Susan Sontag's 'Notes on "Camp"' at 60
Reflections on a term whose contemporary usage bears little resemblance to the sensibility Sontag described and has become tiresome, hectoring and tawdry
In 1964, the American literary critic and public intellectual Susan Sontag published a series of vignettes (58 to be precise) on a sensibility that could be found in art, culture and literature throughout the centuries, but had seldom been given a name or described in any serious detail in print, except, as Sontag notes, “in a lazy two-page sketch in Christopher Isherwood’s novel The World in the Evening (1954).” Republished in 1966 in one of her most famous books, Against Interpretation, the work in question was aptly titled, ‘Notes on “Camp”’.
Examples of Camp Sontag provides range from Bellini’s operas and Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake to Visconti’s direction of Salome and the elegance of Art Nouveau’s Tiffany lamps. But reflecting on her writings some 60 years on, one finds that what is often described as “camp” nowadays only resembles the sensibility Sontag describes on a superficial level, and what often passes as “camp” is often a poor imitation of its artificiality or a crass distortion of its performative qualities.
When most people hear the word “camp” or use it to describe something they think of as such, they would probably mean one of these three definitions given by Merriam-Webster:
1. Something so outrageously artificial, affected, inappropriate, or out-of-date as to be considered amusing.
2. A style or mode of personal or creative expression that is absurdly exaggerated and often fuses elements of high and popular culture.
3. Exaggerated effeminate mannerisms (as of speech or gesture)
Although Sontag would have found it hard to disagree with these, she was cautious about defining Camp in any systematic way, and spoke of the phenomenon as a sensibility rather than an idea, admitting:
A sensibility (as distinct from an idea) is one of the hardest things to talk about; but there are special reasons why Camp, in particular, has never been discussed. It is not a natural mode of sensibility, if there be any such. Indeed the essence of is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration.
“One runs the risk of having, oneself, produced a very inferior piece of Camp,” she declared, on the matter of attempting to define it too systematically. Sontag’s observations throughout her work are sharp and incisive, but she never falls into the trap of over-intellectualizing her points, not least because her subject matter of Camp – which thrives on artifice, exaggeration, irony over tragedy, life as theatre, and a turn away from nature while being consciously aware of nature’s existence – is one that does not lend itself to being explained too intensely.
‘Notes on “Camp”’ does not follow any hard and fast rules about the sensibility she is trying to put into words. Anticipating a mode of thought she later developed in Against Interpretation, the work is chiefly concerned with matters of experience rather than meaning. She lists “certain turn-of-the-century picture postcards” and the operas of Richard Strauss as Camp not because of their content but because of a series of effects they produce.
While we may agree or disagree on what texts, items, works of art, or furniture may be described as Camp, Sontag’s point that Camp is more about the experience than the content underwrites the significant role interpretation plays in this style or mode. She says that the “Camp sensibility is one that is alive to a double sense in which some things can be taken.” By this, she is not referring to a division between literal and symbolic meaning but the very presence of meaning in the first place. This is certainly a useful device in a transitional epoch such as the 1960s, when Camp could accommodate the tastes and sensibilities of those of a liberal persuasion without completely alienating those of a more conservative outlook.
The British Carry On franchise, known for their bawdy comedy, use of innuendo and double entendre, featured a recurring cast of larger-than-life characters who, regardless of the place or period of time in which they were set, always found themselves in wildly exaggerated and downright ridiculous situations that were amusing in-themselves, but there were certain characters whose gestures and utterances carried with them an extra layer of meaning. One thinks of Kenneth Williams, whose famous eye rolling and sudden bouts of hysteria upon when one of the female characters attempts to make advances on him are on the surface comical and under the surface a reflection of an age where homosexuality was beginning to enter public consciousness but, in many cases, not accepted.
The same is true of Charles Ingram’s dainty and effeminate character of Mr. Humphries in the 1970s British sitcom, Are you being served?, whose flamboyant mannerisms and comical gestures are often captured on camera when another character in the department store says something that appeals to, or potentially exposes, his sexual proclivities. His Camp sensibility depends upon his choosing to find additional layers of meaning in utterances that do not necessarily have any but nevertheless elicit a kind of warped imagination. There is also the instance of Mrs. Slocombe, who frequently talks about her “pussy.” While we know that she is clearly referring to her cat, the anecdotes and scenarios in which that term appears are often so vague that it conjures a fictitious image in our minds, where her “pussy” is not in fact her friendly, feline companion but her genitals.
