In her almost aphoristic list of points attempting (superficially) to describe Camp sensibilities in the essay “Notes on ‘Camp,’” from her larger collection of essays Against Interpretation, Susan Sontag does not spend much time fleshing out her assertions and the lack of explanation for some of her points leave a lot to be desired as a theoretical description of Camp. For instance, Sontag ends her second note by saying that Camp is apolitical and does not explain why (277); I also think assertion is false (as my examples of Camp will hopefully show), but it difficult to argue against points like these because they are not contextualized or explained. However, Sontag does spend a great deal of her attention on the insistence that works of Camp can (and ought to be) divided into categories of Naïve and Deliberate Camp. But I do not believe this approach is pragmatic. To prove a person’s intention when creating works that are considered Camp is difficult; there is no real evidence to determine Naïve from Deliberate Camp other than a creator’s word. But even if one could prove innocent intent (which I will argue is not reasonably possible), pleading or assuming “innocence” itself is fraught, especially when harm has been done. To explore the particular problems of presuming innocence, I will use Elizabeth Wolstag’s aptly titled essay “Innocence.” Under the assumption that real Camp by definition is innocent, it is easy to let creators of problematic and hurtful works refuse responsibility and criticism for unintentional misdeeds under the guise of naïveté. For these reasons, I believe it is better to look at Camp through the lens of Foucauldian parrhesia as he describes it in his lecture series: The Courage of Truth, that is, as a mode of unrestrained truth-telling that involves a level of risk; a mode similar to the Cynical style that took social conventions to their logical extremes to make its point. Sontag alludes to this aspect of Camp throughout her notes when she argues that “[Camp] only seems like malice, cynicism. (Or, if it is cynicism, it’s not a ruthless cynicism, but a sweet cynicism)” (291), but this insistence that Camp is not cynicism relies on a misunderstanding and underappreciation for what real Cynicism is. Looking at Camp as an act of parrhesia helps to explain this “sweet cynicism” of Camp and to show exactly how this idea works in Camp, I will mainly be looking at two classically camp films: Pink Flamingos (1972) and The Birdcage (1996).

In her division of Camp into Naïve and Deliberate factions, Sontag seems to favor Naïve Camp on the assumption that it is in some way more authentic when she says that “probably, intending to be campy is always harmful,” (282) and “Camp rests on innocence,” (283).  To these assertions, I would respond with a quote from James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, he says: “But it is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime,” (5-6). By “innocence” here, both Sontag and Baldwin mean the lack of malicious intentions behind an act, not in the legal sense referring to whether or not someone has committed a crime. But how does one determine someone else’s intentions? And to what ends exactly? The only way is to ask them and hope they are telling the truth. Otherwise, if one suspects that another person is lying about his intent, the conversation becomes a back and forth exchange of “nuh-uh”s and “uh-huh”s without any definitive resolution. One would literally have to be able to get inside the other’s mind which, to my knowledge, is still not yet possible. This also implies that any acts of deliberate Camp would have be excluded from the Camp canon, but this has not been the case for such Camp films as Pink Flamingos which the writer, director, and producer of said film, John Waters, called in a recent Vanity Fair interview “a terrorist act against the tyranny of good taste,”(Liebenson). Waters is implying here that Pink Flamingos was written to upset conventions of taste, which the film does through exaggerations of sexuality, femininity, and what it means to be “filthy,” or rather, what it means to be the filthiest person alive.

Probably, Sontag thinks innocent Camp seems more authentic because it is done seemingly without self-consciousness, but self-consciousness does not take away from authenticity, it adds to it. It is a common experience to be surprised by one’s own actions and one learns more about oneself when reflecting on these moments. When one is offended, confused, and ashamed by oneself that person learns the limits of what behaviors they can accept about themselves and (more often than not) will attempt to change accordingly. It is only “the intensity of such self-accusation [that] shows the importance of being conscious of oneself and one’s vulnerabilities when one undertakes to do something,” (Wolgast 303). This self-reflection actually leads one to become a more authentic self. Therefore, if one wants authenticity from Camp, it is not found in innocence, but in the knowledge of the world a piece of Camp is created in and the self-knowledge of the person creating it.

