| Title | : | Notes on Camp |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0241339707 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780241339701 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 55 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1964 |
These two classic essays were the first works of criticism to break down the boundaries between 'high' and 'low' culture, and made Susan Sontag a literary sensation.
Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Stevie Smith; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outerspace.
Notes on Camp Reviews
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not me reading all the books harry styles reccomended
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Read this on my phone off georgetown.edu while also watching Beverly Hills 90210, the one where Steve gets detention and sits on a cupcake and then gets sucked into the world of drag racing on the streets of Beverly Hills 90210. A nice night here, they were calling for five inches of snow, but it’s too warm and we are just getting rain. I didn’t want to go to work tomorrow and thought I’d get off because of the snow but it looks like we’re not getting any. My wife is snoring gently here in bed, and I’m still thinking about something Susan Sontag said about Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, how she remarked on it as being laughably bad because it’s so intellectually narrow while also so troublingly serious, there being no room for fantasy within the work, and from there, no room for fantasy in the mind of the reader. She’s wise there, and wise all over the place in this happy car crash of a think piece. Maybe I’ll call out sick. Andrea has a big problem in that episode too, she has been seeing a hypnotherapist for two months, hoping to learn the identity of a person in a silver truck who nearly ran her over. At the drag race, she must confront the devil themself. Brenda and Kelly go on a blind date with two college boys from Princeton, NJ (!!!) and Donna cuts her teeth on being the school DJ. I wonder what my wife is dreaming. I hope it’s a dream of great relief. Her mother got two tumors cut out of her lungs just a few days ago by a robot. And wait, somehow, the snow is sticking, at least to the cars. Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow and society will still be intact and I still won’t have to make anyone money. Susan Sontag says Oscar Wilde says, "Life is too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it." I hope they’re right.
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It makes me laugh thinking about the outfits from last May’s gala. I loved notes on camp, the second essay a bit less, but certainly worth the read. I love Sontag
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It's pretty fascinating how such a vague text that feverishly circles around a phenomenon that is admittedly hard or even impossible to define could become a key essay on postmodern culture by pointing out the changing nature of sophistication and the growing need for ambiguous concepts that encompass aspects of postmodernism (especially as the ability to deal with ambiguity seems to be in decline, maybe exactly because the postmodern world has become so overcomplex). Typically for Sontag, the many examples and tangents make it fun to read, but that also means that the text requires a certain willingness to indulge these tangents.
Considering this text, it's interesting to see how authors like
Christian Kracht explore the hybridity of camp, a factor that Sontag underlines by stating that camp can be a partial aspect of an artwork - Kracht shows that camp is indeed political (Sontag was never right in claiming that it isn't) and that by using it partially, the effect of insecurity underlines the challenges of postmodern identities. -
A MESS of an essay - stuffed with value judgements, hazy, and defining something even vaguer than what Sontag claims the purpose of the notes are- I love it with all my heart
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IL POTERE DELL'AMARE COSE BRUTTE.
Gioiellino assoluto.
Questo libricino da non perdere, che si legge nell'arco di un viaggio in treno e costa solo una sterlina contiene due bellissimi saggi di Susan Sontag che, qui, riflette sul "brutto che piace".
Il primo essay "Notes on camp" è un'illuminante riflessione sull'estetica camp e sul piacere dell'amare certi prodotti artistici che sono esagerati, pacchiani e brutti, ma carichi di un'anima sovversiva e portatori di una nuova sensibilità artistica.
Il secondo riflette sull'inutile lotta tra approccio scientifico e approccio artistico, tra cultura alta e cultura bassa e sul potere dell'arte di essere anche violenta e uncomfortable. Poche pagine che distruggono l'idea di divisione tra ciò che è avant-garde e ciò che è trash. D'altronde, è ipocrita il pittore colto di minimal art che è in grado di amare l'ultimo successo dell'estate? No, è semplicemente una persona che è stata in grado di avere un'ampia apertura sul mondo e un modo artistico di vivere la vita che abbatte le barriere dettate da una società sempre meno comunicante e sempre più snob. -
‘'The ultimate camp statement: it's good because it's awful.''
