Editing Camp (style) (section)

=== Literature ===
''[[Dandy]]ism'' is often seen as a precursor to camp, especially as embodied in [[Oscar Wilde]] and his work.<ref name=":6" /><ref>{{Citation |last=Mills |first=Victoria |title=Dandyism, Visuality and the 'Camp Gem': Collections of Jewels in Huysmans and Wilde |date=2010 |work=Illustrations, Optics and Objects in Nineteenth-Century Literary and Visual Cultures |pages=147–166 |editor-last=Calè |editor-first=Luisa |url=https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230297395_8 |access-date=2024-08-10 |place=London |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan UK |language=en |doi=10.1057/9780230297395_8 |isbn=978-0-230-29739-5 |editor2-last=Di Bello |editor2-first=Patrizia}}</ref> The character of Amarinth in [[Robert Hichens (writer)|Robert Hichens]]'s ''[[The Green Carnation]]'' (1894), based on Wilde, uses "camp coding" in his "effusive and inverted" use of language.<ref name=":16" />

The scene where Anthony Blanche arrives late to Sebastian Flyte's lunch party in [[Evelyn Waugh]]'s ''[[Brideshead Revisited]]'', has been described by writer George Melly as an example of ''camp''<nowiki/>'s "alchemical ability" to project a [[queer]] sensibility upon the world and unite one's peers in that sensibility.<ref name=":19" />

The first post-World War II use of the word in print may be [[Christopher Isherwood]]'s 1954 novel ''The World in the Evening'', where he comments: "You can't camp about something you don't take seriously. You're not making fun of it; you're making fun ''out'' of it. You're expressing what's basically serious to you in terms of fun and artifice and elegance."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Lowder |first=J. Bryan |date=2013-04-15 |title=Can Camp Be Taken Seriously? |url=https://slate.com/culture/2013/04/midnight-in-the-garden-of-good-and-evil-serious-camp.html |access-date=2024-08-10 |work=Slate |language=en-US |issn=1091-2339}}</ref>

In the American writer [[Susan Sontag]]'s 1964 essay ''[[Notes on "Camp"]]'', Sontag emphasized the embrace of artifice, frivolity, naivety, pretentiousness, offensiveness, and excess as key elements of camp. Examples cited by Sontag included [[Tiffany lamp]]s, the drawings of [[Aubrey Beardsley]], Tchaikovsky's ballet ''[[Swan Lake]]'', and Japanese science fiction films such as [[Rodan (film)|''Rodan'']] and ''[[The Mysterians]]'' of the 1950s.<ref name="Sontag1964" /> However, critics of Sontag's description, such as art historian [[David Carrier]], say that it is outdated and that "her celebration of its ecstatic marginality downplays its implicit subversiveness".<ref name=":20">{{Cite web |last=Carrier |first=David |date=1995-02-02 |title=CRITICAL CAMP |url=https://www.artforum.com/features/critical-camp-202706/ |access-date=2024-08-10 |website=Artforum |language=en-US}}</ref>

In Mark Booth's 1983 book ''Camp'', he defines camp as "to present oneself as being committed to the marginal with a commitment greater than the marginal merits".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Booth |first=Mark |title=Camp |date=1983 |publisher=Quartet Books |isbn=978-0-7043-2353-7 |location=London Melbourne New York |pages=18}}</ref> He makes a distinction between genuine ''camp'', and ''camp fads and fancies —'' things that are not intrinsically camp, but display artificiality, stylization, theatricality, naivety, sexual ambiguity, tackiness, poor taste, stylishness, or camp people, and thus appeal to them.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Booth |first=Mark W. |title=Camp |date=1983 |publisher=Quartet |isbn=978-0-7043-2353-7 |location=London; New York |pages=20}}</ref>

In his 1984 book ''Camp: The Lie That Tells The Truth'', writer and artist [[Philip Core]] describes [[Jean Cocteau]]'s autobiography as "the definition of camp".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Core |first=Philip |title=Camp: the lie that tells the truth |date=1984 |publisher=Delilah Books |isbn=978-0-933328-83-9 |location=New York |pages=9}}</ref>

In 1993, journalist [[Russell Davies]] published comedian [[Kenneth Williams]]'s diaries. Williams's diary entry for 1 January 1947 reads: "Went to Singapore with Stan—very camp evening, was followed, but tatty types so didn't bother to make overtures."<ref>[[Russell Davies]] (1993) ''The Kenneth Williams Diaries'', Harper-Collins Publishers {{ISBN|978-0-00-255023-9}}</ref>