Aside from that, “innocence” is often used a shield by those accused of malintent; their “innocence” absolves them of any responsibility for their actions and insulation from the reality that their actions have consequences. In a genre that defines itself on exaggeration, the danger of stereotyping and minstrelsy in Camp is an easy hole to fall into and presuming innocence when these things happen allows producers of such content to continue creating such material uncritically without any actual evidence or proof of innocence. To presume naivete, that a person who has offended simply did not know any better or has accidently done harm without malice, often “generally means exemption from moral criticism” (Wolgast 297). However, innocence is not inherently a good thing. When it comes to examining intentions through an ethical lens, innocence implies a lack of knowledge between “right” and “wrong”: the “innocent” is only that because he or she did not know what they were doing was “wrong.” Not only does innocence imply this lack of knowledge, it also allows this ignorance to continue. When one hides oneself behind innocence with phrases like “it was just a joke” or “I’m sorry if you’re offended,” he prevents himself from learning (and caring about) whether or not their actions were right and about the experiences of those people he has hurt, “what he is missing is not only self-understanding, but an understanding of those whose world is more complicated,” (Wolgast 304). He removes the responsibility from himself not only to do better, but also to know better. And to know better one must experience errors, but “it is that experience that innocents lack,” (Wolgast 305). He must know when he has erred and must want to know it to really learn from these lapses in ethical behavior.

It may seem pointless or not in the spirit of Camp to make such moralizing judgements about it, but this is yet another reason why it is important to drop “pure” intention as a criterion for Camp. When one questions another’s motives, the aim is usually to make a moral or ethical judgment about whether that person is “innocent” or “guilty” in their actions and if they can be absolved from the consequences thereof because “innocence” implies moral purity. Thus, there is always an impulse to vindicate or vilify someone and/or their actions when one presumes to know that person’s intentions. As Wolgast explains:

“if we want to view actions with their full moral import, we cannot view them as if done

by an impersonal x, from reasons a and b, with motive m… [it] will give a two-dimensional projection of a three-dimensional reality, caricature which cannot helpfully represent what needs to be understood,” (303).

But in a genre like Camp that is largely reliant on caricatures of reality, to moralize it does seem to be self-defeating and an attempt create something like “ethical Camp” to meet this kind of analysis would take away any possibility for innocence because it requires an understanding what is “right.” Innocence, in this sense seems to lie outside of the moral world but is still somehow able to keep its relationship to goodness. It is this paradox that makes intention a non-question in categorizing works as “Pure camp” (Sontag 283). Instead, I believe it is important to analyze how Camp operates rather than why.

What distinguishes Camp works from those that are simply “bad,” is that Camp employs a parrhesiastic modality akin to Cynicism as outlined by Michel Foucault in his lectures The Courage of Truth. To play the “parrhesiastic game,” (12) as Foucault calls it, there are three necessary elements: the courage to tell the truth, taking a risk by telling the whole truth, and an audience’s courage to accept a potentially hurtful truth (Foucault 13). But the rules on how these elements manifest in practice are not strict; like Camp style, parrhesia is a vague and fluid modality which Foucault says, “we should not think of as a sort of well-defined technique,” (Foucault 14). Like Camp, parrhesia is closer to what Sontag calls “a sensibility” (275) rather than a rhetorical style or specific genre of storytelling.

Defining Camp as a sensibility implies that Camp is more of a natural inclination rather than only an occasional act and performance. This is perhaps why some of the best performances of Camp tend to come from apparently campy people like John Waters, Cher, Andy Warhol, character actors like Divine. It is this correlation that likely leads to the impulse to analyze Camp in terms of authenticity and innocence. But I do not believe that people who appear to be “authentically” campy are necessarily innocent in the sense that their art is totally without knowledge or self-consciousness, rather they appear to others as more authentically campy because they practice more. They hone their camp sensibilities by practicing Camp more often than others, either for work or fun or both, so that Camp becomes a kind of truth-telling for them. The best Camp is then, like most other skilled performances, produced after much practice and experience— through practicing Camp as of a way of life.

