Notes on Camp

This booklet I have has two essays, “Notes on Camp” and “One culture and the new sensibility”. NOTES ON CAMP “To talk about Camp is therefore to betray it” is one of the first sentences in Sontag’s dense, unstructured essay about Camp. She talks about taste, sensibilities, the difference between naive and deliberate Camp, offers a brief but insightful historical overview and more. It really is an obligatory reading for everyone with eyes and/or ears. She wrote it in the 60s so many things (books, movies, people) she’s referring to (things that were very relevant back then) I literally never heard of. I would love to see which examples she’d use today. Some quotes - “Camp taste is, above all, a mode of enjoyment, of appreciation — not judgment”. - “The sensibility of failed seriousness, of the theatricalisation of the experience.” - “Camp is the answer to the problem: how to be a dandy in the age of mass culture”. - “The essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration.” - “What is extravagant in an inconsistent or in an unpassionate way is not Camp. Without passion, one gets pseudo-Camp — what is merely decorative, safe, in a word, chic.” - “Things are campy, not when they become old — but when we become less involved in them, and can enjoy, instead of be frustrated by, the failure of the attempt.” - “A work can come close to Camp, but not make it, because it succeeds.” - “When something is just bad (rather than Camp), it’s often because it’s too mediocre in its ambition.” - “Probably, intending to be campy is always harmful.” ONE CULTURE AND THE NEW SENSIBILITY As Sontag says in regard to the rising (and harmful) idea of the conflict between technology and art: “What we are witnessing is not so much conflict of cultures as the creation of a new kind of sensibility” and “What we are getting is not the demise of art but a transformation of the function of art.” I had to keep reminding myself that this was not written in 2026. I was also aware that some things she’s describing, which was considered fresh in the 1960s, has been communicated in almost the exact same way in 1910s. And 1890s. And earlier… “Western man may be said to have been undergoing a massive sensory anaesthesia (…) Having one’s sensorium challenged or stretched hurts. The new serious music hurts one’s ears, the new painting does not graciously reward one’s sight, the new films and the few interesting new prose works do not go down easily… (they are boring)… boredom is only another name for certain species of frustration.” Another reminder that any attempt to portray any time as “better times” is ridiculous when it comes to perception of contemporary art and media.