Chris, I do know how "camp" plays out as a current literary theory. I was
referring to Susan Songtag's "Notes On Camp", first published in 1964. I think
there were a total of 54 or so 'notes.' And it is interesting to me how they
resonate in the work of Ashberry and O'Hara. I took these off a Wikipedia page:
The essay codified and mainstreamed the cultural connotations of the word camp,
and identified camp's evolution as a distinct aesthetic phenomenon.
The essay offers a theory as to why homosexuals are traditionally regarded as
cultural authorities; through becoming authorities on taste, homosexuals assert
an apolitical but valuable form of power in society and thus integrate.
[edit] Quotations
Indeed the essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and
exaggeration. And Camp is esoteric -- something of a private code, a badge of
identity even, among small urban cliques.
9. Camp taste draws on a mostly unacknowledged truth of taste: the most refined
form of sexual attractiveness (as well as the most refined form of sexual
pleasure) consists in going against the grain of one's sex. What is most
beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in
feminine women is something masculine.
10. Camp sees everything in quotation marks. It's not a lamp, but a "lamp"; not
a woman, but a "woman." To perceive Camp in objects and persons is to
understand Being-as-Playing-a-Role. It is the farthest extension, in
sensibility, of the metaphor of life as theater.
18. One must distinguish between naïve and deliberate Camp. Pure Camp is always
naïve. Camp which knows itself to be Camp ("camping") is usually less
satisfying.
41. The whole point of Camp is to dethrone the serious. Camp is playful,
anti-serious. More precisely, Camp involves a new, more complex relation to
"the serious." One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the
serious.
44. Camp proposes a comic vision of the world. But not a bitter or polemical
comedy. If tragedy is an experience of hyperinvolvement, comedy is an
experience of underinvolvement, of detachment.
52. The reason for the flourishing of the aristocratic posture among
homosexuals also seems to parallel the Jewish case. For every sensibility is
self-serving to the group that promotes it. Jewish liberalism is a gesture of
self-legitimization. So is Camp taste, which definitely has something
propagandistic about it. Needless to say, the propaganda operates in exactly
the opposite direction. The Jews pinned their hopes for integrating into modern
society on promoting the moral sense. Homosexuals have pinned their integration
into society on promoting the aesthetic sense. Camp is a solvent of morality.
It neutralizes moral indignation, sponsors playfulness.
58. The ultimate Camp statement: it's good because it's awful . . .
________________________________
From: Chris Jones <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Sat, February 19, 2011 10:34:45 PM
Subject: Re: re-membering moment
On Sat, 2011-02-19 at 13:08 -0800, Stephen Vincent wrote:
> I don't know if the role of 'camp'
> (particularly in the 50's & earl 60's - before Stonewall
It is a formal word used in lit theory, not the camp as in "camp as a
row of tents" though...
--
have chronic fatigue syndrome so may be delayed in reply or brain fog weird
just to let you know that's all, Chris Jones.
Blog: http://abdevpoetics.blogspot.com/
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