Camp as a modality of life also draws a further connection with Cynicism. It important to note here that, despite the popular understanding, Cynicism is not merely pessimism or derision. To explain what I mean by Cynicism and how it further relates to Camp and parrhesia, I will turn to Foucault’s definition also found in The Courage of Truth:

“It seems to me that in Cynicism, in Cynic practice, the requirement of an extremely distinctive form of life… is strongly connected to the principle of truth-telling, of truth-telling without shame or fear, of unrestricted and courageous truth-telling, of truth-telling which pushes its courage and boldness to the point that it becomes intolerable insolence,” (165).

To call Camp a type of truth-telling is sticky because one of the few well-defined features of Camp is its inclination towards exaggeration, but I do not believe that exaggeration is necessarily untruth. Rather the particular types of exaggeration presented in Camp -those of gender, sexual, and sartorial expression- are more like an over directness or frankness about the object of exaggeration.  Cynicism also relies on exaggerations of social norms to show how ridiculous and irrational many of them are. Foucault briefly alludes to an anecdote in which the Cynic Diogenes, who was arguably a Campy figure himself, puts this type of truth-telling into practice:

“There is Diogenes’ famous gesture, recounted so frequently in Antiquity, of masturbating in public and saying: But why are you so scandalized, since masturbation satisfies a need, just as eating does. I eat in public, so why should I not satisfy this need also in public?” (171).

Foucault refers to Cynicism of this type as a “broken mirror” because it is “the reflection of what it is and should be, and of what [one] is and would like to be,” (232). Cynicism reveals hidden parts of the world in way that does not simply reflect it exactly. This imperfect reflection is also present in Camp, but rather than a broken mirror, Camp is more like a funhouse mirror. It exaggerates certain aspects of culture and society sometimes to the point ugliness and grotesquery, but it does not show anything that is not there, but rather chooses to magnify aspects that already exist. Diogenes, here, is subverting the norms around which needs can be satisfied in public by an exaggerated performance of his own sexuality. Similarly, in the John Waters film Pink Flamingos (1972) there are several sexual and bodily boundaries that are crossed in extremely disturbing performances that are designed to subvert sexual norms. I will not get into the details of what those acts were, but I will say, for the sake of grounding this assertion, that one of them involved incest and another, a live chicken. These acts are revolting to most people, but it forces the audience to reevaluate the puritanical values of the mainstream culture. Through this reevaluation, the audience learns some new about themselves; the limits of what sexual acts they can accept, and which will send them screaming and running from the theater.

            To turn to a somewhat more wholesome example of Camp as a method of truth-telling, the 1996 film The Birdcage uses exaggerations of femininity and traditional gender roles to reveal underlying assumptions about what constitutes a “normal” American family. The movie juxtaposes the Goldman’s, Armand and Albert, two gay men who live above a drag club called The Birdcage which the somewhat campy Armand owns, and the very campy Albert performs in, with the Keeleys, Kevin and Louise, two hyper-conservative Republicans whose patriarch is a senator that founded the “Coalition of Moral Order.” For most of the film, The Goldmans are hiding their queerness (reluctantly and which great difficulty in Albert’s case) from the Keeleys and posing as a nuclear family for the sake of Armand’s son, Val, who is engaged to their daughter, Barbara, but when Val’s biological mother, Katherine, gets stuck in traffic and cannot perform her role as mother, Armand’s partner, Albert, steps in. In full drag, he is able to convince that Keeley’s that he is Val’s mother, earning glowing compliments from Senator Keeley. At least until the real Katherine shows up. When the ruse has been uncovered, Senator Keeley is confused and upset and goes to make a quick exit with Louise and Barbara. After Barbara sadly tells the Goldman’s that she would have loved to be part of their family, Kevin opens the door to reporters waiting to catch Senator Keeley coming out of The Birdcage. Unable to leave, the Keeleys sit with the Goldmans and try to figure out how to leave unseen. Albert suggests disguising them as drag performers who are part of that night’s act to which they have no choice but to agree. As the Keeleys dance their way through the club (to the tune of “We Are Family”) with Senator Keeley looking like “Betty White on steroids” or “Bea Arthur on a bad day” according Armand’s actor Robin Williams (Interview 1996), they are able to leave unrecognized with Goldman’s (both Albert and Armand in now suits) escorting them.

