Haughty Children
Episode 4
As defined by Susan Sontag in her essay “Notes on Camp”, camp is defined as a sensibility that revels in artifice, stylization, theatricalization, irony, playfulness, and exaggeration rather than content. Camp sensibility is disengaged, depoliticized—or at least apolitical. Not all homosexuals have Camp taste. But homosexuals, by and large, constitute the vanguard—and the most articulate audience—of Camp. Camp sees everything in quotation marks. It's not a lamp, but a 'lamp; not a woman, but a 'woman.' Many examples of Camp are things which, from a 'serious' point of view, are either bad art or kitsch, though some art which can be approached as Camp merits the most serious admiration and study. Camp which knows itself to be camp.” In certain ways, all of us, in some shapes and forms, can be defined as camp in the way we live out our daily lives. However, in most ways, a child would not understand the idea of camp, for they are so small and so dim, with big foreheads and little thoughts. However however, a group of haughty children is a whole other story. No, a group of haughty children would not understand the idea of camp, but they would, as a large mass of people, have a very basic and mostly incorrect idea of what they kind of understand camp to be based on what they’ve heard from their eccentric Aunt Nicole. And, that minimalist and quite ineffectual understanding of a concept is the same vibe we hope to capture with this edition of HC Poetry. Its themes and messages are quite convoluted and relatively inaccessible to the average audience and we do not, in fact, want you to figure out. Mostly because we haven’t figured it out either. Because we’re just like us. The average audience. Though, please note, we’re definitely cooler than you, but still the same. Believe us. We love you.
