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SUSAN SONTAG
"One must have a heart of stone
to read the death of Little Nell
without laughing."
-In conversation.
54. The experiences of Camp are based on the great discovery
that the sensibility of high culture has no monopoly upon refinement.
Camp asserts that good taste is not simply good taste; that there
exists, indeed, a good taste of bad taste. (See Genet on
this
in
Notre Dame des Fleurs.)
This discovery is very liberating. The man
who insists on high and serious pleasures
is
depriving himself of
pleasure; he continually restricts what he can enjoy;
in
the constant
exercise of his good taste he will eventually price himself out of the
market, so to speak. Here Camp taste supervenes upon good taste
as a daring and witty hedonism. It makes the man of good taste
cheerful, where before he ran the risk of being chronically frustrated.
It is good for the digestion.
55. Camp taste is, above all, a mode of enjoyment, of apprecia–
tion-not judgement. Camp is generous. It wants to enjoy. It only
seems like malice, cynicism. (Or, if it is cynicism, it's not a ruthless
but a sweet cynicism.) Camp taste doesn't propose that it's in bad
taste to be serious; it doesn't sneer at someone who succeeds in being
seriously dramatic. What it does is to find the success in certain pas–
sionate failures.
56. Camp taste is a kind of love, love for human nature. It
relishes, rather than judges, the little triumphs and awkward in–
tensities of "character." ... Camp taste identifies with what it
is
enjoying. People who share this sensibility are not laughing at the
thing they label as "a camp," they're enjoying it. Camp is a
tender
feeling.
(Here, compare Camp with much of Pop art, which-when it
is not just Camp-embodies an attitude which is related, but still
very different. Pop Art is more flat and more dry, more serious, more
detached, ultimately nihilistic.)
57. Camp taste nourishes itself on the love that has gone into
certain objects and personal styles. The absence of this love
is
the
reason why' such kitsch items as
Peyton Place
and the Tishman
Building can't
be
Camp.
58. The ultimate Camp statement: it's good
because
it's aw–
ful.... But one can't always say that. Only under certain conditions,
which I've tried to sketch in these notes.