Notes on "Camp" written by Susan Sontag (1939-2004) in 1964, defines camp as the aesthetic of sophistication and theatricality where the individual does not think about himself in terms of a subject but in terms of posture. This sensitivity sees the world as a setting where one has to give oneself an acting role. For this, archetypes derived from the mass culture, offer a vast choice of registers and characters that can be appropriated. This game of mimesis operates via flamboyant artefacts, such as ornaments, jewellery and make-up. Games of seduction make bodies erotic in such a way so as to perturb all social references that distinguish between masculine and feminine genders. When these codes become interchangeable, the possibilities to transform oneself can be multiplied, allowing ambiguity and reversing of situations.
The absence of gravity suspends all moral reality, but also any position. Originating from a form of naivety rather than a conscious or lucid strategy, the awkwardness of Camp attitude is full of enthusiasm. Fantasy makes up for failure due to excessive eccentricity which constantly shifts the bearings between good and bad taste.
The expression "Camp", considered in the fifties as an insult to homosexuals, became the following decade a form of revendication assumed by the “gay” community. The eccentric behaviour adopted by this minority group allows the construction of a singular identity beyond all dominant models. Hence, for an author, this paradoxical dimension offers subversive arms that can be used to go beyond categorisations and clichés.
The independent movie maker Jack Smith (1932-1989) uses this attitude in order to defy the flashy arrogance of industrial productions. With limited means, he produces a first movie in 1951 Buzzards over Baghdad. In the early sixties, he produces his major movies: Flaming Creatures (1962) and Normal Love (1963). Embracing some of Hollywood’s archetypes, such as the Mummy, the pin-up or the Siren, transvestite actors try to ape their models with trinkets and stereotyped attitudes. Scenes are improvised until the game is exhausted and the limits are reached. Yet, this somehow bizarre accumulation of grotesque fetishes stops us from fully gripping the proposed model, thereby frustrating the fascination of great myths established in an insubstantial setting.
Rejecting efforts of hard work, this frivolous attitude creates a jubilatory effect: the free and easy way Smith approaches technical know-how reflects the predominance of spontaneous acts. The camera in motion stops at random moments and focuses on insignificant details, putting off extraordinary action in order to examine details attentively.
If the ingenuity of Jack Smith, Andy Warhol, Ron Rice and Ken Jacobs’s movie production still offered vital space within a context of systematized production, this discovery fades away with the arrival of postmodernism. From the moment "Camp" sensitivity becomes a codified and controlled aesthetic, it loses its lightness and sense of ambivalence and sees itself reduced to its own stereotypes.
Text: Geneviève Loup
