Susan Sontag’s “Notes on ‘Camp’”: The Illiteracy of the Met Gala
Defining camp is not an easy thing to do. Just look at what the The Met Gala attendees did to camp; they butchered it completely. Did know one read this essay? Did no one see #20: “Probably, intending to be campy is always harmful” (294)?
I think that Sontag makes the most of the ineffable idea that Camp truly is. I like her use of numbering her thoughts; I think this is a very logical way of thinking about something quite illogical, like Camp. I like the idea of being able to number my thoughts on paper in a piece like this. It also seems to have a certain flow from one number to the next. To me, the numbered thoughts get less complex as we keep reading. We start with Camp as a complex whole, and it feels like we are working through this idea of Camp with Sontag herself. By the end, we have “The ultimate Camp statement,” which is: “it’s good because it’s awful… Of Course, one can’t always say that. Only under certain conditions, those which I’ve tried to sketch in these notes” (302). It feels like a process — not just reading — that we’ve gone through with Sontag to reach a particular conclusion. Long live this blatantly simple style of writing in listed numbers.
I also like the quotes that Sontag works into the piece. I think they add another element of simplicity — a comic relief almost — to the piece. Sontag’s dense paragraphs are often hard to follow for me, and these quotes often help to clarify. I think my favorite is: “Life is too important a thing to talk seriously about it” (297). The quotes bring more light into the piece and helps to break up the density.
Camp is obviously a daunting topic to take up in such few words, and — let’s not forget — without images. I think Sontag’s style best fits this topic, with a numbered list to break up concepts, and witty quotes to summarize more complex ideas. This would’ve been a painless essay for the plain black suit cohort to read pre-Met Gala.
