CAMP: A sensibility that revels in artifice, stylization, theatricalization, irony, playfulness, and exaggeration rather than content, as Susan Sontag famously defined the term in her short essay, "Notes on 'Camp.'" According to Sontag, "Camp sensibility is disengaged, depoliticized—or at least apolitical"; however, some postmodernists, feminists, and queer theorists have explored the ways that camp (for example, the drag show) can trouble the belief that gender is "natural" or inherent, and can therefore work against heteronormativity. As Sontag argues, "Not all hom*osexuals have Camp taste. But hom*osexuals, by and large, constitute the vanguard—and the most articulate audience—of Camp." By exaggerating sexual characteristics and personality mannerisms, such queer-inflected camp could be said to contend that all behavior is really performative. Camp is also tied to postmodernism. As Sontag puts it, "Camp sees everything in quotation marks. It's not a lamp, but a 'lamp; not a woman, but a 'woman.'" In this way, the term resembles Linda Hutcheon's very similar understanding of parody, which Hutcheon offers as one of the major characteristics of postmodern art. (See the Hutcheon module on parody.) Camp's relationship to kitsch is a close one; camp could be said to be a self-conscious kitsch. As Sontag writes, "Many examples of Camp are things which, from a 'serious' point of view, are either bad art or kitsch," though she also acknowledges that "some art which can be approached as Camp... merits the most serious admiration and study." Sontag also distinguishes between "pure camp," which amounts to a kitsch that takes itself so seriously that we can now see it as hilarious (in other words, the camp sensibility is on the side of the audience not the author of the work), and "Camp which knows itself to be camp" and is, therefore, already making fun of itself. (Click here for Sontag's article.)
