men who feel themselves caught outside the accepted masculine and sexual boundaries defined by mass culture and find affirmation in adopting the exaggerated pose of the feminine.

The difficulty is in how the exaggerated excess of the feminine reflects back on women who are in some sense still being defined by men. It can be both affirming for those marginalized and yet still reinforcing certain restrictive ideals of "womenhood" associated with the feminine. The fashion industry, for example, has long had struggles with that mix of celebration and control, designing for an ideal that is sometimes forced on to the real in discomforting ways.

At the same time, many women embrace that and others including many celebrities like Lady Gaga and some of the others at the event have also adopted or reclaimed the sense of exaggerated femininity for themselves to perform. This isn't exactly new, Judy Garland, among others, long recognized their appeal and sense of connection to the gay community and happily accepted that role as the recognition of both the performative aspect of femininity and masculinity through their celebrity and the place in the culture those outside the margins held and what it is they saw in performers like Garland that mainstream culture didn't appreciate.

The shifts over time in how visible and acceptable elements of queer culture has changed the balance some as has the power women have had in defining their own sense of identity, but the historical aspect still informs the current moment, which is why camp is difficult to assess in our "post-modern" era where the hierarchical values of culture have largely disappeared for a map of coexisting and conflicting subcultures that can't easily be read from any single defining perspective as to their importance and meaning, so evaluation is necessarily limited to whatever view one adopts as a starting point.
posted by gusottertrout at 11:25 PM on May 6, 2019 [5 favorites]


I think we might play with color and really lean into the drama
Somebody please tell me that didn't turn out to mean blackface
posted by inexorably_forward at 12:44 AM on May 7, 2019 [1 favorite]


I don't know whether this is particularly germane or not, but I can't think about camp without recalling this old Gareth Cook piece from the '90s limning what he saw as its (by that point, anyway) deeply problematic and classist nature.
posted by non canadian guy at 3:35 AM on May 7, 2019 [1 favorite]


Somebody please tell me that didn't turn out to mean blackface

Well, Lena Waithe is Black, soo....

(see a few comments above for her excellent suit!)

If you misread and were thinking Lena Dunham, don't worry, she didn't do anything deeply racistly inappropriate.
posted by kalimac at 10:35 AM on May 7, 2019




Just didn't know who "we" might encompass.
posted by inexorably_forward at 3:27 PM on May 7, 2019


EZRA MILLER, THO

My first thought was that it was like something out of a giallo film.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:13 PM on May 7, 2019 [2 favorites]


Is there a picture of Miller and Monáe together? Because I think her hats and his eyes match up. At a specific, possibly Chthuhulian, angle.
posted by clew at 12:24 PM on May 8, 2019 [1 favorite]


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