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NOTES ON CAMP
529
snob taste. But since no authentic aristocrats in the old sense exist
today to sponsor special tastes, who is the bearer of. this taste?
Answer: an improvised self-elected class, mainly homosexuals, who
constitute themselves as aristocrats of taste.
51. The peculiar relation between Camp taste and homosex–
uality has to be explained. While it's not true that Camp taste
is
homosexual taste, there is no doubt a peculiar affinity and overlap.
Not all liberals are Jews, but Jews have shown a peculiar affinity for
liberal and reformist causes. So, not all homosexuals have Camp
taste. But homosexuals, by and large, constitute the vanguard-and
the most articulate audience-of Camp. (The analogy is not frivol–
ously chosen. Jews and homosexuals are the two outstanding crea–
tive minorities in contemporary western culture. Creative, that is, in
the truest sense: they are creators of sensibilities. The two pioneering
forces of modern sensibility are Jewish moral seriousness and homo–
sexual estheticism and irony.)
52. The reason for the flourishing of the aristocratic posture
among homosexuals also seems to parallel the Jewish case. For every
sensibility is self-serving to the group that promotes it. Jewish liberal–
ism is a gesture of self-legitimization. So Camp taste which definitely
has something propagandistic about it. Of course, the propaganda
is in just the opposite direction. The Jews pinned their hopes for
integrating into modern society on promoting the moral sense. Homo–
sexuals have pinned their integration into society on promoting the
esthetic sense. Camp is a solvent of morality. It neutralizes moral
indignation, sponsors playfulness.
53. Nevertheless, even though homosexuals have been its van–
guard, Camp taste is much more than homosexual taste. Obviously,
its metaphor of life as theater is peculiarly suited as a justification
and projection of a certain aspect of the situation of homosexuals.
(The Camp insistence on not being "serious," on playing, also con–
nects with the homosexual's desire to remain youthful.) Yet one
feels that if homosexuals hadn't more or less invented Camp, some–
one else would. For the aristocratic posture with relation to culture
cannot die, though it may persist only in increasingly arbitrary and
ingenious ways. Camp is (to repeat) the relation to style
in
a time
in which the adoption of style-as such-has become altogether
questionable. (In the modern era, each new style, unless frankly
anachronistic, has come on the scene as an anti-style.)