This manifestation of Camp has inevitably faded away as social attitudes in the West have liberalized, the boundaries between public and private have become blurred and matters of decorum, modesty and propriety have almost disappeared (for better or for worse). If one looks at 1990s television, for instance, there was a sense that all that was previously viewed as taboo must be put on display. Sex scenes were rife and swearing abundant (I think of Russell T Davies’ Queer as Folk, which does not depend on this interplay of meaning and no meaning). The question of morality is not so much the point here as the effects of a sensibility which foregrounds a great deal but, to its detriment, leaves very little to the imagination. Whereas Camp, as Sontag understood it, holds firmly onto surfaces and appearances – it does not project all reality onto us.
There is another dimension to this as well, which is the complete shift in understanding by creatives (and performers) of what experience, performance and artifice are, and how a Camp sensibility should manifest itself in their work. Traditional camp is playful, and turns objects, things or people into entities that seem to take on a separate existence to their essence. An example Sontag uses is the idea that a lamp is not a lamp as such but a “lamp.” Camp embraces artifice but what we have increasingly seen is artifice treated as something that is more real than what is beneath the surface. But in recent years, it has become all too clear how such a playful style and mode can undermine itself.
Judith Butler, who is known primarily for writing an opaque and intellectually vacuous monograph called Gender Trouble, argues (under the influence of French post-Structuralism and Deconstruction) that reality is mediated through language and that such notions as “gender” are merely linguistic constructions that are conceived and reproduced by a series of performances rather than something rooted in an independently verifiable reality. For Butler, we all perform reality, and reality is contingent upon subjective articulations of it.
Of course, this is patent nonsense, though there is a kernel of truth in this idea of life as theatre. One finds it in the writings of Wilde and Genet, in the dramaturgical analyses of Kenneth Burke and in the sociological investigations of Erving Goffman, but none of these men actually thought – beyond mere analogy or metaphor – that reality is a series of performances or that reality itself can be remolded at will. Their ideas are very much part of the camp sensibility, which plays on artificiality but does not seek to deny nature.
We find that this is the case historically, when Sontag traces the origins of Camp back to the 18th century (though there is reason to assume that a camp sensibility may have existed prior to this). She finds Camp in “Gothic novels, Chinoiserie, caricature, artificial ruins,” and in the aristocratic salons of the 18th century. But Sontag does admit that “the relation to nature was quite different then.” There were “people of taste” who “either patronized nature (Strawberry Hill) or attempted to remake it into something artificial (Versailles).”
In the 19th century, the camp sensibility was embodied by the Dandy, who was slightly aloof and attempts (in some vain fashion) to tame or control nature. The solitary and introspective person of Des Esseintes in Huysmans’ À rebours, who displays a host of artificial plants that look real in his home before replacing them with real plants that look artificial, is a case in point. A Camp sensibility is one that knowingly indulges in pretense and temporarily de-naturalises experience or aestheticizes it. Even “Rural Camp is still man-made,” Sontag informs us.
“Today’s camp taste effaces nature, or else contradicts it out right.” Coupled with what Sontag calls naïve Camp (camp that is too self-conscious of its campness), such a claim is truer today than it was in the 1960s, but to the point where the sensibility she described has been taken to the point where the frivolous has become all too serious and the performative aspect of life tries to present itself as the highest form of authenticity. Camp may have traditionally indulged in a creative and playful subverting of nature and reality, but what often passes for camp in the modern day treats the performance, the pretense or the irony as authentic. True camp only works if it understands itself as artifice. When individuals treat artifice as reality, it is simply foolish.
The drag queens who are brought into schools to talk to young children about the reality of gender identity do so while engaging in a kind of performance, betraying their claims about authenticity. And the comparisons that are often drawn between drag queens and pantomime dames as a means to justify drag queens reading fairy tales and stories to young children does not hold up to scrutiny when we know the latter perform as the opposite sex and act in a way that is exaggerated, ridiculous and playful for humorous effect, chiefly because we know that what we are seeing is not to be taken seriously, is farcical at its heart and is fun for all of the family.
