The Easy Version of Susan Sontag Notes on Camp
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Considering this text, it's interesting to see how authors like Christian Kracht explore the hybridity of camp, a factor that Sontag underlines by stating that camp can be a partial aspect of an artwork - Kracht shows that camp is indeed political (Sontag was never right in claiming that it isn't) and that by using it partially, the effect of insecurity underlines the challenges of postmodern identities.
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To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up. - An Ideal Husband
I really wanted to buy this and I do not know why it took me so long to get it. The Met gala is kinda what pushed me to finally get it.
I adore simple pleasures.- A Woman Of No Importance
So I loooove Camp, I looove trash, I loooove weird shit. I love grotesque and over the top shit okay? Garbage brings me joy. Camp movies spark joy.
To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up. - An Ideal Husband
I really wanted to buy this and I do not know why it took me so long to get it. The Met gala is kinda what pushed me to finally get it.
I adore simple pleasures.- A Woman Of No Importance
So I loooove Camp, I looove trash, I loooove weird shit. I love grotesque and over the top shit okay? Garbage brings me joy. Camp movies spark joy.
"It's good because it's awful": After the 2019 Met Gala and its disastrous failure to represent camp (because a bunch of rich people will never be able to achieve camp on purpose), I found myself thinking about Susan Sontag's 1964 essay again. Even this brief text, which has been nigh-universally adopted as one of the most precise postmodern definitions of the word, skirts around
Well, somehow I accidentally deleted my entire review because the Goodreads mobile app sucks, so here we go: take two."It's good because it's awful": After the 2019 Met Gala and its disastrous failure to represent camp (because a bunch of rich people will never be able to achieve camp on purpose), I found myself thinking about Susan Sontag's 1964 essay again. Even this brief text, which has been nigh-universally adopted as one of the most precise postmodern definitions of the word, skirts around the edges without committing: camp is "the consistently aesthetic experience of the world," Sontag says, and describes it as "the answer to the problem [of] how to be a dandy in the age of mass culture." She identifies camp as "anti-serious," but fails to acknowledge the deeply rooted political history of camp, a major flaw in her essay.
Camp is a fashion movement, and it is highly political. The word and the movement in general are both strongly associated with queer people and queer art, more specifically with queer men. Although the fashion aspect is an important element of camp, camp is also a way of approaching the world—being ugly and off-putting, on purpose. A hyperfixation on beauty ruins art, in my opinion, and this was the core of what was wrong with the Met Gala: no one wanted to look bad. But camp is ugly at its core: overblown, ostentatious, it has to be grand to be truly camp. It has to be enthusiastically appalling, even horrifying. Often appropriately linked to theatrical fashion and the drama and passion associated with stage performances and drag, camp is a purposeful rejection of "stylish," "chic," "attractive," and the like, in favour of a dramatic, frivolous aesthetic: it's big, it's loud, it's colourful, it is above all fun.
Much like a peacock's tail feathers are not only flashy but also serving a purpose, camp is highly political. Whether it's the deliberate signaling of the expression of one's gender or sexuality at pride parades, 70s counterculture punk fashion intentionally flouting conventional straight-laced clothing, or teenage boys wearing skirts to protest an unfairly gendered dress code, fashion has a purpose beyond looking good: dressing unconventionally signals your membership to a particular group, in this case a marginalised one. Although the politics of camp mean that the movement deliberately turns its back on how one is "expected" to dress, camp is also strongly grounded in self-expression and self-decoration through the lens of fashion. It's those so-bad-it's-good movies, it's those attention-grabbing ugly outfits, it's those crazy hairstyles; think the UK punk movement, think visual kei, think the Phantom of the Opera musical, think everything John Waters has ever done. (John Waters was, notably, not invited to the Met Gala.)
There's something indescribably disconcerting from going to the Met's web page for the exhibition, reading the headline CAMP: NOTES ON FASHION, then scrolling down only slightly to read, "The exhibition is made possible by Gucci. Additional support is provided by Condé Nast."
