Camp

Camp refers to styles, attitudes, and behaviors that are exaggerated, overstated, and ironic. Originally used in relation to the behavior of homosexual men, the term now refers to self-conscious acts of subversion and parody in the context of society's gender norms. The significance of camp to the study of gender surrounds the ways in which it can undermine social structures of domination and power. Camp performances in social spaces can often destabilize norms and beliefs surrounding the regulations that govern masculinity and femininity. To the extent that they have increasingly been associated with acts and performances that have questioned the sociocultural constructions of sexuality and gender, camp constitutes both a personal and political act. Explanations of the key definitions and contexts of camp draw on theories and illustrations to show how its complexities point to the social and political dimensions in which gender and sexuality are performed.

Disco; art nouveau; television shows Dynasty (U.S.), Prisoner Cell Block H (Australia), and The Avengers (U.K.); dramatist Oscar Wilde; the films of John Waters and Hollywood musicals of the 1930s; singers Diana Ross and Barry Manilow; entertainers Divine, Bette Midler, Grace Jones, and Barbra Streisand; actors Dirk Bogard, Mae West, and Judy Garland; the work of Andy Warhol and David Hockney; and productions such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show and the music and lyrics of Cole Porter all share one thing in common: They have all been defined or discussed in relation to camp style and aesthetics.

First cited in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1909, the term camp refers to behavior thought to be characteristic of male homosexuals. From the early 20th century, words such as affected, inauthentic, exaggerated, ostentatious, and theatrical have also been used to define camp, meaning that homosexuality is not the only context in which the word is used. Throughout the 20th century, camp has taken its many meanings from both high and popular culture. Historically, one aspect of camp is its relation to gender and sexuality via drag, in which male impersonators of women exaggerate the culture's construction of female behavior. In addition, the cultural domains of ballet, opera, and literature, on one hand, and those of soap opera, drag shows, and film melodramas, on the other, have all contributed to the ways in which camp has been articulated and defined.

At once a performance and a style, a way of acting and a mode of seeing, camp continues to inflect how culture is both produced and consumed today, though taking its meanings from the cultural contingencies and conditions that have shaped gender behavior in different historical periods. In the 1890s, for example, Oscar Wilde's inflection of camp, in his plays and his own life, was performed during a period in which certain gender behavior was considered unacceptable. Conversely, the camp style associated with the life and work of dramatist Joe Orton was self-consciously enacted in the 1960s to provoke moral outrage and unease.

These aforementioned listings are not intended as a definitive chronicle of camp genres or people. Rather, the list reflects the uneven and disparate features associated with camp stylizations. Camp does not privilege one style over another so much as it enables a multiplicity of unrelated aesthetic forms to intervene in and subvert the dominant culture. Today, the popular band The Scissor Sisters, for example, is self-consciously camp in ways that previous musical figures were not. Their work assimilates yet at the same time mocks earlier moments of popular camp seen in the performances of Elton John and David Bowie in the 1970s.

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