{"id":119574,"date":"2018-10-25T13:36:34","date_gmt":"2018-10-25T17:36:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=119574"},"modified":"2018-11-07T11:46:05","modified_gmt":"2018-11-07T16:46:05","slug":"what-i-mean-when-i-say-charles-nero-and-camp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2018\/10\/25\/what-i-mean-when-i-say-charles-nero-and-camp\/","title":{"rendered":"What I Mean When I Say: Charles Nero and \u2018Camp\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes, camp involves sitting around a fire eating s\u2019mores. Or, here in Maine, it could be that family cottage by a lake or up north.<\/p>\n

For Bates professor Charles Nero and other film lovers and scholars of queer studies, camp is also a style that focuses on the excessive and over-the-top \u2014 an aesthetic that has been embraced by LGBTQ communities since the mid-20th century.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Charles Nero teaches a session of a First-Year Seminar in August. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cCamp focuses a lot on style, image,\u201d says Nero, the Benjamin E. Mays \u201920 Distinguished Professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies. \u201cSome people might say it\u2019s an attention to detail that is excessive. At the same time, for queer people, it is something that allows us to recognize each other and build community with each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

So what qualifies as camp?<\/p>\n

Think Broadway musicals, particularly classics from the 1940s and \u201950s, with their \u201cpassionate depictions of love and romance and bursting into song as a way of expressing that passion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Or the Bette Davis classic All About Eve<\/em>. \u201cEvery line in the movie is deliberate, intentional, and quite witty, a celebration of wit in the style of Oscar Wilde,\u201d Nero says. \u201cPeople are constantly glamorous and beautiful and saying smart things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Think performers, like Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand, who \u201chave legions of queer people, both male and female, who adore them because of their ability to emote via song,\u201d Nero says.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Margaret O’Brien and Judy Garland perform the song “Under the Bamboo Tree” in Meet Me In St. Louis<\/em>, a film that Charles Nero says exemplifies the concept of camp. (Photograph by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Life<\/em> magazine, Vol. 17, No. 24 [public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)<\/p><\/div>Or one of Nero\u2019s favorites, Meet Me In St. Louis<\/i>. \u201cIt\u2019s incredibly queer,\u201d Nero says, \u201cand it\u2019s directed by Vincente Minnelli, a bisexual man, who\u2019s the father of Liza Minnelli and married to Judy Garland \u2014 so you\u2019ve got three icons in one.\u201d <\/i><\/p>\n

And why is camp important?<\/p>\n

Think of the way film depictions of gay and lesbian love were taboo or outright banned for decades, how \u201cHollywood film was defined by an absence<\/em> of queer people,\u201d Nero says.<\/p>\n

But, of course, queer people still watched movies or worked in the industry. So they \u201clearned to recognize moments of style that felt queer to them, and they could talk about those with other members of their community and form an audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Does camp have downsides?<\/p>\n

It can \u2014 if, as Nero has, you associate camp and style with historic preservation in gay neighborhoods, associate historic preservation with access to wealth, and wealth with white elites and white gay men around historic preservation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has helped remove people of color from communities, old people, poorer people, and has furthered gentrification,\u201d Nero says. \u201cSome gentrification has to do with style and camp.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Think Judy Garland, Meet Me In St. Louis<\/em>, and, maybe, gentrification. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1005,"featured_media":119662,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,14],"tags":[2132,10116],"class_list":["post-119574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-faculty-staff","tag-charles-nero","tag-what-i-mean-when-i-say"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1005"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119574"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":119688,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119574\/revisions\/119688"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}