To their credit, I do actually think the Met Museum itself presented the styles and history of camp in a much more nuanced and comprehensive way through their exhibit (the exhibit's page on their website has a direct, and unavoidable, reference to Pink Flamingos), but—well, even museums have to make money, and there's absolutely no way the überwealthy partygoers would be able to achieve camp. The irony of camp is that this careful and deliberate fashion choice results in a distinctly "unfashionable" look, which is not something these rich people would endure: glamour and camp overlap frequently, but have discrete functions. Camp is cheap and gaudy, and tickets to the Met Gala were US$35 thousand in 2019.
Maybe the irony of the 2019 Met Gala is that the failure to achieve anything even remotely resembling camp was actually, in and of itself... kind of camp?
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Nah.
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I was thrilled to find a hard copy of this essay for only £1 today as I've been meaning to read it for my dissertation anyway - can't argue with fate! I always enjoy Sontag's writing - she's so observant and articulate without ever getting bogged down in the jargon that plagues so many of my most-hated academics. I love so much of her take on camp, and she produces some incredible lines, like "The hallmark of Camp is the spirit of extravagance."
But I can't help but be aware that cultura
3.5 starsI was thrilled to find a hard copy of this essay for only £1 today as I've been meaning to read it for my dissertation anyway - can't argue with fate! I always enjoy Sontag's writing - she's so observant and articulate without ever getting bogged down in the jargon that plagues so many of my most-hated academics. I love so much of her take on camp, and she produces some incredible lines, like "The hallmark of Camp is the spirit of extravagance."
But I can't help but be aware that cultural attitudes towards Camp have evolved greatly since this essay was originally conceived and published in the 60s. There's a mainstreaming of certain aspects of Camp sensibility (think Glee), and Sontag's insistence that the best Camp is unintentional doesn't seem to hold weight these days when deliberate Camp arguably outweighs the unintentional. I mean, John Waters films are undeniably deliberately campy, and I just can't agree that they're "less satisfying" as a result of their self-awareness. I also found it odd how the relation between the LGBTQ community and Camp was thrown in only as an afterthought, when that's a relationship that I find vitally important in discussing Camp as a concept and aesthetic practice. You really can't disentangle the two. Finally, I thought it was bizarre that Sontag argued that Camp is "depoliticized - or at least apolitical". Camp's relation to the LGBTQ community makes it inherently political, in my eyes, and anyway I think that any aesthetic mode (or sensibility, as she puts it) that challenges the norms and gives "high culture" the finger is absolutely political. But again, so much about Camp has changed since the essay was written that I can chalk it up to cultural evolution.
Despite these criticisms, this is a beautifully-written essay which I will absolutely be referencing heavily in my dissertation.
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How Sontag could have thought that Camp is "depoliticized/apolitical" is honestly beyond me.
One Culture and the New Sensibility - 5/5
One of the most brilliant essays I've ever read in my life, to be honest. A cultural landmark.
How Sontag could have thought that Camp is "depoliticized/apolitical" is honestly beyond me.
One Culture and the New Sensibility - 5/5
One of the most brilliant essays I've ever read in my life, to be honest. A cultural landmark.
This was interesting and kind of fun, but often also quite redundant.
Overall, I liked it, but I didn't really enjoy it.
I wish it was kind of less preachy, had less of a "we have a superior taste than you" type of voice.
This was interesting and kind of fun, but often also quite redundant.
Overall, I liked it, but I didn't really enjoy it.
I wish it was kind of less preachy, had less of a "we have a superior taste than you" type of voice.
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It is excruciatingly hard to solidify the foundations of the concept and Sontag's essay creates more questions than answers.
The way I understand it, Camp has to be unique in itself. According to Susan Sontag, it transforms the experience. She also states that Camp sensibility is represented in androgynous elements, there's something feminine in men and masculine in women. There is sexuality but Camp does not arouse sexual desire. It can also be inferred from the essay that Camp is full of contrasting emotions. Sontag states that camp propagates double meaning, subject to double interpretation. Duplicity and contrasts are in the essence of Camp. Camp should also be smooth. Excessive effort is not acceptable in the nature of Camp. It can both be coarse and elegant. Vulgarity can be appreciated in camp, though its appreciation may change or evolve over time. Extravagance is a crucial aspect of camp, there's nothing too much or overly exaggerated.
