Jay Hutchinson

This research project titled Mainstreaming of Camp examines Camp aesthetics and discourse as an artistic method of queering, thereby dismantling normative systems. Although there is a myriad of writing about Camp, not much has focused on its evolution due to the mainstreaming of the sensibility since Sontag wrote about it in 1964. Many previous definitions of Camp have alluded to its connection to queerness, however focused more on the relationship to sexual orientation as opposed to the queering of structures. This discussion becomes even more problematic when we consider how Camp has been mainstreamed, creating an almost cliché or pop-synthesized idea of Camp. If the cis-heteronormative has full control of Camp narrative, then its subversive power is lost, either to ‘straight washing’ or simplification. Camp has been an entryway for queer people to break through to the mainstream, however, therein lies the conundrum. Can queer sensibility maintain its queerness if it is accepted into the mainstream? In today’s popular culture, Camp has become synonymous with things such as RuPaul’s Drag Race or pop stars like Lady Gaga, and although the connection to queerness is still present the intent and market is different. Moe Meyer has previously suggested that the pop versions of Camp, are merely appropriations of Camp, and therefore do not hold the same power that ‘true Camp’ does. Even if this is so, the mainstream beliefs that appropriations are ‘true Camp’ must have some effect on the power of ‘queer Camp’ discourse. One possibility is that Camp is slowly, through art and culture, queering the normative, thereby creating an alternative ‘mainstream’. The goal of this research project is to analyze how Camp still functions as a queer discourse, and how the mainstream definitions of Camp may alter that discourse or its power in dismantling normative systems.