Notes On "Camp" by Susan Sontag

Notes On "Camp"

by Susan Sontag

Published in 1964.

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Many things in the world have not been named; and many things, even if they have been named, have never been described. One of these is the sensibility -- unmistakably modern, a variant of sophistication but hardly identical with it -- that goes by the cult name of "Camp."

A sensibility (as distinct from an idea) is one of the hardest things to talk about; but there are special reasons why Camp, in particular, has never been discussed. It is not a natural mode of sensibility, if there be any such. Indeed the essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration. And Camp is esoteric -- something of a private code, a badge of identity even, among small urban cliques. Apart from a lazy two-page sketch in Christopher Isherwood's novel The World in the Evening (1954), it has hardly broken into print. To talk about Camp is therefore to betray it. If the betrayal can be defended, it will be for the edification it provides, or the dignity of the conflict it resolves. For myself, I plead the goal of self-edification, and the goad of a sharp conflict in my own sensibility. I am strongly drawn to Camp, and almost as strongly offended by it. That is why I want to talk about it, and why I can. For no one who wholeheartedly shares in a given sensibility can analyze it; he can only, whatever his intention, exhibit it. To name a sensibility, to draw its contours and to recount its history, requires a deep sympathy modified by revulsion. 

http://interglacial.com/~sburke/pub/prose/Susan_Sontag_-_Notes_on_Camp.html 

Ein wunderbarer Artikel. Sie beschreibt das, was ich in Ermangelung ihrer Präzision 'meinen schlechten Geschmack' nenne. Für den ich mich schäme, auf den ich stolz bin und den ich vor allem nicht wirklich beeinflussen kann (und will). Und der auch beim Theatermachen, wie ein persönliches Rumpelstizchen immer mitarbeitet. 

Heute denk ich, 

morgen plan ich 

und übermorgen geht es wieder mit mir durch. 

Manchmal wünschte ich, es wäre nicht so, aber meistens, vor allem, wenn ich mich wieder mal im Theater/TV/Kino öde, bin ich nur froh, dass meine intellektuelle Selbstkontrolle einen so schwachen Willen hat.