{"id":2826,"date":"2010-02-24T13:16:10","date_gmt":"2010-02-24T12:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.disparates.org\/delta\/?p=2826"},"modified":"2010-03-24T10:52:28","modified_gmt":"2010-03-24T09:52:28","slug":"jacques-lacamp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.disparates.org\/delta\/2010\/02\/jacques-lacamp\/","title":{"rendered":"must be Lacan Camp"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.disparates.org\/delta\/wp-content\/uploads\/devil_is_a_woman.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" width=\"470\" height=\"755\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-4745\" title=\"the devil is a woman\" src=\"https:\/\/www.disparates.org\/delta\/wp-content\/uploads\/devil_is_a_woman.jpg\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.disparates.org\/delta\/wp-content\/uploads\/devil_is_a_woman.jpg 470w, https:\/\/www.disparates.org\/delta\/wp-content\/uploads\/devil_is_a_woman-93x150.jpg 93w, https:\/\/www.disparates.org\/delta\/wp-content\/uploads\/devil_is_a_woman-329x530.jpg 329w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 470px) 100vw, 470px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<div style=\"margin-right: 10px; margin-left: 10px;\">\n<p><span style=\"font-family: book antiqua,palatino;\">To patronize the faculty of taste is to patronize oneself.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: book antiqua,palatino;\">To emphasize style is <strong>to slight content<\/strong>, or to introduce an attitude which is neutral with respect to content.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: book antiqua,palatino;\">Camp sees everything in <strong>quotation mark<\/strong>s. It\u2019s not a lamp, but a \u201clamp\u201d; not a woman, but a \u201cwoman\u00a0\u00bb.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: book antiqua,palatino;\">To perceive Camp in objects and persons is to understand <strong>Being-as-Playing-a-Role<\/strong>. It is the farthest extension, in sensibility, of the metaphor of<strong> life as theater<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: book antiqua,palatino;\">Life is not stylish. Neither is nature.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: book antiqua,palatino;\">In na\u00efve, or pure, Camp, the essential element is seriousness, a seriousness that fails. Of course, not all seriousness that fails can be redeemed as Camp. Only that which has the proper mixture of the exaggerated, the fantastic, the passionate, and the na\u00efve.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: book antiqua,palatino;\">When something is just bad (rather than Camp), it\u2019s often because it is too mediocre in its ambition. The artist hasn\u2019t attempted to do anything really outlandish. (\u201c<span style=\"font-size: x-large;\"><strong>It\u2019s too much<\/strong><\/span>,\u201d \u201c<span style=\"font-size: x-large;\"><strong>It\u2019s too fantastic<\/strong><\/span>,\u201d \u201c<span style=\"font-size: xx-large;\">It\u2019s not to be believed<\/span>,\u201d are standard phrases of Camp enthusiasm.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: book antiqua,palatino;\">The hallmark of Camp is the<strong> spirit of extravagance.<\/strong> Camp is a woman walking around in a dress made of three million feathers. Camp is the paintings of Carlo Crivelli, with their real jewels and trompe-l\u2019oeil insects and cracks in the masonry. Camp is the outrageous aestheticism of Steinberg\u2019s six American movies with Dietrich, all six, but especially the last, <em>The Devil Is a Woman<\/em>\u2026\u00a0 In Camp there is often something d\u00e9mesur\u00e9 in the quality of the ambition, not only in the style of the work itself. Gaud\u00ed\u2019s lurid and beautiful buildings in Barcelona are Camp not only because of their style but because they reveal \u2014 most notably in the Cathedral of the Sagrada Familia \u2014 the ambition on the part of one man to do what it takes a generation, a whole culture to accomplish.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: book antiqua,palatino;\">26. Camp is art that proposes itself seriously, but cannot be taken altogether seriously because it is <span style=\"font-size: large;\"><strong>\u201ctoo much.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><em>Titus Andronicus<\/em> and <em>Strange Interlude<\/em> are almost Camp, or could be played as Camp. The public manner and rhetoric of de Gaulle, often, are pure Camp.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: book antiqua,palatino;\">34. Camp taste turns its back on the good-bad axis of ordinary aesthetic judgment. Camp doesn\u2019t reverse things. It doesn\u2019t argue that the good is bad, or the bad is good. What it does is to offer for art (and life) <strong>a different \u2014 a supplementary \u2014 set of standards<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: book antiqua,palatino;\">Something is good not because it is achieved, but because another kind of truth about the human situation, another experience of what it is to be human &#8211; in short, another valid sensibility \u2014 is being revealed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: book antiqua,palatino;\">38. Camp is the consistently aesthetic experience of the world. It incarnates a victory of \u201cstyle\u201d over \u201ccontent,\u201d \u201caesthetics\u201d over \u201cmorality,\u201d of irony over tragedy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: book antiqua,palatino;\">44. Camp proposes a comic vision of the world. But not a bitter or polemical comedy. If tragedy is an experience of hyperinvolvement, comedy is an experience of underinvolvement, of detachment.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: book antiqua,palatino;\">49. It is a feat, of course. A feat goaded on, in the last analysis, by the threat of boredom. The relation between boredom and Camp taste cannot be overestimated. Camp taste is by its nature possible only in affluent societies, in societies or circles capable of experiencing the psychopathology of affluence.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: book antiqua,palatino;\">55. Camp taste is, above all, <strong>a mode of enjoyment, of appreciation<\/strong> &#8211; not judgment. Camp is generous. <strong>It wants to enjoy.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: book antiqua,palatino;\">57. Camp taste nourishes itself on the love that has gone into certain objects and personal styles.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: book antiqua,palatino;\">\u2014 <a href=\"http:\/\/www9.georgetown.edu\/faculty\/irvinem\/theory\/Sontag-NotesOnCamp-1964.html\" target=\"_blank\">Susan Sontag: Notes On \u201cCamp\u201d<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To patronize the faculty of taste is to patronize oneself. To emphasize style is to slight content, or to introduce an attitude which is neutral with respect to content. Camp sees everything in quotation marks. It\u2019s not a lamp, but a \u201clamp\u201d; not a woman, but a \u201cwoman\u00a0\u00bb. To perceive Camp in objects and persons [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[568,108,556],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.disparates.org\/delta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2826"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.disparates.org\/delta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.disparates.org\/delta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.disparates.org\/delta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.disparates.org\/delta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.disparates.org\/delta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2826\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.disparates.org\/delta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.disparates.org\/delta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.disparates.org\/delta\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}