Camp 2.0

I keep thinking about what camp means to a generation who is assimilating, and doesn't seem to need it much anymore. I think about how it has become a parlour game, more then it usually was, or a trick of rhetoric, something that becomes historical positioning, taxonimizing and commenting on a parody of culture, which became the dominant way of thinking, a kind of culture itself. But the weird thing is, it seems that camp becomes a way (as it always has?) for us to save ourselves from heterosexism, from homophobia, and now from assimilating queers, who wish to put the strangeness and the impoliteness back into the closet. In works as diverse as Andrea Bowers AIDS quit installations, Rufus doing Judy at Carnegie Hall, Richard (Blank)'s ecent photos of Versailles, the poetry of Friedreic Sediel, the songs of Nellie McKay, the installations of Andrew Harwood and Ayllson Mitchell, Carl Wilson's 33 1/3rd Volume on Celine Dion, amongst others, asks and re-evaluates what camp is, and who it is for. It becomes Camp 2.0.

Outline:
What is Camp:

1. Potted History of Sontag
2. Critique of Sontag's history.
   
3. Discussion of Barthes, Punctum and Theatricality/Artifice
   
4. Can Punctum exist in a work that is mediated so deeply.
5. What has happened to Camp, in the post Judy era, what was different and what has remained the same.
   
6. Camp and the heremunitics of suspicion
   
7. Camp and its realtionship to assimilation, camp's uneasy realtionship to mainstream gays (cf Mattachine society and its suits, Macho versus Fairy in the 70s, Stonewall's participants and difference, Discourse around the uses and abuses of the parade)
   

Who:

1. Gay Male:
1. the expecations, the assumption is that this is the culture that needs and uses camp most often.
   
2. how do we use it, and when do we use it.
   
2. Lesbian Female
   
1. Drag Aesthetic and LEsbian Performance
   
1. Radcylffe Hall
2. Dolly Wilde
   
3. Claude Cahun
   
4. Gertude and Alice
   
5. Highsmith (and Ripley as cross barrier)
6. Pulps
   
7. Terry Castle on the above
   
8. Drag Kings
   
9. How this history is used
   
10. forgotten?
    
3. Transgendered
   
1. How does playing with gender differ from being?
2. Camp as mark of gender fluidity
   
3. The Case of the Cockettes.
   
4. Performing Across Barriers of Gender and SExuality as a nessecary component of camp.
   
4. Straight
1. Decadence, Deviance, Performance, and Desire
   
2. The Case of Nellie McKay and femminism on Mother of Pearl, (esp in the metajokes about senses of humor)
3. The Case of Fredrick Segial and his Ducatti's.
   

How:

1. Rufus, Judy, and Gender
   
2. Andera Bowers, Diseased Pariah, Taxonmies, and Reliquies in grey steel
3. Carl Wilson, Celine Dion, Sentimentality, the Sublime, and the absence of gay voices.
   
4. Versailles storage room:
1. cosmetic
   
2. Antoinette as Camp Icon
1. Castle
   
2. Coppala
   
3. French pop
   
5. Mitchell, homecraft, and Taste
   
6. Harwood and the Femming of the Motorcycle
   
1. Seidel and the Motorocycle
   
2. Teh Motorcycle in GLBTQ history
   

Why:

1. Then: Because it is expected of us
   
1. Now: Because it is a skil that might atrophy unless it is used.
   
2. Because it destablizes and refuses the expecations of standardizing discourse
   
1. Because it estranges the pull towards political purity.
   
3. Because it makes a complicated arguement against the large biological urges
1. Because it reminds us that our history is against marriage and family (cf Lee Edelman Queer Theory and the Death Drive)
   
4. because it is liberating
   
1. because it is historicising
   
5. Because it engages in the carnivalesque
1. because as a culture, we have forgotten, with few exceptions the vitiality of the carnveisque (Bhaktin, obv)
   
6. Because it allows to safely speak home truths.
   
1. it still does this (cf McKellon as Dame)
   
7. because it is fun.
   
1. YEAH FUN.
   

When

1. Differences b/w historical camp and camp now
   
2. Attempts at defining camp and how they have failed
   
3. Camp as a poltical force/protest force
   
4. do people remember or is it important that camp is maintained
   
5. the case study of the new cuddly, broadway safe john waters
   

Conclusion:

1. Failure at Taxonomizing and Definining Camp Historically
2. How I failed here
   
3. questions that are left to be answered
   
4. is the term too large to be useful.
   
5. is there anyway real difference
   
6. why wont matt damon love me.