Notes on "Camp"

File:Against Interpretation (1966 1st ed dust jacket cover).jpg

"Notes on 'Camp'" is a 1964 essay by Susan Sontag that brought the aesthetic sensibility known as "camp" to mainstream consciousness.{{Cite youtube |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7J7ZBDKxFw |title=What Is Camp? These Sci-Fi Movies Explain |date=Jun 1, 2023 |language=en |publisher=Turner Classic Movies |series=Film 101 |access-date=2023-10-30}}

Background

"Notes on 'Camp{{'"}} was first published as an essay in 1964, and was her first contribution to the Partisan Review.{{cite journal |last1=Sontag |first1=Susan |title=Notes on 'Camp' |journal=Partisan Review |date=Fall 1964 |volume=31 |issue=4 |pages=515–530}} The essay attracted interest in Sontag.

The essay was republished in 1966 in Sontag's debut collection of essays, Against Interpretation.{{cite web |last=DeMott |first=Benjamin |authorlink=Benjamin DeMott |title=Lady on the Scene |work=The New York Times |date=January 23, 1966 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1966/01/23/archives/lady-on-the-scene-lady-on-the-scene.html |url-access=subscription |accessdate=April 14, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170714133425/https://www.nytimes.com/1966/01/23/books/booksspecial/sontag-interpretation.html|archive-date=July 14, 2017 |department=The New York Times Book Review |pages=5, 32 |volume=115 | issue = 39,446 }} The essay considers meanings and connotations of the word "camp".Sontag, Susan. Notes on "Camp". Penguin Random House (2018). {{ISBN|978-0241339701}}

Synopsis

The essay is structured with a brief introduction, followed by a list of 58 "notes" on what camp is, or might be.

Christopher Isherwood is mentioned in Sontag's essay: "Apart from a lazy two-page sketch in Christopher Isherwood's novel The World in the Evening (1954), [camp] has hardly broken into print." In Isherwood's novel two characters are discussing the meaning of camp, both High and Low. Stephen Monk, the protagonist, says:

You thought it meant a swishy little boy with peroxided hair, dressed in a picture hat and a feather boa, pretending to be Marlene Dietrich? Yes, in queer circles they call that camping. … You can call [it] Low Camp…High Camp is the whole emotional basis for ballet, for example, and of course of baroque art … High Camp always has an underlying seriousness. You can't camp about something you don't take seriously. You're not making fun of it, you're making fun out of it. You're expressing what’s basically serious to you in terms of fun and artifice and elegance. Baroque art is basically camp about religion. The ballet is camp about love …Isherwood, Christopher. The World in the Evening. University of Minnesota Press. 2012 p. 10 {{ISBN|9780099561149}}

Then examples are given: Mozart, El Greco and Dostoevsky are camp; Beethoven, Flaubert and Rembrandt are not.Isherwood, Christopher. The World in the Evening. University of Minnesota Press. 2012 {{ISBN|9780099561149}} p. 10-11

Legacy

The 2019 haute couture art exhibit Camp: Notes on Fashion, presented by the Anna Wintour Costume Center at New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art, was built around Sontag's essay by Andrew Bolton, the Wendy Yu Curator in Charge of the Costume Institute.{{Cite web |title=The Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute Presents "Camp: Notes on Fashion" for Its Spring 2019 Exhibition |url=https://www.vogue.com/article/costume-institute-2019-exhibition-camp-notes-on-fashion |access-date=2019-06-03 |website=Vogue |date=9 October 2018 |language=en}}{{Cite web |last=Bekhrad |first=Joobin |title=What does it mean to be camp? |url=https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20190503-what-does-it-mean-to-be-camp |access-date=2023-10-30 |website=www.bbc.com |language=en}}