In my previous article I talked about the basics of what a camp performance is, now I am going to go a little more in depth and discuss the specific elements that are involved with camp.
The three elements of camp are: Incongruity, theatricality, and humor.
Incongruity This element depends on the perception or creation of incongruous juxtapositions.
Camp incongruity often takes the form of inversion, standing commonly accepted concepts on their head.
The serious taken for humorous and the humorous is taken seriously.
One of the central inversion performances by camp is to place aesthetic concerns above ethical concerns.
Oscar Wilde in his book 'phrases and philosophies for the young sums this up: "One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.
" Ethical considerations--particularly pious, moralistic, and rigid ethical considerations--must give way to beauty and style.
A perfect example of this is the classic John Water film 'Pink Flamingos' (1973) In where Divine is challenged to whether or not she is 'the filthiest woman in the world'.
The incongruity starts with divine, who is a drag queen being called a woman, the second is the idea of 'filth' being an honor that only a few can attain.
Camp is extremely self conscious of this incongruity, it takes it to various extremes to make a point, or simply be pointlessly fabulous.
'Art for art sake'.
Theatricality Camp is marked by its self conscious artificiality and many performances that were intended as 'serious' performances fail because they became self-consciously artificial.
Such 'bad' acting is always a prime target of camp perception and camp performers often transform 'bad' acting into an art.
For example the drag queen, as opposed to the female impersonator, rarely intends to be taken seriously as a woman from the outset.
The drag artist intends us to see the self conscious artificiality of the performance.
The camp performance, unlike the standard theatrical event, demands no the suspension of disbelief, but the intense awareness of artificiality.
The great camp performers like Mae West, never hid that they were acting, but brilliantly playing on their artificiality.
So when does stylization become so exaggerated that it becomes funny, and when is stylization to be taken seriously? The line that separates the unfunny rituals of the church from the hilarious rituals of the Marx brothers is often a thin one.
Some very sophisticated artists like to hover above this line so that an audience cannot determine whether to take them seriously or burst out laughing.
High camp often straddles that line between the serious use of the ridiculous and the ridicule of the serious.
Camp has the power to open up dimension after dimension of ambiguity and undecidability.
Humor Camp then is funny, but, it is not only amusing, it frequently has a serious point behind its surface of frivolity.
Indeed one of the powerful aspects of camp humor is the uncertainty of whether one should laugh at it, is it really being funny or really being serious? Camp is so intimately involved with the intersection of social hierarchy and gender roles that people like Judith Butler believe that it is at the heart of a radical program for transforming consciousness.
Because of its ability to stand received ideas on their head, by inverting notions, and by emphasizing the 'unnatural' of what the dominate society believes to be 'natural'; camp has a central part to play in sexual politics.
Of greatest interest (according to Butler) is that camp, as epitomized by the drag queen, shows that gender is 'performative'; in other words people are not born masculine or feminine but perform 'masculinity' and 'femininity'.
By upsetting notions of the naturalness of gender, camp frees us to perform in whatever way we like.
So as you can see, the drag queen has a powerful place in shaping the social structure of society, by existing on the 'fringe' they are able to comment, push and explore concepts, themes, memes and notions that might not otherwise be questioned or even conscious of.
They are mirrors that orbit the self showing us a different reflection of ourselves, and what we can be.