"The vanguard - and the most articulate audience": Queer Camp, Jack Smith and John Waters

I wish to take the "Camp eye" as a point of departure for an examination of camp (lower-case "c") as a way of seeing, a set of relations with the world, a mode of artistic production, a refined form of irony, and an effective mode of critique. To do this I feel we must avoid Sont...

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Autor principal:	Nicholas de Villiers
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	University of Edinburgh 2007
Materias:	Fine Arts N Language and Literature P
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/a4313e429d3f467f9c06066ccb8a19ef
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:a4313e429d3f467f9c06066ccb8a19ef2021-11-23T09:46:01Z"The vanguard - and the most articulate audience": Queer Camp, Jack Smith and John Waters1749-9771https://doaj.org/article/a4313e429d3f467f9c06066ccb8a19ef2007-06-01T00:00:00Zhttp://www.forumjournal.org/article/view/577https://doaj.org/toc/1749-9771I wish to take the "Camp eye" as a point of departure for an examination of camp (lower-case "c") as a way of seeing, a set of relations with the world, a mode of artistic production, a refined form of irony, and an effective mode of critique. To do this I feel we must avoid Sontag's stress on "campy" objects, and instead look at what she calls the "vulgar" use of the term as a verb: "to camp." As a verb, camp implies activity and process; this invigorates the radical possibilities that lie within it. I will however tentatively suggest not a "canon" but a tradition of camp ways of seeing, a distinctly queer avant-garde tradition full of intertextual cross-referencing, allusion, and mutual admiration. The two figures I have chosen to illustrate this more contingent concept of camp are John Waters and Jack Smith. This essay will involve a reading of two re-released films: Smith's Flaming Creatures (1962) and Waters's Pink Flamingos (1972). Both films have earned great notoriety in terms of efforts to censor their distribution due to "obscene" (explicit, homoerotic, transvestite) content, and an equally avid following with circulation ranging from East Village midnight screenings to Congressional hearings.Nicholas de VilliersUniversity of EdinburgharticleFine ArtsNLanguage and LiteraturePENForum, Iss 04 (2007)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Fine Arts N Language and Literature P
spellingShingle	Fine Arts N Language and Literature P Nicholas de Villiers "The vanguard - and the most articulate audience": Queer Camp, Jack Smith and John Waters
description	I wish to take the "Camp eye" as a point of departure for an examination of camp (lower-case "c") as a way of seeing, a set of relations with the world, a mode of artistic production, a refined form of irony, and an effective mode of critique. To do this I feel we must avoid Sontag's stress on "campy" objects, and instead look at what she calls the "vulgar" use of the term as a verb: "to camp." As a verb, camp implies activity and process; this invigorates the radical possibilities that lie within it. I will however tentatively suggest not a "canon" but a tradition of camp ways of seeing, a distinctly queer avant-garde tradition full of intertextual cross-referencing, allusion, and mutual admiration. The two figures I have chosen to illustrate this more contingent concept of camp are John Waters and Jack Smith. This essay will involve a reading of two re-released films: Smith's Flaming Creatures (1962) and Waters's Pink Flamingos (1972). Both films have earned great notoriety in terms of efforts to censor their distribution due to "obscene" (explicit, homoerotic, transvestite) content, and an equally avid following with circulation ranging from East Village midnight screenings to Congressional hearings.
format	article
author	Nicholas de Villiers
author_facet	Nicholas de Villiers
author_sort	Nicholas de Villiers
title	"The vanguard - and the most articulate audience": Queer Camp, Jack Smith and John Waters
title_short	"The vanguard - and the most articulate audience": Queer Camp, Jack Smith and John Waters
title_full	"The vanguard - and the most articulate audience": Queer Camp, Jack Smith and John Waters
title_fullStr	"The vanguard - and the most articulate audience": Queer Camp, Jack Smith and John Waters
title_full_unstemmed	"The vanguard - and the most articulate audience": Queer Camp, Jack Smith and John Waters
title_sort	"the vanguard - and the most articulate audience": queer camp, jack smith and john waters
publisher	University of Edinburgh
publishDate	2007
url	https://doaj.org/article/a4313e429d3f467f9c06066ccb8a19ef
work_keys_str_mv	AT nicholasdevilliers thevanguardandthemostarticulateaudiencequeercampjacksmithandjohnwaters
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"The vanguard - and the most articulate audience": Queer Camp, Jack Smith and John Waters

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