Who Wrote 'Notes On Camp' And What Inspired It?

2025-06-27 10:57:40 282

3 Answers

Hattie
Hattie
2025-06-30 17:12:41
Susan Sontag wrote 'Notes on Camp' as part of her 1964 essay collection 'Against Interpretation'. The piece was inspired by her fascination with the exaggerated, theatrical aesthetic that defies traditional notions of beauty. Sontag noticed how camp celebrates artifice and irony, turning bad taste into high art. She drew examples from old Hollywood films, drag performances, and Baroque architecture—anything that embraced excess and self-parody. The essay became iconic because it put a name to this underground sensibility right as pop culture was starting to embrace flamboyance. Sontag’s own exposure to queer subcultures in New York clearly shaped her perspective, though she framed camp as a universal sensibility rather than just LGBTQ+ expression.
Zofia
Zofia
2025-07-02 05:33:06
Susan Sontag penned 'Notes on Camp', and the inspiration is as layered as the concept itself. Sontag was a critic who thrived on dissecting cultural paradoxes, and camp’s embrace of ‘failed seriousness’ hooked her. She saw it in Oscar Wilde’s wit, the over-the-top melodrama of 1950s B movies, and even the deliberate gaudiness of Art Nouveau.

What’s striking is how Sontag connected dots between seemingly unrelated things—like the exaggerated poses in silent films and the ornate details of Versailles. Her essay emerged during the 1960s when counterculture was blurring lines between high and low art. The underground queer scene, which had long celebrated camp as survival humor, clearly influenced her, though she avoided making it exclusively a queer lens. Instead, she mapped how camp’s love for the unnatural—plastic flowers, feather boas, rhinestones—challenged rigid artistic hierarchies.

The timing was perfect. As Warhol’s pop art and John Waters’ films gained traction, Sontag’s essay gave intellectuals permission to take frivolity seriously. Her numbered list of camp traits (‘style over content’, ‘a seriousness that fails’) still frames discussions today, from fashion runways to TikTok aesthetics.
Kiera
Kiera
2025-07-02 05:53:09
The brilliant Susan Sontag authored 'Notes on Camp', and her inspiration came from observing how marginal cultures turned adversity into art. While many credit her essay with defining camp, she was really documenting what queer communities and avant-garde artists had practiced for decades. Sontag’s genius was recognizing patterns—how Judy Garland’s cult status, or the deliberate cheesiness of sci-fi props, shared a DNA of exaggerated irony.

She didn’t invent camp; she decoded it. The essay’s power lies in its examples: a Tiffany lamp (useless but gorgeous), a drag queen’s hyper-feminine performance (both tribute and mockery). Sontag’s own love for theater and opera likely sharpened her eye for artifice. What’s wild is how her 1964 essay predicted today’s meme culture—where earnestness and sarcasm collide. Camp isn’t just style; it’s a wink, a middle finger to ‘good taste’ that Sontag captured right before it exploded into mainstream.
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