camp

camp, style and aesthetic sentiment that values the extravagant, the ironic, and the flamboyant and typically bridges the gap between high and popular culture. Blending artifice and affectation with the absurd and outrageous, camp subverts conventional ideas about artistic taste, seriousness, and substance. The expression “so bad it’s good” springs directly from the camp aesthetic. In marginalized communities, particularly in queer culture, camp serves as a form of resistance to the mundanity of the status quo and an empowering means of self-expression. Camp takes on many forms, but its prime examples are often referred to as “camp classics,” especially films that became cult favorites precisely because of their exercise in bad taste, such as What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) and Showgirls (1995). Among the celebrities who became famous for their camp appeal are Liberace, Bette Midler, John Waters, and RuPaul.

Camp’s foundations

The first known uses of camp in this context date to the 19th century, when it appeared in several British sources in reference to men dressed in women’s clothing. It has been proposed that camp derives from the 17th-century French colloquialism se camper, meaning “to strike a pose boldly or provocatively.” The Oxford English Dictionary defines camp as “Esp. of a man or his mannerisms, speech, etc.: flamboyant, arch, or theatrical, esp. in a way stereotypically associated with some gay men.”

Indeed, queer culture is central to camp. This was personified early on in the style of 19th-century Irish poet, playwright, and novelist Oscar Wilde, whose cultivated posturing and sparkling witticisms made him a perfect spokesman of the Aesthetic movement, which celebrated art for art’s sake, a key tenet of camp.

Black LGBTQ+ culture was also a foundational influence on contemporary expressions of camp. Emerging in Harlem, New York City, in the 1860s, drag balls provided a space for the Black LGBTQ+ community to gather and perform. In the 1980s and ’90s these balls gained national attention with the popularity of the documentary Paris Is Burning and Madonna’s music video for her song “Vogue” (both 1990), which feature Black and Latinx drag queens and dancers, such as Pepper LaBeija, Willi Ninja, and José Xtravaganza. Their exuberant performance of gender identity, high fashion, and classic cinema incorporated the theatricality that is central to camp. Importantly, the ballroom scene laid the foundation for the superstar drag queens of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Among the first of these drag queens to have a mainstream influence was RuPaul, whose 1992 dance club anthem “Supermodel (You Better Work)” celebrates the creative impulses behind camp.

What is camp?

In 2019 “Camp: Notes on Fashion” was selected as the theme for the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute Benefit, commonly known as the Met Gala. Although this event helped to bring camp’s sensibility into mainstream consciousness, many fashion and culture journalists struggled to define it. The New York Times, Time, and Vogue published articles asking the question, “What is camp?” Many of their definitions referred back to American writer Susan Sontag’s seminal 1964 essay, “Notes on ‘Camp,’ ” in which she writes:

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.

Sontag defines camp, in part, as “the consistently aesthetic experience of the world. It incarnates a victory of ‘style’ over ‘content,’ ‘aesthetics’ over ‘morality,’ of irony over tragedy.” Since the publication of Sontag’s essay, other definitions of camp have distinguished it from mere kitsch, arguing that camp is self-aware about its intent. Sontag alluded to this in her essay, declaring, “The pure examples of Camp are unintentional; they are dead serious.”

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Camp classics in film

A key film in the canon of camp is Robert Aldrich’s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, two of the most famous movie stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age who were entwined in a decades-long personal and professional feud. In the film they were cast as the Hudson sisters: the jealous former child star Baby Jane (Davis) and the passive-aggressive Blanche (Crawford), whose acting career eclipsed her sister’s until Blanche became paralyzed in an accident. As the two aging divas cling to their faded fame, Jane terrorizes Blanche in the decaying mansion that is their home. Nearly every detail of the movie—from Davis’s macabre makeup to the sisters’ catty exchanges, is heralded as high camp.

With unabashedly trashy films that include Pink Flamingos (1972), Polyester (1981), Hairspray (1988), and Cry-Baby (1990), American filmmaker John Waters is widely referred to as the “King of Camp.” Waters’s canon is a knowing celebration of bad taste, fully conscious of its place as camp. Featuring the acting talents of larger-than-life drag diva Divine, former teen porn star Traci Lords, heiress-turned-leftist-radical Patty Hearst, and fading 1950s heartthrob Tab Hunter, Waters’s work subverts the idea of highbrow culture by reveling in the tackiest, basest, and lowest of the low.

Dutch filmmaker Paul Verhoeven’s tawdry Showgirls, starring Elizabeth Berkley as Las Vegas exotic dancer Nomi Malone, is likewise held up as a camp classic. The movie was panned by critics and was a box office flop, but it was later embraced by fans, particularly in the LBGTQ+ community, for its over-the-top performances, melodramatic plot, and exaggerated style. In a 2007 WWD interview, Verhoeven said of the film, “I was never convinced that I made a really bad movie. I was taking my cues from Vegas itself, and I felt that in a very hyperbolic way, I was portraying the absurdity of a certain American reality.”

The reality of camp

Camp is not limited to fiction. Documentaries such as the Maysles brothers’ Grey Gardens (1975) and many reality TV series have been embraced as camp. The Real Housewives franchise, introduced on the cable TV network Bravo in 2006, was originally conceived as a documentary series set in Orange county, California, offering an “authentic look” behind the gates of one of the wealthiest communities in the United States. The series later expanded to other cities and developed into one of the most meaningful 21st-century examples of camp. Featuring casts of real-life women wealthy housewives, complete with glam squads providing hair, makeup, and styling, the show’s episodes regularly devolve into drink throwing and table-flipping.

Camp in music

A wide range of musicians also fit the camp sentiment. Though their fashions and musical styles differ, what they share is an enthusiasm for artifice, excess, and flamboyance. These entertainers include American pianist Liberace, of the sequined capes, massive pompadour, and mirrored grand pianos; and American pop singer and actress Cher, who rejected convention for decades, clad in gaudy rhinestones, feathers, and fishnet bodysuits, and who has been referred to as the “Queen of Camp.” The latter title has also been used to describe American actress and singer Bette Midler, whose tacky stage persona was honed early on in her career in a cabaret act performed in gay bathhouses. Midler’s repertoire has included disco tunes delivered in ridiculous costumes, such as the mermaid suit worn by her Delores DeLago persona.

Other American musical artists who perfected the camp aesthetic include pop superstar Prince, whose style favored high heels, extravagantly ruffled shirts, and flares, and country singer-songwriter Dolly Parton, whose huge blonde wigs and rhinestone-encrusted denim outfits represent an intentionally extreme performance of femininity. Perhaps summing up the delicious irony of camp, Parton has famously remarked, “It costs a lot of money to look this cheap!”