Overall, there is no judgment but enjoyment in camp. It is stripped off all moral indignations; it is there for the refined taste to enjoy but not restricted to high culture. It is daring and controversial, both old-fashioned and Avant Garde. Its intensity fluctuates but it is well-balanced, thus creating an appealing reflection. Though subjective, it is widely appreciated. Lovely isn't it? But with all these criteria, what exactly is camp? It's quite difficult to give an example and I do not understand the examples given by Sontag, thus leaving you to decide:
Random examples of Camp according to Sontag:
Zuleika Dobson
Tiffany lamps
Scopitone films
The Brown Derby restaurant on Sunset Boulevard in LA
The Enquirer, headlines and stories
Aubrey Beardsley drawings
Swan Lake
Bellini's operas
Visconti's direction of Salome and 'Tis Pity She's a Whore
certain turn-of-the-century picture postcards
Schoedsack's King Kong
the Cuban pop singer La Lupe
Lynn Ward's novel in woodcuts, God's Man
the old Flash Gordon comics
women's clothes of the twenties (feather boas, fringed and beaded dresses, etc.)
the novels of Ronald Firbank and Ivy Compton-Burnett
stag movies seen without lust
I had no idea what 'Camp' is, and I was delighted when reading these 'jottings' as the author put it. I love diving into new entities, especially that lately I've been reading a lot about aesthetics and artifice.
However, I was disappointed with a chunk of the essay, when Sontag clearly took a general and stereotypical approach towards jews and homosexuals.
For i
I had no idea what 'Camp' is, and I was delighted when reading these 'jottings' as the author put it. I love diving into new entities, especially that lately I've been reading a lot about aesthetics and artifice.
However, I was disappointed with a chunk of the essay, when Sontag clearly took a general and stereotypical approach towards jews and homosexuals.
For instance, she writes that "Camp taste is homosexual taste", and that "homosexuals have pinned their integration into society on promoting the aesthetic sense". I find it demeaning to reduce a group of people to the cheesiest stereotype there is.
That was the first essay: Notes on 'Camp'. The second one: One Culture and the New Sensibility, was a less enjoyable read, although as interesting as the other. It mainly focuses on 'literary-artistic culture', as opposed to 'scientific culture' ; 'high' and 'low' / 'mass' or 'popular' culture. The author offers quite an interesting take on the matter.
"Camp is a certain mode of aestheticism. It is one way of seeing the world as an aesthetic phenomenon. That way, the way of Camp, is not in terms of beauty, but in terms of the degree of artifice, of stylization."
"It goes without saying that the Camp sensibility is disengaged, depoliticized - or at least apolitical."
"It (Camp) is the love of the exaggerated, the 'off', of things-being-what-they-are-not. The best example is in Art Nouveau, the most typical and fully developed Camp style."
"Camp is the consistently aesthetic experience of the world. It incarnates a victory of 'style' over 'content', 'aesthetics' over 'morality', of 'irony' over 'tragedy'."
PS: It was brought to my attention that Camp was the theme of the 2019's annual Met Gala. If you google the event, you'll be amazed by what you'll find.
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These two essays were a really great look at Camp as a concept and aesthetic, as well as the development and distinction between art and science in the modern world. Susan Sontag manages to say so much in so little words, and I flew through both of these essays and managed to get a lot out of them in just 55 pages. Definitely would recommend this one if you're interested!
"Camp is the answer to the problem: how to be dandy in the age of mass culture."These two essays were a really great look at Camp as a concept and aesthetic, as well as the development and distinction between art and science in the modern world. Susan Sontag manages to say so much in so little words, and I flew through both of these essays and managed to get a lot out of them in just 55 pages. Definitely would recommend this one if you're interested!
