Camp

A Sociology Professor (the course was Deviant Sexuality) of mine once asked us to write a definition of "Camp" out and turn it in. I tried but could not. The majority of the class failed to turn in anything of any significance as well. What is your definition of "Camp?"

the word has regressed into the mainstream to mean gay and gay now applies to everything. so, everything is gay. everything is camp. everything is great. everything is trash. being gay is not about attraction, it is about politics and majority opinion. camp isn't about cruising in the woods.. it's about pinkwashing kitsch.

Most people I know use this.

Camp = so bad and yet highly entertaining

In OP's case, I would've just written: "It's pronounced Versayce". And once the teacher gives me a bad grade, I'd go Nomi Malone on his ass. Then he would get it.

So bad, it makes you laugh.

Camp is any over-the-top performance that was intended to convey one message completely conveys a different and often hilarious message to the audience

When camp is intended, it usually means something is praised and mocked simultaneously.

Too many people think camp just means effeminate. To me it’s really more about doing something in an exaggerated, performative way, often with a humorous emphasis on a particular detail. True camp is sharp and observant. It’s not about flouncing around in a feather boa, which is what a lot of basic straight people think it is.

Camp is something that’s supposed to be dead serious but comes across as unintentionally hilarious

Camp is a character in a slasher movie dying an over the top brutal death. It’s a supposed to be serious but then over the op acting and music makes it hilarious and takes it to a camp level

Camp is a character in court on a soap opera, saying something shocking and everyone on the courtroom oohs and ash’s and says stuff like “I don’t believe this!” “This is insane!” And then we get the close ups of the shocked faces and the melodramatic music cue That is CAMP

^ Yes, this ^ Camp doesn't have to be Gay at all. Gays just happen to be the first ones to recognize camp

Satire can be camp. Carol Burnett was a master at this

Cartoons can be camp. Bugs Bunny could be as campy as it gets. Although, as with Carol Burnett, I suspect that Warner Bros. had a strong Gay writing staff. With both Carol Burnett and Bugs Bunny the camp was more a subliminal sub-plot

Camp is without intention. It is a projection by the viewer.

The tragically ludicrous? The ludicrously tragic?

But is it hilariously ludicrous?

I'm not actually sure camp can be described - it has to be experienced. There's things that if you just described them would not be camp, but most certainly are.

If I really had to try and define it, I would say something that has a heightened aspect that makes it funny, even when it is not necessarily in and of itself overtly humorous, with an element of flamboyance.

People in the UK call men who behave in an effeminite way 'camp' but that's only one aspect of it IMO.

^ Kind of like porn, I can't describe it, but I know it when I see it

It's the place Jewish kids from Long Island went during the summer.

It’s the current iteration of Spurs F.C. for me.

They try so hard in countless different ways, and do so much outrageous nonsense to change their situation, looking like bumbling clowns and charlatans in the attempt. And it almost never works. This is how we get the adjective, ‘spursy’.

The club’s failures are always fatefully tragicomical—a rival swooping in at the last second to steal their transfer or take a desperately-needed chance for a point, or a new manager dismantling whatever small amount of progress had been made and plunging them into ludicrous chaos. Or that ‘cheese room’ they planned to build in their new stadium.

Then every few years they’ll pull some unbelievable (and usually-accidental) triumphant upset out of the bag, and everyone forget for a moment what a fucking perennial shambles they are. And that foolish frisson of elation is the apogee of their Camp.

Get back to me when you’ve experienced band camp. True camp!

Rewatching BOY MEETS WORLD recently, I noticed quite a few examples.

In one episode, there’s an interesting dichotomy played between male-to female sitcom crossdressing that’s camp (veering into drag), and sitcom crossdressing that isn’t. The characters Shawn (played by Rider Strong) & Cory (played by Ben Savage) crossdress as part of a social studies article/report they’re writing for their school exams.