The most blatant moment of parrhesia is the scene where Val is literally compelled to “tell the whole truth, hiding nothing of the truth, telling the truth without hiding it behind everything,” (Foucault 10) in regards to his family:

               Senator Keeley: How many mothers does he have?
               Val: Just one. [Putting a hand on Albert’s shoulder] This is my mother.

   My father owns the club downstairs. My mother is the star. We lied to you, Barbara     and I. And everyone lied for us. These are my parents.

               Armand: This is my wife. [Gesturing to Albert]

               This is the lady who had Val. [Gesturing to Katherine]

               (The Birdcage 1996).

The deconstruction of the nuclear family is one of the most prominent themes throughout the film (the opening scene is tour of The Birdcage is also set to the tune of drag queens performing “We are Family”). The nuclear family as an ideal and an American value is shown to be merely traditional social construct, but what constitutes “family” can, in reality, take many different forms. Later, even before Albert is performing motherhood for the Keeley’s he is extremely protective and maternal towards Val, expressing deep concern about his engagement and cries over a family photo album, lamenting how quickly Val has grown up. Katherine, Val’s biological mother confesses that she has been absent for most of his life because she is not very maternal (while popping champagne bottle between her legs) and Armand assures her that he and Albert are both maternal.

 It is only when Armand tries to force everyone to imitate the more traditional gender roles akin to the Keeley’s, that his performance—as well as Val’s and their houseboy’s—seems artificial and stiff. This plays off the Keeley’s apparent taste for the artificial, made apparent by the Senator’s avid lust for candy going so far as to eat some out of a trashcan; both Kevin and Louise have difficulty seeing through the performance, even though it is obviously failing.  It is only Albert, in his performance as Mrs. Coleman (changed from Goldman to hide Armand’s Jewishness as well), that Senator Keeley admires. Albert is used to performing in drag and is so over the top even off the stage that he is far more comfortable than the others and is able to purport conservative ideas about abortion and the military that he does not believe by exaggerating those as well. As Val says: “Excuse me. I assure you…Mother is just following a train of thought to a logical…yet absurd, conclusion,” (The Birdcage 1996) which precisely how Cynicism (as a form of parrhesia) operates. Albert is actually pointing to the truth of the absurd political beliefs that Senator Keeley wholly supports and the hypocrisy of his morality, but he is only able to do this successfully through Camp. This performance also reveals something of her husband to Louise after he begins defending Mrs. Coleman and criticizing Armand for the way he seems to be treating her. Louise says: “I’ve never really seen you before. I don’t even know who you are!” (The Birdcage 1996). Thus, it is seeing the Camp performance of a “normal” and “moral” family by the Goldman’s that causes Louise begins to see through the artifice of her own relationship to her husband and the traditional conservative values that they had, until this moment, shared. It is also only after the Keeleys do drag themselves that they are able to connect to the Goldmans and finally agree to let Val and Barbara get married.

            Both Pink Flamingos and The Birdcage are trying to break through the artifice of morality and conservatism (both political and personal) through camp performances the distort these values to their logical extremes. Thus, these films tell the audience truths about their personal values and societal norms and the inconsistencies therein.

            Referring back to Foucault’s definition of Cynicism, that it must be done without fear or shame, I would argue that Camp must also be done this way; that there is no room for fear and shame in Camp. Sontag alludes to this point when she is discussing “failed” Camp, she says “When something is just bad (rather than Camp), it’s often because it is too mediocre in its ambition. The artist hasn’t attempted to do anything really outlandish,” (283). Foucault also says that, in parrhesia, “the subject must be taking some kind of risk [in speaking] this truth,” (11). So, fearlessness in Camp also comes with risk. “Risk” for the Parrhesiast can be anything from jeopardizing a relationship with someone by offending to literally risking one’s life. Because of Camp’s ties to queerness (specifically gay men), it seems fairly obvious how a campy person may be at risk of violence and homophobia at the very least, but as I mentioned before, Camp often runs the risk of offending people in various ways and in itself can be harmful.