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The second essay "One Culture and the New Sensibility" muses on the differences between science-minded (or cultured) and art-minded (or cultured) individuals and movements, and comes to the conclusion that they aren't so different and aren't mutually exclusive.
What is camp? It's surely not this essay. 'Notes on Camp' is far too clear, systematic, and serious to warrant that. What's camp is that classic portrait of Susan Sontag on the cover of 'Against Interpretation'. That's camp insofar as we have a photograph of an extravagantly beautiful young ingénue with a Dorothy Parker smile looking askance as a means to introduce a landmark work of postmodern criticism. It's the juxtaposition of grand philosophy and the image of a glamorous young bobbed girl to pitch it. But one last element is needed to make it truly camp: the book didn't quite live up to its ambition. As a Nietzschean take on pop culture in praise of surfaces, they never quite match her French masters. Overall, her essays are too derivative. More journalistic than philosophical. Yet one could well imagine choosing her approach over others thanks to her diva-like persona which goes hand-in-hand with her role as exasperated public intellectual. And sure, the conscious distastefulness of valuing a woman's intellectual work for her cover-girl shot is a bit naughty, as is the wilful nostalgia of being captivated by a black and white of a pin-up who has grown old and died: a kind of Emily Brontë necro-camp.
What isn't camp? In the two essays which comprise this tiny volume, an influential conception of contemporary bildung is developed: camp culture is the amalgam of the high and the low which eschews earnestness in favour of prising out delicate sensibilities from a careful bricolage of cultural inputs. Camp is careful insofar as one must always be on the look-out not to affirm the obvious. Be too quick to praise the best and you become dry as a stick. Simply put, 'camp is dandyism in the age of mass culture' (p27). The dandy must know which exquisite cultural artifacts to value, and which moral censures to flout. The values in the epigrams woven into Wilde's writing cannot be lived without contradiction, and the tensions resulting from this should be experienced as a liberation as opposed to the sturm und drang of the beautiful soul. Replace artifacts and morals with products and causes and you have camp.
If, as Sontag suggests, camp sensibility, as precursor to postmodern hip, emanated largely from Jews and homosexuals in metropolitan centres, today it has become divorced from physical location or specific oppressed group. To each their own camp, but in the process, the organic style has run aground against the 0/1 of code. The shifting performances of gender and the necessary ambiguities of wit are hard to maintain in a culture where everything is recorded, where affiliations must be explicit, and where a love of pop is no longer ironic. Edgy and insecure, it is the assertion of the bad for moral grounds. Camp today is just no fun.
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It's my very favorite thing about wrestling-- the OTT gimmicks, the enthusiastic ploys (i.e. the "slowmo bomb" at 321 Battle that had performers and audience alike acting out their various roles in full on slow motion), the exaggerated emotions, etc.
It's my very favorite horror m
I knew I enjoyed campy things, but I only really understood the idea of Camp in a nebulous sort of way. After having read this, I can confidently say that Camp is exactly what I love about all the things I love the most.It's my very favorite thing about wrestling-- the OTT gimmicks, the enthusiastic ploys (i.e. the "slowmo bomb" at 321 Battle that had performers and audience alike acting out their various roles in full on slow motion), the exaggerated emotions, etc.
It's my very favorite horror movies-- why I thought the first Prom Night was a snoozefest, but Prom Night 2, with its animatronic carousel horse frothing at the mouth, its chalkboard turned into a black pool waiting to suck in its terrified lead, its rattling chest of doom, delighted me.
It's why I love the Fast and the Furious movies such an ungodly amount, with their ridiculously hulking men, sky jumping cars, and over earnestness.
It's the combination of the extravagant mixed with an abundance of passion and exuberance. It's ridiculousness that invites you too enjoy, have fun, to let go of your cynicism.
