LGBT+ history: the story of camp, from Little Richard to Lil Nas X
mambaonline.comLil Nas X embodies camp in his music video for Montero (Call Me By Your Name) Although camp is difficult to define, it probably doesn’t need much description. Ever since 1956 – when former teenage drag queen Little Richard began performing his tribute to anal sex, Tutti Frutti, while wearing a six-inch pompadour, plucked eyebrows, and eyeliner – camp has increasingly been accommodated into social acceptance and understanding.
It has been adopted and adapted by celebrities including Dolly Parton, Prince, Elton John, Ru Paul, Lady Gaga, and Lil Nas X.
It was the theme of the 2019 Met Gala, prompting widespread commentary about what camp is. Susan Sontag, whose work inspired the Met Gala Ball’s theme, wrote in Notes on Camp (1964) that camp is about “artifice and the unnatural”, a “way of seeing the world as an aesthetic phenomenon”.
Camp, Sontag continues, is “the spirit of extravagance”, as well as “a kind of love, a love for human nature”, which “relishes, rather than judges”.
Read more on mambaonline.com