Shawn is reluctant to participate, but in pursuit of a passing grade is convinced to play the crossdress ‘straight’, trying to act as a normal girl as much as possible while out on a date with a young man. While in the crossdress, Shawn makes wisecracks at the expense of the situation, his date and himself, but these are quiet stressed asides (partially because the scene is dramedic and moralistic in nature, about sexual consent). The bulk of the comedy comes from the fact that Shawn’s male date does not realise that he is male, rather than the fact that Shawn is crossdressed. Shawn/Rider isn’t making reference in this performance to the fact that a man dressed as a stereotypical woman is utterly ludicrous, and he’s adjusting his voice and posture and movements sincerely to disguise his obviously male physical characteristics as much as he can.

Cory on the other hand is playing a waitress at the diner where the date is taking place, to keep an eye on proceedings. When he enters the scene, it’s with a loud bang of the saloon door to the kitchen, a silly smile, and stumbling in his heels. He then proceeds to hit on Shawn’s date playfully, make back-of-the-theatre jokes (“my hosiery is bunching!”), and puts on a smokey caricaturish voice. He plays a middle-aged bawd in a loud and broad and OTT manner, winking at the other characters in the scene and the camera. Cory/Ben is leaning into the situation rather than away from it, squeezing out the more outrageous comedic moments and ‘hamming’. He’s not as awkward or worried by the performance he’s being asked to make, and most crucially isn’t really trying to make a convincing ‘real woman’ (his voice in the scene is still deep and gravelly, he still walks with a masculine lumber, he makes aggressive innuendos like a man).

Cory’s girlfriend Topanga (played by Danielle Fishel), the only biological woman in the scene, silently watches the proceedings from her own table in the diner, mouth agape in bemused horrified amusement and not even reading the glossy magazine open on her jean-clad thighs. This adds to the ‘camp’ by encouraging the audience to have a heightened reaction.

I don’t think “camp” has much to do with irony. I think camp movies and songs are more of a cathartic thing. For gay men, they serve as a conduit for pent up emotions and frustrations. Lesbians and heterosexuals, who try to make sense of it, falsely conclude the interest in camp entertainment is some sophisticated form of irony.

The problem with some of your definitions is that they suggest camp can’t be intentional, but of course it often is. So I’d say it is the tone of earnestness in a performance that the audience finds funny, whether or not the performers are in in the joke.

Camp is most delicious when the humor us not intended: See Mommie Dearest or Showgirls.

But a gifted comic like Carol Burnett can do it on purpose. See also Rocky Horror

Camp can absolutely be intentional. All John Waters films are intentionally camp. Most over the top performances are intentional. Camp isn’t inherently bad or unskilled, it evokes, among other things, heightened emotion, intensity, glamour, and artifice.

R26 I love this definition. The way the term camp has become mainstream shows how straights and lesbians really don’t understand there’s a love behind camp, it’s not just ironic or something to mock.

Camp is inherently ironic. You need the contrast between the apparent sincerity of the performance (which can be fake), and its absurdity. Otherwise, you have slapstick or farce.

The “cathartic” element r26 notes is an important reason why gays enjoy camp, but I don’t think it’s essential to the definition of camp.

Camp was a gay perspective of straight society that both parodied and ridiculed that society.

If you laugh when you imagine someone in real life behaving like a character in a movie, then it's probably camp.

If you laugh when you imagine someone in real life behaving like a character that you're watching in a movie, then it's probably camp.

(Edited for clarity.)

So Showgirls is not camp, r31?

Has anyone ever watched Showgirls in black and white? It's like Schindler's List but with more boobs.

In British usage "camp" often just means "stereotypically gay" in my experience. In American usage it has the more specific meaning of a kind of ironic mimetic performance, social or otherwise.

Real camp is accidental. Fabricated camp can be fun, though.

I don't think there's a strict line between accidental and intentional camp. The intentional kind is by people who are using things (characters, fashions, language, etc.) that already exist in an ironic and exaggerated way.

I’d say the opposite, R38. Real camp is intentional, but accidental camp is often better.

