camp is essentially an aesthetic style that puts value into things that are usually seen as tacky or gaudy. camp is all about irony and appreciating things that are typically seen as having bad taste for the ironic value. camp is a way to disrupt what people’s ideas of artistic value are and to turn it on its head by appreciating things that wouldn’t normally be classified as artistic or being of high value. camp as an aesthetic style can be seen in john waters’ movies, in drag queens and performers like rupaul or liberace, and in music from people like cher and dusty springfield. politically, camp is about redefining the cultural meaning of things.
so the met gala’s theme this year is based on the essay “notes on camp” by susan sontag who was a really important critic and wrote about leftist ideologies, communism, and art. her work is studied in subjects like philosophy, feminist studies, and most importantly, queer studies. in her essay, sontag describes camp as the love of the exaggerated, and she goes on to list what is and isn’t deemed to be camp. one of the most important claims sontag makes is that pure camp is not intentional in its campiness. instead camp is more pure when an artist isn’t trying to be campy. camp is all about seriousness, but the failure in that seriousness is what makes it camp. camp is how art is seen or performed, not the art itself. sontag argues that camp is consuming art and popular culture through quotation marks, so a lamp isn’t a lamp but a “lamp” or a woman is a “woman” etc.
i’ve had to read a lot of academic pieces about camp as a feminist studies major, especially since my senior honors thesis is based in queer theory and incorporates camp themes. if you have any more questions or need me to explain anything better, let me know and i’ll gladly do so! ❤
