Concept

Camp (style)

Overview

Camp is an aesthetic and sensibility that regards something as appealing or amusing because of its heightened level of artifice, affectation and exaggeration, especially when there is also a playful or ironic element. Camp is historically associated with LGBTQ culture and especially gay men. Camp aesthetics often disrupted modernist understandings of high art by inverting traditional aesthetic judgements of beauty, value, and taste, and inviting a different kind of aesthetic engagement.

Camp art is distinct from but often confused with kitsch. The big difference between camp and kitsch is mainly that camp is aware of its artificiality and pretense.

The American writer Susan Sontag emphasized camp's key elements as embracing frivolity, excess and artifice. Art historian David Carrier notes that, despite these qualities, it is also subversive and political. Camp may be sophisticated, but subjects deemed camp may also be perceived as being dated, offensive or in bad taste. Camp may also be divided into high and low camp (i.e., camp arising from serious versus unserious matters), or alternatively into naive and deliberate camp (i.e., accidental versus intentional camp). While author and academic Moe Meyer defines camp as a form of "queer parody", journalist Jack Babuscio argues it is a specific "gay sensibility" which has often been "misused to signify the trivial, superficial and 'queer'".

Camp, as a particular style or set of mannerisms, may serve as a marker of identity, such as in camp talk, which expresses a gay male identity. This camp style is associated with incongruity or juxtaposition, theatricality, and humour, and has appeared in film, cabaret, and pantomime. Both high and low forms of culture may be camp, but where high art incorporates beauty and value, camp often strives to be lively, audacious and dynamic. Camp can also be tragic, sentimental and ironic, finding beauty or black comedy even in suffering. The humour of camp, as well as its frivolity, may serve as a coping mechanism to deal with intolerance and marginalization in society.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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But now, returning from the pursuit after having plundered Caesar's camp, Brutus wondered that he could not see Cassius's tent standing high, as it was wont, and appearing above the rest, nor other things appearing as they had been; for they had been immediately pulled down and pillaged by the enemy upon their first falling into the camp. But some that had a quicker and longer sight than the rest acquainted Brutus…
Plutarch, Plutarch
Names Camp several times; opens on Camp.
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XII. But can we be equally safe among Antonius's piratical crew? We cannot; or, even if the rest can, I do not believe that I can. What will be the case if we are not to confer out of the camp? What camp is to be chosen for the conference? He will never come into our camp:--much less will we go to his. It follows then, that all demands must be received and sent to and fro by means of letters. We then shall be in our…
Marcus Tullius Cicero, The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4
Names Camp several times; states what Camp is.
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But as these principles are too disinterested and too difficult to support, it is requisite to govern men by other passions, and animate them with a spirit of avarice and industry, art and luxury. The camp is, in this case, loaded with a superfluous retinue; but the provisions flow in proportionately larger. The harmony of the whole is still supported, and the natural bent of the mind being more complied with…
David Hume, Hume's Political Discourses
States what Camp is; names Camp several times.
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Philosophers who discussed Camp (style)

Susan Sontag

Related ideas

Place in the tradition

Part of Outline of aesthetics.

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