            There is not a single scene in Pink Flamingos where either the actors nor characters exhibit any outward signs of shame. In a movie where the protagonist declares herself “The Filthiest Person Alive” and competes with another couple who want to be the filthiest people alive, shame is not even a possibility. To clarify, to do something without shame is not to do something with self-awareness, it is do something totally aware, but without fear of how it will be perceived. The film revels in its own shamelessness, the characters smiling and laughing their way through moments obscenity such as when Divine, as Babs Johnson, hides a piece of meat between her legs to steal it or another scene involving Divine, as herself, and (real) coprophagy. The shamelessness continued even after the film’s release, John Waters was so delighted by criticism and revulsion to such scenes that, instead cutting them, he began handing out Pink Flamingos brand barf-bags (Konow 97). Of course, this shamelessness was met with backlash. It was banned in some countries, censored in others, and earned Waters nicknames like “the pope of trash” from William S. Burroughs (Katz 2010), but the film still managed to sell-out multiple weeks and has embedded itself culturally as a cult classic. Both risk and shamelessness pay off in for the film.

            The Birdcage deals with shame and risk as themes in the, but their presence often leads to a failure of performance (for the characters, not the actors). It is the overarching fear of being discovered by the Keeleys that makes Armand’s performance as a straight man so profoundly unconvincing. But Albert’s performance is totally shameless, he relishes in the character of Mrs. Coleman and derives great satisfaction when he is able to convince Senator Keeley that he is Val’s mother. Alberts performance has a risk too, he is convincing for the most part, but there is always the chance that he and the rest of the family will be found out and having taken up this role is what leads to the confusion when Katherine arrives. Also, referring to scene described earlier when Val confesses the truth, he is speaking without shame, proud to call Armand and Albert his parents and proud of who they are, but by confessing in this way, he risks losing Barbara (which he very nearly does).

            In short, both Pink Flamingos and The Birdcage move beyond shame to give successful performances and while there is a risk to this shamelessness, the performance cannot work without it. With Camp especially, the shamelessness seems to come from a place of fun and celebration. It is this element that makes Camp its own type of parrhesia and why I specifically argue that Camp is only similar to Cynicism and not exactly the same. Camp, to me, appears to be a type of parrhesia with an added element of fun or joyous delivery, “a mode or enjoyment” as Sontag calls it — a “sweet cynicism” (Sontag 291).

            The third part of Foucault’s definition of Cynicism, and the final point I will make, is his point that cynicism, because it taken to such shameless extreme, that it becomes “intolerable insolence,” (165). Camp often brings behaviors, fashions, and attitudes that are dismissed by the mainstream because they are “intolerable” to the forefront; as Sontag explains, “[Camp] offer[s] for art (and life) a different—a supplementary—set of standards” (286). Camp is Camp precisely because it is not the norm or mainstream, rather, it subverts these categories and throws them back on themselves; it brazenly holds up that funhouse mirror to upset the norms on those who adhere to them.  It is this type of insolence which largely constitute the “risk” in Camp and the particular type of unrestrained and exaggerated truth-telling is what makes Camp so “intolerable.”  Even Sontag admits that “[she is] strongly drawn to Camp, and almost as strongly offended by it,” (276).

            This kind of “intolerable insolence” is readily apparent in Pink Flamingos. Aside from the above mentioned scenes, the film also displays act of incest, sexual violence, exhibitionism, and voyeurism; things that mainstream society would find intolerable (and with good reason). Audiences were indeed nauseated, disturbed, and horrified by what they were seeing on screen and indeed other films like Caligula (1979) and Showgirls (1995) who have tried to capitalize the kind of sexual “filth” in Pink Flamingos and achieve a similar cult following were too intolerable and failed miserably. I believe this largely because: 1. No other film has ever been able to achieve that level of filth and 2. More importantly, because Pink Flamingos does not romanticize these acts in order to be shocking. The film knows that these acts are normally intolerable and frames them that way; all of these acts contribute to each character’s “filthiness.” By naming these acts as “filth,” Pink Flamingos is able to tell the filthy truth about them while still using them for its insolent purposes of unsettling norms. The film does not advocate any of these things necessarily, it more so brings things that do actually happen but are not often spoken of and enlarges it to the point where it must be confronted one way or another.

