Camp (style)

Camp is an aesthetic style and sensibility that regards something as appealing because of its bad taste and ironic value.^[1] Camp aesthetics disrupt many of modernism's notions of what art is and what can be classified as high art by inverting aesthetic attributes such as beauty, value, and taste through an invitation of a different kind of apprehension and consumption.^[2]

Camp can also be a social practice and function as a style and performance identity for several types of entertainment including film, cabaret, and pantomime. Where high art necessarily incorporates beauty and value, camp necessarily needs to be lively, audacious and dynamic. The visual style is closely associated with gay culture.^[2]

Camp art is related to and often confused with kitsch and things with camp appeal may be described as cheesy. In 1909, Oxford English Dictionary defined camp as "ostentatious, exaggerated, affected, theatrical; effeminate or homosexual"^[3] behavior, and by the middle of the 1970s, camp was defined by the college edition of Webster's New World Dictionary as "banality, mediocrity, artifice, [and] ostentation ... so extreme as to amuse or have a perversely sophisticated appeal".^[4] The American writer Susan Sontag's essay Notes on "Camp" (1964) emphasized its key elements as: "artifice, frivolity, naïve middle-class pretentiousness, and shocking excess".^[5]

^ Babuscio (1993, 20), Feil (2005, 478), Morrill (1994, 110), Shugart and Waggoner (2008, 33), and Van Leer (1995)
^ ^a ^b Kerry Malla (January 2005). Roderick McGillis (ed.). "Between a Frock and a Hard Place: Camp Aesthetics and Children's Culture". Canadian Review of American Studies. 35 (1): 1–3. Retrieved 10 October 2019.
^ Gipson, Ferren (23 April 2019). "Art Matters podcast: an introduction to the camp aesthetic | Art UK". Art UK. Retrieved 14 October 2022.
^ Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language, 1976 edition, sense 6, [Slang, orig., homosexual jargon, Americanism] banality, mediocrity, artifice, ostentation, etc. so extreme as to amuse or have a perversely sophisticated appeal
^ Harry Eiss (11 May 2016). The Joker. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 26. ISBN 978-1-4438-9429-6.

[1] Babuscio (1993, 20), Feil (2005, 478), Morrill (1994, 110), Shugart and Waggoner (2008, 33), and Van Leer (1995)

[MallaMcGillis2005-2] Kerry Malla (January 2005). Roderick McGillis (ed.). "Between a Frock and a Hard Place: Camp Aesthetics and Children's Culture". Canadian Review of American Studies. 35 (1): 1–3. Retrieved 10 October 2019.

[3] Gipson, Ferren (23 April 2019). "Art Matters podcast: an introduction to the camp aesthetic | Art UK". Art UK. Retrieved 14 October 2022.

[4] Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language, 1976 edition, sense 6, [Slang, orig., homosexual jargon, Americanism] banality, mediocrity, artifice, ostentation, etc. so extreme as to amuse or have a perversely sophisticated appeal

[Eiss2016-5] Harry Eiss (11 May 2016). The Joker. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 26. ISBN 978-1-4438-9429-6.

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