Reflections on Camp Warren Hedges, SOU English Dept., 4/98
	Dictionary Definitions 1. "A satirical or amusing quality present in an extravagant gesture, style, or form, esp. when inappropriate or out of proportion to the content that is expressed." 2. "Delight in artificiality, exaggeration and affectation, esp. when used in conjunction with banality and outlandish trivia."
	Some Reflections Among other things, camp often exaggerates dominant conventions to the point where they are exposed *as conventions* instead of "natural," "proper," or "inevitable." In the case of heterosexual conventions, for instance, under the pressure of camp, they begin to look affected, strained, or ridiculous (though an enjoyable lark all the same). This disrupts the privileged status of what a culture valorizes as natural. I'm reminded of once when Cher was a guest on the RuPaul show, and her confused sense of shock and admiration when RuPaul broke down her characteristic ways of moving, gesture by gesture and then, in effect, did a better Cher than Cher did. The effect was to demonstrate that Cher, heterosexual icon that she is (or aspires to be) was just as constructed, just as "unnatural," as RuPaul. And this isn't just, or even primarily, a matter of her prosthetic enhancements, but rather her ways of carrying herself, the supposedly most "womanly" things about her. Yet unlike irony, which always appeals to some other, equally naturalized, conventions which it would put in place of what it parodies, camp refuses to erect *any* conventions as natural. Camp may valorize some conventions over others, but it never loses sight of, and in fact celebrates, the fact that they are conventions. RuPaul did not proceed to claim to be a better woman than Cher is. Rather, he celebrated her. Not as model to copy, but as one performer to another--performers of gender. As such, camp is perhaps most at home in the realm of the simulacrum, which questions the very notion of a self-identical original and derivative copy.
	See Also Irony Taxonomy Queer Theory Queer Theory Explained