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NOTES ON CAMP
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17. This comes out clearly
in
the most vulgar use of the word
Camp, as a verb, "to camp," something that people do. To camp
is a mode of seduction-one which employs mannerisms susceptible
of a double interpretation; gestures full of duplicity, with a witty
meaning for the cognoscenti and another, more solemn, for out–
siders. Equally and by extension, when the word becomes a noun,
when a person or a thing is "a camp," a duplicity is involved. Be–
hind the "straight" public sense in which the thing can be taken,
one has found a private witty experience of the thing.
"To be natural is such a very dif–
ficult pose to keep up."
-An Ideal Husband
18. One must distinguish between naive and deliberate Camp.
Pure Camp is always naive. Camp which knows itself to be Camp
is "camping," which is usually less satisfying.
19. The pure examples of Camp are unintentional; they are
dead serious. The Art Nouveau craftsman who makes a lamp with
a snake coiled around it is not kidding, nor is he trying to be
charming; he is saying, in all earnestness: Voila! the Orient! Pure
Camp-for instance, the numbers devised for the Warner Brothers
musicals of the early thirties
(42nd Street; The Golddiggers of
1933;
...
of
1935; ...
of
1937;
etc.) by Busby Berkeley-does not
mean
to be funny. Camping-say, the plays of Noel Coward-does. It
doesn't seem possible that much of the traditional opera repertoire
could be such satisfying Camp if the melodramatic absurdities of
most opera plots hadn't been taken seriously by their composers. One
doesn't need to know the artist's private intentions. The work tells
all. (Compare a typical nineteenth-century opera with Samuel
Barber's
Vanessa,
a piece of manufactured, calculated Camp, and
the difference is clear.)
20. Probably, intending to be campy is always harmful. The
perfection of
Trouble in Paradise
and
The Maltese Falcon,
among
the greatest Camp movies ever made, comes from the effortless
smooth way
in
which tone is maintained. This is not so with such
famous would-be Camp films of the fifties as
All About Eve
and
Beat the Devil.
These more recent movies have their fine moments,
but the first is so slick and the second so hysterical; they want so