I'm still digesting for now, but I plan to revisit this very soon 😊
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content warnings
- queer erasure
review
Oh boy, this one. Sontag has been highly rated by me in the past (specifically for her takes in Regarding the Pain of Others) but this one just was not it. I thoroughly enjoyed the concept of steering away from a traditional essay and the accessibility the format permits. That being said, the arguments were stale at best and problematic at worst and more often than not they were claims with no sources or reasoning behind them, leaving me with man
content warnings
- queer erasure
review
Oh boy, this one. Sontag has been highly rated by me in the past (specifically for her takes in Regarding the Pain of Others) but this one just was not it. I thoroughly enjoyed the concept of steering away from a traditional essay and the accessibility the format permits. That being said, the arguments were stale at best and problematic at worst and more often than not they were claims with no sources or reasoning behind them, leaving me with many questions rather than answers. Apart from that, Sontag's claims about Camp is simply elitist and erases the queer and non-white impact almost completely which is incredibly problematic and also untrue. The fact that this has become close to a definition of camp is a pity.
The second essay was literally so boring that I did not finish it.
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camp taste identifies with what it is enjoying. people who share this sensibility are not laughing at the thing they label as 'a camp', they're enjoying it.
Camp is a /tender/ feeling camp taste is a kind of love, love for human nature. it relishes, rather than judges, the little triumphs and akward intensities of 'character'...
camp taste identifies with what it is enjoying. people who share this sensibility are not laughing at the thing they label as 'a camp', they're enjoying it.
Camp is a /tender/ feeling ...more
Psychologizing Jews and gay people in generalizing and stereotypical ways: decidedly less cool!
- 'One Culture and the New Sensibility' - probably radical when published, now thoroughly internalized. - 'Notes on 'Camp'' - fantastic, quotable, much food for thought.
- 'One Culture and the New Sensibility' - probably radical when published, now thoroughly internalized. ...more
Her books include four novels, The Benefactor, Death Kit, The Volcano Lover, and In Am
Susan Sontag was born in New York City on January 16, 1933, grew up in Tucson, Arizona, and attended high school in Los Angeles. She received her B.A. from the College of the University of Chicago and did graduate work in philosophy, literature, and theology at Harvard University and Saint Anne's College, Oxford.Her books include four novels, The Benefactor, Death Kit, The Volcano Lover, and In America; a collection of short stories, I, etcetera; several plays, including Alice in Bed and Lady from the Sea; and nine works of nonfiction, starting with Against Interpretation and including On Photography, Illness as Metaphor, Where the Stress Falls, Regarding the Pain of Others, and At the Same Time. In 1982, Farrar, Straus & Giroux published A Susan Sontag Reader.
Ms. Sontag wrote and directed four feature-length films: Duet for Cannibals (1969) and Brother Carl (1971), both in Sweden; Promised Lands (1974), made in Israel during the war of October 1973; and Unguided Tour (1983), from her short story of the same name, made in Italy. Her play Alice in Bed has had productions in the United States, Mexico, Germany, and Holland. Another play, Lady from the Sea, has been produced in Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany, and Korea.
Ms. Sontag also directed plays in the United States and Europe, including a staging of Beckett's Waiting for Godot in the summer of 1993 in besieged Sarajevo, where she spent much of the time between early 1993 and 1996 and was made an honorary citizen of the city.
A human rights activist for more than two decades, Ms. Sontag served from 1987 to 1989 as president of the American Center of PEN, the international writers' organization dedicated to freedom of expression and the advancement of literature, from which platform she led a number of campaigns on behalf of persecuted and imprisoned writers.
Her stories and essays appeared in newspapers, magazines, and literary publications all over the world, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, Art in America, Antaeus, Parnassus, The Threepenny Review, The Nation, and Granta. Her books have been translated into thirty-two languages.
Among Ms. Sontag's many honors are the 2003 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the 2003 Prince of Asturias Prize, the 2001 Jerusalem Prize, the National Book Award for In America (2000), and the National Book Critics Circle Award for On Photography (1978). In 1992 she received the Malaparte Prize in Italy, and in 1999 she was named a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government (she had been named an Officier in the same order in 1984). Between 1990 and 1995 she was a MacArthur Fellow.
Ms. Sontag died in New York City on December 28, 2004.
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Source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36436100-notes-on-camp
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