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NOTES ON
CAMP
117
That way, the way of Camp, is not in tenns of beauty, but in tenns
of style.
2. To emphasize style is to slight content, or to introduce an
attitude which is neutral with respect to content. It goes without
saying that the Camp sensibility
it
disengaged, depoliticized-or at
least apolitical.
3. Not only
is
there a Camp vision, a Camp way of looking at
things. Camp is as well a quality discoverable
in
objects and the
behavior of persons. There are "campy" movies, clothes, furniture,
popular songs, novels, people, buildings. . . . This distinction
is
im–
portant. True, the Camp eye has the power to transform experience.
But not everything can be seen as Camp. It's not
all
in
the
eye
of
the beholder.
4. Random examples of items which are part of the canon
of Camp:
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
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
5. Camp taste has an affinity for certain
arts
rather than
others. Clothes, furniture,
all
the elements of visual decor, for in–
stance, make up a large part of Camp. For Camp art is often decora–
tive art, emphasizing texture, sensuous surface, and style at the
expense of content. Concert music, though, because
it
is content–
less, is rarely Camp. It offers no opportunity, say, for a contrast
between silly or extravagant content and rich form. . .. Sometimes
whole art fonns become saturated with Camp. Classical ballet,