To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up. - An Ideal Husband
I really wanted to buy this and I do not know why it took me so long to get it. The Met gala is kinda what pushed me to finally get it.
I adore simple pleasures.- A Woman Of No Importance
So I loooove Camp, I looove trash, I loooove weird shit. I love grotesque and over the top shit okay? Garbage brings me joy. Camp movies spark joy.
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All of this went right over my head. I think I understood about one sentence in ten. Also, this really isn't an area of study I'm interested in at all. I got this simply because it was a theme for the Met Gala a few years ago and I thought it would be light-hearted and informative. It was not. I'm really not into philosophical debates on the merits of camp and it's aesthetic sensibility.
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Completely arbitrary, inconsistent, extravagant and a bit silly. Camp, in other words. I rather enjoyed it.
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‘It’s good because it’s awful’: After the 2019 Met Gala and its disastrous failure to represent camp (because a bunch of rich people will never be able to achieve camp on purpose), I found myself thinking about Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay again. Even this brief text, which has been nigh-universally adopted as one of the most precise postmodern definitions of the word, skirts around the edges without committing: camp is ‘the consistently aesthetic experience of the world,’ Sontag says, and describes it as ‘the answer to the problem [of] how to be a dandy in the age of mass culture.’ She identifies camp as ‘anti-serious,’ but fails to acknowledge the deeply rooted political history of camp, a major flaw in her essay.
Camp is a fashion movement, and it is highly political. The word and the movement in general are both strongly associated with queer people and queer art, more specifically with queer men. Although the fashion aspect is an important element of camp, camp is also a way of approaching the world—being ugly and off-putting, on purpose. A hyperfixation on beauty ruins art, in my opinion, and this was the core of
what was wrong with the Met Gala: no one wanted to look bad. But camp is ugly at its core: overblown, ostentatious, it has to be grand to be truly camp. It has to be enthusiastically appalling, even horrifying. Often appropriately linked to theatrical fashion and the drama and passion associated with stage performances and drag, camp is a purposeful rejection of ‘stylish,’ ‘chic,’ ‘attractive,’ and the like, in favour of a dramatic, frivolous aesthetic: it’s big, it’s loud, it’s colourful, it is above all fun.
Much like a peacock’s tail feathers are not only flashy but also serving a purpose, camp is highly political. Whether it’s the deliberate signaling of the expression of one’s gender or sexuality at pride parades, 1970s counter-culture punk fashion intentionally flouting conventional straight-laced clothing, or teenage boys wearing skirts to protest an unfairly gendered dress code, fashion has a purpose beyond looking good: dressing unconventionally signals your membership to a particular group, in this case a marginalised one. Although the politics of camp mean that the movement deliberately turns its back on how one is ‘expected’ to dress, camp is also strongly grounded in self-expression and self-decoration through the lens of fashion. It’s those so-bad-it’s-good movies, it’s those attention-grabbing ugly outfits, it’s those crazy hairstyles; think the UK punk movement, think visual kei, think the Phantom of the Opera musical, think everything John Waters has ever done. (John Waters was, notably, not invited to the Met Gala.)
There’s something indescribably disconcerting from going to
the Met’s web page for the exhibition, reading the headline CAMP: NOTES ON FASHION, then scrolling down only slightly to read, ‘The exhibition is made possible by Gucci. Additional support is provided by Condé Nast.’
To their credit, I do actually think the Met Museum itself presented the styles and history of camp in a much more nuanced and comprehensive way through their exhibit (the exhibit’s page on their website has a direct, and unavoidable, reference to Pink Flamingos), but—well, even museums have to make money, and there’s absolutely no way the überwealthy partygoers would be able to achieve camp. The irony of camp is that this careful and deliberate fashion choice results in a distinctly ‘unfashionable’ look, which is not something these rich people would endure: glamour and camp overlap frequently, but have discrete functions. Camp is cheap and gaudy, and tickets to the Met Gala were US$35 000 in 2019.
Maybe the irony of the 2019 Met Gala is that the failure to achieve anything even remotely resembling camp was actually, in and of itself... kind of camp?