This is accidental CAMP- I think

Delicate and Feminine is Henrietta Hippo

@OP, I hope you're getting all this down, some very good answers here. Let us know what grade you get (better be an A) ;-)

Camp is a framework and a sensibility. It's hard to be defined because it can be many things. I think it's similar to porn, in that you know it when you see it. Straight people really don't understand camp. Of course some do, but they are usually more cultured and they have a life that revolves around gay people and the arts. But obviously look at the Camp Met Gala, and many of them couldn't nail it. Maybe it's camp to unintentionally not wear camp for the camp met gala? Am I getting too meta?

I was watching the director’s cut of Terminator 2, and the scene where Sarah gets beat up in the institution is complete camp.

I refer you to Susan Sontag's Notes on Camp.

Agree that you there is no definitive line between intentional and accidental camp. Someone mentioned slasher movies. Those are hardly supposed to be serious. The genre is campy fun. The directors try to be campy fun and also somewhat terrifying. The good sensation you have watching such flicks (if they work) is still enjoying camp.

^ "Scary Movie" is a good example of that

How did the word ‘camp’ arise to describe what we’re discussing? What is the etymology?

^ Best I could find...

"In 1870, in a letter produced in evidence at his examination before a magistrate at Bow-street, London, on suspicion of illegal homosexual acts, crossdresser Frederick Park referred to his "campish undertakings"; but the letter does not make clear what these were.[5] In 1909, the Oxford English Dictionary gave the first print citation of camp as

ostentatious, exaggerated, affected, theatrical; . So as a noun, 'camp' behaviour, mannerisms, et cetera. (cf. quot. 1909); a man exhibiting such behaviour."

I recently had this argument with some idiot on Reddit about the movie Kimi. It is complete and utter camp, especially the end.

Poster was arguing with me that camp is a very specific aesthetic limited to movies from a certain area. I told the poster not to straightsplain camp to an eldergay.

You know it when you see it.

Andrew Garfield’s “MY PRADA’S AT THE CLEANERS!!/I’m coming back for *Everything*!” performance in ‘The Social Network’ reads as camp to me, but I defer final concrete approval to the elders.

Black people invented camps!

It's where the man goes up into the other man with a little bit of spit and a whole lotta regrets!

I think what someone finds ridiculous might also factor in on what someone finds campy.

Camp is the effect of the negative dissonance between creation or product as intended or as presented and creation or product as experienced.

Camp sensibility is possible only for the literate, informed, savvy or educated. However, this does not occur from a position of superiority, True camp maintains an ethical or moral sense and a considerable sympathy for its source. Camp seldom can be intended and succeed; it is inadvertent. Otherwise there is no negative dissonance of effect.

If I were the professor I would look for a new job. Obviously teaching dumbdumb "Deviant Sexuality" must be a soul-killing and pointless expenditure of his good mind. Where does OP study? Hopefully Devry, and not one of our respected colleges.

Carol Burnett is not camp. Also, not satire. Carol Burnett's sketches are "spoofs." Yes, there is a difference.

"Deviant Sexuality"? Hmmm....

I think camp is like porn, in that I know it when I see it! Also, philistines similarly can't tell between art and porn, or camp and bad art. Just like how conservatives from Florida qualified Michaelangelo's David as porn, some Gen Zer commented that Sam Smith's recent music video was camp. And both situations angered me

Camp is subversive kitsch.

True camp is not intentional.

Most intentional camp is just stuff done in the style of the above.

I think it’s meaning has become broadened though. It’s almost a simile now for over-the-top.

It’s kind of lost its definition in the same way drag has.

[quote]Camp is any over-the-top performance that was intended to convey one message completely conveys a different and often hilarious message to the audience

I think that's ONE definition, R7. But the early works of John Waters is totally camp but does NOT fit your criteria. Because his stuff is camp on purpose.

I second Nasim. She is a camp icon. A trailblazer too.

The most satisfying and concise definition of camp I've ever come across is "failed seriousness." I would add that camp is extremely stylized, as well.

R72 THIS is camp aerobics.

Queen Sondra Prill was camp.

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