What is gay or lesbian camp
Published in:March-April 2013 issue.
UNTIL RECENTLY, it seemed that camp was and would last a phenomenon of the 20th century—camp, in all its manifestations: as a theory of æsthetics and style; as coded communication and performativity; as a site of humor and parody; as provocative social commentary. But if camp as a mode of artistic utterance has fallen dormant, it remains a category favored by queer theorists to capture a certain modality of homosexual art and experience of the past. The latest is David Halperin in a recently published book, How to be Gay (2012). The book contains an entire chapter devoted to unpacking the elusive sense and significance of camp. But before looking at Halperin’s analysis of camp, a brief history of the synonyms seems necessary.
In evidence, the word “camp” has an extensive three-and-a-half-century history that began in 1671. Mark Booth traced the etymology of camp in an essay “Campe-Toi! On the Origins and Definitions of Camp” in the anthology Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Demonstrating Subject—A Reader (1999). He found the earliest known reference to camp in a play, Molière’s Les Fourberies de Scapin (1671), in which a nature advises the followin
In a video promoting her song “Curious,” the singer and dancer Hayley Kiyoko mouths the words to the girls who, she explains, are “uncomfortable with liking girls even though they do.” It’s same parts love song and ballad of exasperation. The 27-year-old Kiyoko rolls her eyes; she vamps and goofs. She hits all of the same beats as the dancers surrounding her but with an amplified, hilarious affect, as if she’s sniggering and pointing to all the trouble they’re going to and saying: isn’t all this fuss silly? But look how good I am at it.
Kiyoko’s video fits into my working theory of what I call “dyke camp.” Dyke camp is not camp as we grasp it, the aesthetic sensibility derived from the male lover community that glorifies kitsch and irony; the camp of Priscilla Queen of the Desert and Rita Hayworth, Bette Davis, and RuPaul. Rather, it’s a movement directed, for the first time, not by the tastes of queer men but gay women: a specific brand of humor, manners, and sensibilities guided by lesbian identity.
Susan Sontag was the first person to attempt to properly define camp, in her seminal 1964 ess
In the summer of 2015, I worked as a camp counselor in northern Michigan. It was one of the most enriching summers of my life.
Despite the overriding positive memories, when I reflect on that summer, I linger troubled by the gender divisions and enforced heteronormativity I observed daily at camp. Almost everything at camp was divided by gender binary, from meal times to evening activities. I led a cabin of teenage boys, many of whom reminded me of myself at that age; they had a propensity for pop tune, reality TV and musical theater, and didn’t quite fit in with the other boys. I saw teenagers mocked and excluded for displaying flamboyant action amidst an underlying enforcement of what boys and girls should do and be like. Now, a generation on, I’m not confident that we acquire arrived at a place where queer teenagers can be completely comfortable in camp environments. But there are sure signs of hope.
Anyone who has lived the camp experience, be it over 10 years as a camper, or 10 weeks as a counselor, knows how particular it is, and how it stays with you forever. Whether it’s the first place you touch independent, learn a expertise that shapes your purpose o
WHAT IS CAMP? The very definition of the legal title remains up for grabs in a way that isn’t the case for other artistic styles. Or is it a “sensibility” (as Susan Sontag called it)? Or an attitude, a commentary upon other styles or cultural constructs, thus a “meta” style? As a mode of social satire, most definitions agree that camp involves exaggeration, artificiality, over-the-topness. A more culturally specific definition sees camp as a feature of gay and lesbian culture when it satirizes heterosexual conventions and heterosexism. An even narrower definition tends to equate camp with drag, female impersonation, cross-dressing, or gender bending à la Annie Lennox, Madonna, or Elton John.
The notion of camp that I grew up with when I came out in the prior 1960s was taught to me by a collective of female impersonators, flamboyant queens, and Jewish humorists. It was a camp that savagely mocked the rules and roles of straight society through gesture, language, voice, tone, pitch, fashion, exaggeration, and hyperbole. It was Miami Beach, art deco, Morris Lapidus’ Fontainebleau Hotel, Carmen Miranda, Desi Arnaz’ conga band, and Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers films fond of Flying Down t Gender a výzkum / Gender and Explore 2021, 22 (2): 45-70 | DOI: 10.13060/gav.2021.019 The purpose of this study is to explore the ways in which LGBTQ campers and counsellors are shaped by and shape summer camp. Summer camps are often the place where many US youth kickoff to learn about sex and sexuality. It is a unique and crucial spatial locale that is understudied in both sexualities and wider sociological enquiry. To better perceive the impact of summer camp experiences on sexualities, the study analyses retrospective interviews with former campers about their experiences at a summer camp, as well as podcasts and blogs. We address two key areas of camp life: sexual firsts and being openly queer at camp. Many campers are less likely to be out at camp than they are at abode. The exception to this is when there are evident staff or counsellors that are out at camp. Despite not being out, many LGBTQ campers have their first sexual ex
Queer at Camp: The Impact of Summer Camps on LGBTQ Campers in the United States