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Nah. -
3.5 stars
I was thrilled to find a hard copy of this essay for only £1 today as I've been meaning to read it for my dissertation anyway - can't argue with fate! I always enjoy Sontag's writing - she's so observant and articulate without ever getting bogged down in the jargon that plagues so many of my most-hated academics. I love so much of her take on camp, and she produces some incredible lines, like "The hallmark of Camp is the spirit of extravagance."
But I can't help but be aware that cultural attitudes towards Camp have evolved greatly since this essay was originally conceived and published in the 60s. There's a mainstreaming of certain aspects of Camp sensibility (think Glee), and Sontag's insistence that the best Camp is unintentional doesn't seem to hold weight these days when deliberate Camp arguably outweighs the unintentional. I mean, John Waters films are undeniably deliberately campy, and I just can't agree that they're "less satisfying" as a result of their self-awareness. I also found it odd how the relation between the LGBTQ community and Camp was thrown in only as an afterthought, when that's a relationship that I find vitally important in discussing Camp as a concept and aesthetic practice. You really can't disentangle the two. Finally, I thought it was bizarre that Sontag argued that Camp is "depoliticized - or at least apolitical". Camp's relation to the LGBTQ community makes it inherently political, in my eyes, and anyway I think that any aesthetic mode (or sensibility, as she puts it) that challenges the norms and gives "high culture" the finger is absolutely political. But again, so much about Camp has changed since the essay was written that I can chalk it up to cultural evolution.
Despite these criticisms, this is a beautifully-written essay which I will absolutely be referencing heavily in my dissertation. -
Notes on Camp - 4/5
How Sontag could have thought that Camp is "depoliticized/apolitical" is honestly beyond me.
One Culture and the New Sensibility - 5/5
One of the most brilliant essays I've ever read in my life, to be honest. A cultural landmark. -
Yeah, I didn’t really ‘get’ this one. It was just a bunch of pretentious essays that left a sour taste in my mouth. It was mostly nonsense, and when it wasn’t nonsense, I totally disagreed with it.
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Did you ever wonder what "Camp" or campy really means? Sontag's essay "Notes on Camp" details 58 descriptors ending with "The ultimate Camp statement: it's good because it's awful...Of course, one can't always say that. Only under certain conditions, those of which I've tried to sketch in these notes." I'm not sure what the point of the essay is but it is mostly entertaining. The 2nd essay "On Culture and the New Sensibility" is on the gap between art and science and the difference between high and low culture. Ho hum.
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No voy a darle un rating a este libro porque me resulta muy difícil ratear un essay sobre algo que sé poco y nada.
A pesar de que me interesa la ropa, no se nada sobre lo que es el mundo de la moda o de la moda en sí, realmente. En parte por eso este ensayo me pareció super interesante. Aunque el concepto es medio abstracto y difícil de definir, creo que Susan Sontag logra ponerlo en términos relativamente simples, haciendo que para el final hasta los lectores menos educados entiendan, más o menos, lo que es Camp.
“But since no authentic aristocrats in the old sense exist today to sponsor special tastes, who is the baerer of this taste? Answer: an improvised self-elected class, mainly homosexuals, who constitute themselves as aristocrats of taste.”
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“Pero dado que hoy no existen auténticos aristócratas en el sentido antiguo para patrocinar gustos especiales, ¿quién es el principal portador de este gusto? Respuesta: una clase autoelegida improvisada, mayormente homosexuales, que se autoconstituyen como aristócratas del gusto.”
“The ultimate Camp statement: it’s good *because* it’s awful.”
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“La declaración definitiva de Camp: es bueno *porque* es horrible.” -
I still have very little grasp on what Camp is, but Sontag is a very interesting writer and both the included essays were rather enlightening nonetheless.
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I don’t think there’s anything Earth-shatteringly new to discover here, but a fascinating essay nonetheless!
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At this remove, the late critic/author Susan Sontag is probably best remembered for ILLNESS AS METAPHOR and AIDS AND ITS METAPHORS. However, this little essay had already put her on the map back in the Sixties, when it first appeared in book form as one chapter of AGAINST INTERPRETATION. Here's an inexpensive way to get Sontag's low-down on the emerging phenomenon known as "Camp," and why its artifacts can be viewed sympathetically, ironically, or dismissively. Since today's world is full of Camp, as witness the re-released Volkswagen Beetle, Elvira the bad-movie mocking queen, and Bruce Vilanch's t-shirts, it's great fun to check out "the source," Susan Sontag. The interested may also wish to ponder her **SPOILER** closing statement, that the modern world is shaped by Jewish moral earnestness and homosexual irony and playfulness.