            The kind of “intolerable insolence” in The Birdcage is less conspicuous, but still present. It is campiness of the Albert and much of the settings that both intolerable and insolent within the context to film and these things that must be hidden away in order to for the Goldmans to seem acceptable. Albert mannerisms and gestures allow him to take up a lot of space and as drag star and gay man, to take up space in this way is insolent because he belongs to two subcultures that were largely invisible to the mainstream until recently. Thus being visible as a highly feminine gay man would very likely be intolerable to the conservative Keeleys; especially considering Albert’s defiant dramatics and flamboyance annoy even Armand at times. Such as when Albert walks in on Katherine (to whom they had gone to ask for help with their ruse) drunk and touching Armand’s chest. He takes the car and drives home (badly) and arrived after Armand who took the bus and says that he only came home to get his toothbrush and then he was leaving. When Armand asks where he was going, he replies

Albert: To Los Copa.

Armand: There isn’t anything in Los Copa but a cemetery.

Albert: I know. That’s why I’m packing light.

Armand: I see. You’re going to the cemetery with your toothbrush. How Egyptian.

Albert: Good-bye, Armand.

(The Birdcage 1996).

Albert’s theatrics make his threat appear empty, but the point here is to make his distress known to and to upset Armand, which it does because Armand does chase after him when Albert leaves. But Armand can mostly tolerate this sort behavior because he lives in the same subculture that Albert does and is used to theatrics (an indeed performs some himself). The antics would not be permissible to a more conservative family and so they must be hidden away along with “happy objects” as Sara Ahmed would call them in her book The Promise of Happiness: Armand’s many statues of naked men, his painting of a man in a dress with a rose and, ideally, the Grecian bowls that depict men having sex with each other that find their way to the dinner table anyway; they are objects that display “queer intimacy [which] leave an impression on the walls…these objects betray their secret,” (109). But as insolent things and people are wont to do, they make themselves apparent despite these attempts to hide them. Albert, against Armand and Val’s wishes, dons his Mrs. Coleman garb and seats himself at the dinner table eating soup out said Grecian dishes. Later, when the charade is over and the Goldmans are all made visible as they really are, the Keeleys are unable to tolerate it until they have no choice.

            The film itself had come out shortly after the apex of the AIDS crisis which had heightened conservative beliefs that gay people were immoral and sick, and much of the queer produced media at the time centered on the crisis and a somber political call to action. But The Birdcage changed the tone of the conversation by upsetting this “unhappy queer” (Ahmed 88) narrative. The humor and fun of its characters defied the idea that gay equals depravity and perversion and, unlike most other queer films and books at the time, none of them had to die (Ahmed 88). The queer subjects and objects are not the only insolent pieces of the film either, many conservative members of the audience could have seen a version of themselves in Senator Keeley, but he is framed as profoundly oblivious and hypocritical that to acknowledge shared beliefs with that character would be likely be seen as more intolerable that identifying with the Albert or Armand. The films insolence lies equally in making happy gay men visible both within the context of the film and without, as well mocking the hyper-conservative political aura surrounding gay-related issues of the time without fear or shame.

            In conclusion, the theoretical framework suggested by Susan Sontag can be useful in understand some aspects of Camp, but it is not developed enough to be the definitive reference for defining Camp her section on Naïve Camp vs. Deliberate Camp—Camp that rests on innocence, is not pragmatic in analyzing Camp because it is not possible to truly know another’s intentions and the notion “innocence” can be used, rather insidiously, to excuse certain acts of Camp that do cause harm. I believe rather, that Camp is better analyzed as mode of parrhesia, as defined by Foucault, because it fulfills the requirements for parrhesia in style similar to Cynicism, but differs largely through its more playful tone. 

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