Drag queens, however, have a tradition of performing in adult-only environments, often making sexually explicit jokes and miming sexual acts. For obvious reasons, taking one’s children to the pantomime is not in any way comparable to subjecting them to ‘Drag Queen Story Hour’. But this is not the key point I wish to make here. Rather, it is that, in both instances, there is a degree of camp, and both are performers. We should be under no illusion that what they are doing is just that, and it is no accident that camp often appeals to, and is performed by, gay men. Sontag wrote:
The peculiar relation between Camp taste and homosexuality has to be explained. While it’s not true that Camp taste is homosexual taste, there is no doubt a peculiar affinity and overlap. Not all liberals are Jews, but Jews have shown a peculiar affinity for liberal and reformist causes. So, not all homosexuals have Camp taste. But homosexuals, by and large, constitute the vanguard – and the most articulate audience – of Camp.
And then notes in a subsequent parenthesis:
The analogy [between homosexuals and Jews] is not frivolously chosen. Jews and homosexuals are the outstanding creative minorities in contemporary urban culture. Creative, that is, in the truest sense: they are creators of sensibilities. The two pioneering forces of modern sensibility are Jewish moral seriousness and homosexual aestheticism and irony.
Regardless of what one thinks of the analogy, Sontag was not mistaken to argue that a Camp sensibility is often a homosexual one. But she would probably be non-plussed by the appropriation of Camp by these ideologically drag queens and Camp imitators, one of whom goes by the sleazy pseudonym, ‘Lil Miss Hot Mess’, and has encouraged children to shout, “Free Palestine!” A veil of playful innocence covers over attempts to advance nefarious political causes and to indoctrinate children with ideas they clearly know nothing about.
The irony here is that Israel who is the most tolerant and liberal nation in the Middle East, one where those who are gay or live alternative lifestyles can do so openly, which cannot be said about Gaza, whose violent, murderous and terrorist leaders would not tolerate such lifestyles and certainly would not subscribe to the belief that there are an infinite number of genders or that men parading around in sequins, make-up and dresses with over-sexualised pseudonyms should sit in a room with children. Aside from the intersectional politics, the flamboyant behaviour of these drag queens is a far cry from the politically incorrect sensibility of traditional Camp, which Sontag described as being “disengaged, depoliticized – or at least apolitical.” There is an aura of crudity and aggression which accompanies their veneer of nicety. It is frivolity trying to be serious, whereas Camp as Sontag understood it never took itself all too seriously.
With the proliferation of so-called Queer Theory, Camp has been taken too seriously. Attempts have been made to argue that reality is in fact “reality”, a construct that depends on perpetuating false binaries that oppressive those on the margins. Their conclusion is that all binaries should be deconstructed, and an entire spectrum of categories should be embraced as a way of allowing people’s “authentic” selves and “lived experiences” to be fully realized. As a consequence, all of the things that made Camp interesting are now treated as much a part of reality – or even more real – as the Earth orbiting the sun, which undermines the raison d’être of Camp in the first place and turns it into a tool of political ideology.
Queer theorists are not only busy deconstructing the reality of the present but the reality of the past. “Queer coding” enables them to discover that Joan of Arc may have in fact been “non-binary.” The anachronisms are bad enough, but so too are the impositions of meaning on texts and objects where there is no such meaning to be found. For Sontag, Camp was all about a sensibility that accompanies an experience of art, culture and so forth, but she would not have imposed meaning upon texts where there was no meaning to be found and did not demand anything from the sensibility she was describing.
What often passes for Camp 60 years on from Sontag’s publication is not really camp at all. A Camp sensibility may not be part of the present zeitgeist but, as Sontag demonstrates, it does not belong to one particular age. It runs through the ages in strange and peculiar ways, each time employing an ironic detachment from the world, though never denying the reality of it. At a time when ideologues run rampant in many of our cultural institutions, Camp – as Sontag understood it – is one useful refuge from those who use the term incorrectly and produce nothing that evokes that sensibility Sontag set out in her Notes. If we are to learn anything from Sontag – who “was strongly drawn to Camp, and almost as strongly offended by it” – we should not be too solemn about it. It is just a shame that proponents of modern Camp are so very serious about it.