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This was interesting and kind of fun, but often also quite redundant.
Overall, I liked it, but I didn't really enjoy it.
I wish it was kind of less preachy, had less of a "we have a superior taste than you" type of voice. -
"Camp is generous. It wants to enjoy."
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It’s Good Because It’s Awful: Susan Sontag’s controversial essay Notes on Camp has been both a pleasure and torment for the refined reader. Many have tried and failed to interpret the meaning behind it and it feels like the more we peel the more it becomes cryptic. The famous essay circles around the phenomenon of Camp. But one wonders what it is: Is it a noun or an adjective? Is it an abstract concept fit for the imaginative minds, a philosophical approach to art, an absurd taste or a universally appreciated form of aesthetics?
It is excruciatingly hard to solidify the foundations of the concept and Sontag’s essay creates more questions than answers.
The way I understand it, Camp has to be unique in itself. According to Susan Sontag, it transforms the experience. She also states that Camp sensibility is represented in androgynous elements, there’s something feminine in men and masculine in women. There is sexuality but Camp does not arouse sexual desire. It can also be inferred from the essay that Camp is full of contrasting emotions. Sontag states that camp propagates double meaning, subject to double interpretation. Duplicity and contrasts are in the essence of Camp. Camp should also be smooth. Excessive effort is not acceptable in the nature of Camp. It can both be coarse and elegant. Vulgarity can be appreciated in camp, though its appreciation may change or evolve over time. Extravagance is a crucial aspect of camp, there’s nothing too much or overly exaggerated.
Overall, there is no judgment but enjoyment in camp. It is stripped off all moral indignations; it is there for the refined taste to enjoy but not restricted to high culture. It is daring and controversial, both old-fashioned and Avant Garde. Its intensity fluctuates but it is well-balanced, thus creating an appealing reflection. Though subjective, it is widely appreciated. Lovely isn’t it? But with all these criteria, what exactly is camp? It’s quite difficult to give an example and I do not understand the examples given by Sontag, thus leaving you to decide:
Random examples of Camp according to Sontag:
Zuleika Dobson
Tiffany lamps
Scopitone films
The Brown Derby restaurant on Sunset Boulevard in LA
The Enquirer, headlines and stories
Aubrey Beardsley drawings
Swan Lake
Bellini's operas
Visconti's direction of Salome and 'Tis Pity She's a Whore
certain turn-of-the-century picture postcards
Schoedsack's King Kong
the Cuban pop singer La Lupe
Lynn Ward's novel in woodcuts, God's Man
the old Flash Gordon comics
women's clothes of the twenties (feather boas, fringed and beaded dresses, etc.)
the novels of Ronald Firbank and Ivy Compton-Burnett
stag movies seen without lust -
I accidentally picked up this book at the library (mainly because I've read two essays by Sontag, and loved them ; and it was for 4dt).
I had no idea what 'Camp' is, and I was delighted when reading these 'jottings' as the author put it. I love diving into new entities, especially that lately I've been reading a lot about aesthetics and artifice.
However, I was disappointed with a chunk of the essay, when Sontag clearly took a general and stereotypical approach towards jews and homosexuals.
For instance, she writes that "Camp taste is homosexual taste", and that "homosexuals have pinned their integration into society on promoting the aesthetic sense". I find it demeaning to reduce a group of people to the cheesiest stereotype there is.
That was the first essay: Notes on 'Camp'. The second one: One Culture and the New Sensibility, was a less enjoyable read, although as interesting as the other. It mainly focuses on 'literary-artistic culture', as opposed to 'scientific culture' ; 'high' and 'low' / 'mass' or 'popular' culture. The author offers quite an interesting take on the matter.
"Camp is a certain mode of aestheticism. It is one way of seeing the world as an aesthetic phenomenon. That way, the way of Camp, is not in terms of beauty, but in terms of the degree of artifice, of stylization."
