"Camp mocks bad taste..." | Dictionary.com
In short, camp mocks bad taste; kitsch exploits it. Camp arouses our sense of the ridiculous, and we respond with amused tolerance. When we see Bette Davis or Ruth Gordon, fine if sometimes flamboyant performers relax their self-discipline and over-extend their acting technique in a superfluity of ineffective gestures �— finger-twitching and hip-switching, hand-rubbing or hip-protruding — we label the sum total as camp. Mae West, whose nasally provocative delivery, eye-rolling, lip-pursing, and pelvic tics parody the conventional invitation to dalliance, is never out of control and is camp, pure and simple.... Camp was also the stock-in-trade of Carmen Miranda, whose retina-searing Technicolor® get-ups, skyscraper headdresses bearing a season's fruit harvest, clomping platform shoes and garbled English projected in a voice that could be heard on Mars, all came together beautifully in her campy personification of Exaggeration. Had we been blessed with the Brazilian Bombshell's own blazing interpretation of Joan of Arc, the grotesque, if fascinating, result would surely have been kitsch.
CURTIS F. BROWN, "Is It Kitsch or Is It Camp?"Star-Spangled Kitsch (Universe Books, 1975)
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| STAR-SPANGLED KITSCH [Universe Books, 1975] |
Brown buttresses his thesis with reinforcing remarks and observations about four infamously celebrated female film performers of the early B&W turned Technicolor® era of American cinema: Betty Davis, Ruth Gordon, Mae West and Carmen Miranda.
The "kitsch/camp" theorist discusses in a mellifluously colorful and contemporary manner the conventions of that which is most distinctly "CAMP," pointing out that the flamboyant, quizzically quixotic & chimerical (Oh! Just call it straight up as it is: QUEER!) gesticulations and glaringly gaudy "get-ups" (i.e., accouterments, accessories, costumes, clothing, etc.) of these brazenly garish gals often served as parodic personifications and pasquinade of archetypal character traits, concepts, customs, behaviors or mores.
Mae West, for example, "whose nasally provocative delivery, eye-rolling, lip-pursing, and pelvic tics parody the conventional invitation to dalliance, is never out of control and is camp, pure and simple....," writes Brown, in his deliberately descriptive and constatively conclusive manner.
These parodist-performers personify not real or fictitious characters, personalities or people, but caricature in a conspicuously comedic fashion, with flagitiously flamboyant, frivolous fervor and right raucous, rambunctious repugnance, the conventions contrived of by our own seemingly sophisticated society, thus satirized it/us on stage and screen as "CAMP."
Were the performers actually in fact meant to interpret an historical personage, character or role writ from real life, the resultant (re)presentation would be ultimately defined as "KITSCH." Brown explains this distinct concept explicitly by referencing Carmen Miranda: "Had we been blessed with the Brazilian Bombshell's own blazing interpretation of Joan of Arc, the grotesque, if fascinating, result would surely have been kitsch."
Thus, then, and therefore, Brown describes two definitively dueling depictions of parodic satire "à la burlesque" and deems the two archetypal performance styles either distinctly "CAMP" or distinctly "KITSCH" (i.e., Brown's "kitsch/camp" thesis or theory).
I highly recommend to anyone interested in the study and/or performance of parodic satire "à la burlesque" by the infamously venerated female celebrity actors of the "Old Film" era or otherwise in the dichotomically "camp/kitsch" performances of contemporary female celebrity impersonators (i.e., drag queens!!) of the "Old School," at least to link to this abstracted quotation from Curtis F. Brown's definitive discourse on the dichotomic binary between all that is "CAMP" and all that is "KITSCH."
I myself find that this quotation intrigues the mind enough to motivate the reader immediately to seek out the source-text for further reading. I myself am going straight to the library today to check out Star-Spangled Kitsch, by Curtis F. Brown, so that I might completely immerse myself in the study of this profoundly erudite performance discourse; thus, then, and therefore, to inaugurate finally my fanatically fervid, right reasonably well-directed and derived research into the art of drag performance and of female impersonators as entertainers, both historically and contemporaneously, or could be possibly even maybe more.... We'll see!!
Thanks Dictionary.com for having serendipitously set my path of discovery in the direction of this dichotomic "kitsch/camp" discourse, so that I might delve deliberately even deeper into the subject matter as it relates to the art(s) of DRAG!! I never knew nor thought that this so easily navigable virtual reference library would spur on my determined effort to educate myself so thoroughly, dutifully and delightfully, all at once...
"In short, camp mocks bad taste; kitsch exploits..." Columbia World of Quotations, Columbia University Press, 1996. 10 Aug. 2010. Dictionary.com http://quotes.dictionary.com/In_short_camp_mocks_bad_taste_kitsch_exploits.
Respectfully submitted,
Matt(e)o | QHereKidSF
Matthew D. Blanchard
San Francisco, CA USA
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