Editing Camp (style) (section)

== Distinguishing between kitsch and camp ==
The words ''camp'' and ''[[kitsch]]'' are often used interchangeably, though they are distinct. ''Camp'' is rooted in a specifically queer sensibility, informed by [[Queer|queer identity]] and [[Sexuality and gender identity-based cultures|culture]],<ref name=":14" /><ref name=":12" /> whereas ''kitsch'' is rooted in the rise of mass-produced art and [[popular culture]] for the mainstream.<ref>Menninghaus, Winfried (2009). "On the Vital Significance of 'Kitsch': Walter Benjamin's Politics of 'Bad Taste'". In Andrew Benjamin and Charles Rice (ed.). ''Walter Benjamin and the Architecture of Modernity''. re.press. pp. 39–58. {{ISBN|978-0-9805440-9-1}}.</ref> Both terms may relate to an object or work that carries aesthetic value, but ''kitsch'' refers specifically to the work itself, whereas ''camp'' is a sensibility as well as a mode of performance. A person may consume ''kitsch'' intentionally or unintentionally, but ''camp'', as Susan Sontag observed, is always a way of consuming or performing culture "in quotation marks".<ref name="Sontag2009">{{cite book|author=Susan Sontag|title=Against Interpretation and Other Essays|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HLdQPwAACAAJ|access-date=6 September 2011|date=2 July 2009|publisher=Penguin Modern Classics|isbn=978-0-14-119006-8|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130602194813/http://books.google.com/books?id=HLdQPwAACAAJ|archive-date=2 June 2013|url-status=live}}</ref>

Sontag also distinguishes between ''naïve'' and ''deliberate'' ''camp'',<ref name="Sontag1964">{{cite web |author1=Susan Sontag |author-link1=Susan Sontag |title=Notes On "Camp" |url=https://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/Sontag-NotesOnCamp-1964.html |website=faculty.georgetown.edu |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191001152759/https://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/Sontag-NotesOnCamp-1964.html |archive-date=1 October 2019 |access-date=10 October 2019 |url-status=live}}</ref> and examines Christopher Isherwood's distinction between ''low camp''—which he associated with cross-dressing and drag performances—and ''high camp''—which included "the whole emotional basis of the Ballet, for example, and of course of Baroque art".<ref name="Stępień2014">{{cite book|author=Anna Malinowska|editor=Justyna Stępień|title=Redefining Kitsch and Camp in Literature and Culture|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OyRQBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA11|date=26 September 2014|publisher=Cambridge Scholars Publishing|isbn=978-1-4438-6779-5|page=11|chapter=1, section 1: Bad Romance: Pop and Camp in Light of Evolutionary Confusion}}</ref> ''High camp'' has also been used to describe drag that is more subtle or ironic, as opposed to drag that is more parodic and obvious (and thus ''low camp'').<ref>{{Cite web |date=2011-06-04 |title=glbtq >> arts >> Drag Shows: Drag Queens and Female Impersonators |url=https://www.glbtq.com/arts/drag_queens.html |access-date=2024-08-09 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110604055547/https://www.glbtq.com/arts/drag_queens.html |archive-date=4 June 2011 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Wren |first=Daniel |date=2014-07-25 |title=A fool's guide to drag 'types' |url=https://vadamagazine.com/features/opinions/guide-drag-types |access-date=2024-08-09 |language=en-GB}}</ref>

According to sociologist [[Andrew Ross (sociologist)|Andrew Ross]], ''camp'' combines outmoded and contemporary forms of style, fashion, and technology. Often characterized by the reappropriation of a "throwaway Pop aesthetic", camp works to intermingle the categories of "high" and "low" culture.<ref>{{cite book |last=Ross |first=Andrew |url=https://archive.org/details/norespectintellec00ross |title=No Respect: Intellectuals and Popular Culture |publisher=Routledge |year=1989 |location=New York |page=[https://archive.org/details/norespectintellec00ross/page/136 136] |author-link=Andrew Ross (sociologist) |url-access=registration}}</ref> Objects may become camp objects because of their historical association with a power now in decline. As opposed to kitsch, camp reappropriates culture in an ironic fashion, whereas kitsch is indelibly sincere. Additionally, kitsch may be seen as a quality of an object, while camp "tends to refer to a subjective process".<ref>{{cite book |last=Ross |first=Andrew |url=https://archive.org/details/norespectintellec00ross |title=No Respect: Intellectuals and Popular Culture |publisher=Routledge |year=1989 |location=New York |page=[https://archive.org/details/norespectintellec00ross/page/145 145] |author-link=Andrew Ross (sociologist) |url-access=registration}}</ref> Those who identify objects as "camp" note the distance often apparent in the process through which "unexpected value can be located in some obscure or exorbitant object."<ref>{{cite book |last=Ross |first=Andrew |url=https://archive.org/details/norespectintellec00ross |title=No Respect: Intellectuals and Popular Culture |publisher=Routledge |year=1989 |location=New York |page=[https://archive.org/details/norespectintellec00ross/page/146 146] |author-link=Andrew Ross (sociologist) |url-access=registration}}</ref>

In its subversiveness and irony, camp can also suggest the possibility of overturning the [[status quo]], making it a far more "radical spectacle" than ''kitsch''.<ref name=":11" /> Musicologist [[Philip Brett]] has described camp as:<blockquote>a strategy which confronts un-queer [[ontology]] [states of being] and [[homophobia]] with humor and which by those same means may also signal the possibility of the overturn of that ontology—as when, on a famous night in 1969, the evening of the funeral of [[Judy Garland]], the mood of a group of gays and drag queens reveling in the spectacle of their own arrest by members of the New York City Vice Squad at the [[Stonewall Inn|Stonewall Bar]] turned to one of rage and produced the event that solidified the lesbian and gay movement.<ref name=":15" /></blockquote>