"It goes without saying that the Camp sensibility is disengaged, depoliticized - or at least apolitical."
"It (Camp) is the love of the exaggerated, the 'off', of things-being-what-they-are-not. The best example is in Art Nouveau, the most typical and fully developed Camp style."
"Camp is the consistently aesthetic experience of the world. It incarnates a victory of 'style' over 'content', 'aesthetics' over 'morality', of 'irony' over 'tragedy'."
PS: It was brought to my attention that Camp was the theme of the 2019's annual Met Gala. If you google the event, you'll be amazed by what you'll find. -
Penguin 60s ‘Notes on Camp’ contains two evergreen and thought-provoking Sontag essays which provide a beautiful introduction to her writing. Exhilarating, probing and deeply contemplative, they remain a historical time capsule of ideas, references and interwoven histories.
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I knew I enjoyed campy things, but I only really understood the idea of Camp in a nebulous sort of way. After having read this, I can confidently say that Camp is exactly what I love about all the things I love the most.
It's my very favorite thing about wrestling-- the OTT gimmicks, the enthusiastic ploys (i.e. the "slowmo bomb" at 321 Battle that had performers and audience alike acting out their various roles in full on slow motion), the exaggerated emotions, etc.
It's my very favorite horror movies-- why I thought the first Prom Night was a snoozefest, but Prom Night 2, with its animatronic carousel horse frothing at the mouth, its chalkboard turned into a black pool waiting to suck in its terrified lead, its rattling chest of doom, delighted me.
It's why I love the Fast and the Furious movies such an ungodly amount, with their ridiculously hulking men, sky jumping cars, and over earnestness.
It's the combination of the extravagant mixed with an abundance of passion and exuberance. It's ridiculousness that invites you too enjoy, have fun, to let go of your cynicism.
I'm still digesting for now, but I plan to revisit this very soon 😊 -
Leave it to Sontag to destroy every scrap of fun and joy present in camp. In her hands camp is a withering husk lit by Tiffany lamps and patrolled by Staffordshire dogs. I know she is counted a genius, but as far as I can tell she is shallow pedantic and humorless and her observations range from tortured, to silly, to things that may be true but which I would rather not see and do not benefit from thankyouverymuch.
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"Camp is the answer to the problem: how to be dandy in the age of mass culture."
These two essays were a really great look at Camp as a concept and aesthetic, as well as the development and distinction between art and science in the modern world. Susan Sontag manages to say so much in so little words, and I flew through both of these essays and managed to get a lot out of them in just 55 pages. Definitely would recommend this one if you're interested! -
مقالهی کوتاهی بود دربارهی شناختن کمپ و اینکه چه معنایی داره و چه چیزهایی رو شامل میشه؛ چیزی حاوی ابتذال، مبالغه، غیرطبیعی بودن و درعین جدی بودن سخیف، با بزرگنماییهای بیش از حد. بطور کلی چیزی که خوب اما مزخرف است.
فکر میکنم بشه گفت نقش بازی کردن چیزی که خودمون نیستیم، نوعی به نمایش گذاشتن و خود در حلق مردم فروکنی. -
Zanimljiv uvid u to šta predstavlja termin "Camp" i kako ga treba shvatiti.
Izuzetno kratak esej koji je lijepo pročitati i proširiti znanje o ovom pokretu u umjetnosti. -
Vague definitions of the indefinable that left me with more questions than answers—as all good critical essays tend to. That being said, this was clearly a white woman's attempt to bottle a phenomenon that does not have its origins in whiteness or affluence, and it shows. Unlike what would be considered good critical writing today, these pieces from the 60s use the word 'homosexual' way too many times for something that does not once go into looking at the queer history of Camp. From where I'm standing, Sontag's "ultimate Camp statement" could easily apply to at least the first essay in this volume: it's good because it's awful.
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“Notes on Camp” is a very effective and informative essay, especially so, I imagine, for those who haven’t grown up with “camp” as part of their cultural lexicon.
The second essay “One Culture and the New Sensibility” muses on the differences between science-minded (or cultured) and art-minded (or cultured) individuals and movements, and comes to the conclusion that they aren’t so different and aren’t mutually exclusive.
