Abstract

Camp, historically a coded communication of queer identity has been recently dragged out of the closet and into the limelight with the exhibition “Camp, Notes on Fashion” (2019) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. While a lot of the fashion that was on display was kitschy, and certainly fun and clever, some of it left the exhibition vulnerable to criticism that it was not actually Camp. Also, an exhibition like this while overtly very gay-positive brings up many issues about the packaging and presentation of queer culture. This essay involves a review of the exhibition itself as well as an examination of the criteria for inclusion or (sometimes deliberate) exclusion of key elements of Camp: the abject, consumerism, and queer liberation to name a few. As well as what self-appointed arbiter of Camp, Susan Sontag inadvertently communicated about her own conflicted relationship with what would eventually become queer culture in her 1964 Partisan Review essay “Notes on Camp,” which formed the theoretical bedrock of this exhibition. Research methodology employs “grounded theory” which seeks to broaden the parameters of “data” to include ethical concerns and the voices of non-dominant groups, who are traditionally excluded from economic evaluations, and normative mainstream concerns. Research methods involve an experiential review of the exhibition itself, as well as a deeper exploration of the themes on display, and an analysis of visual rhetoric and elements of queer political theory that were brought up by this type of display within this venue. As the definition of Camp is political, contextual and in a state of constant evolution, the examination of this in a museum setting provides a rich locus for analysis from queer, visual culture and social theory perspectives. In the spirit of the original Sontag article, a “Camp” list better situated in contemporaneity is also included.

摘要

坎普，历来是酷儿身份的编码交流，最近在纽约大都会艺术博物馆举办的“坎普，时尚笔记”（2019 年）展览中被从壁橱中拖出并成为众人瞩目的焦点。虽然展出的许多时装都很俗气，当然也很有趣和聪明，但其中一些让展览很容易受到批评，认为它实际上不是坎普。此外，像这样的展览虽然公开地非常积极地支持同性恋，但也带来了许多关于酷儿文化的包装和展示的问题。这篇文章涉及对展览本身的回顾，以及对坎普关键元素的包含或（有时是故意的）排除标准的审查：卑鄙、消费主义和酷儿解放等等。以及什么自封的坎普仲裁者，党派评论论文《营地笔记》，构成了本次展览的理论基石。研究方法采用“扎根理论”，旨在扩大“数据”的参数范围，以包括伦理问题和传统上被排除在经济评估之外的非主导群体的声音，以及规范的主流问题。研究方法包括对展览本身的体验性回顾，以及对展览主题的更深入探索，以及对此类展览在该场馆内提出的视觉修辞和酷儿政治理论元素的分析。由于坎普的定义是政治性的、语境化的并且处于不断演变的状态，因此在博物馆环境中对其进行检验为从酷儿、视觉文化和社会理论的角度进行分析提供了丰富的场所。