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3.9 AVERAGE
3.9 AVERAGE
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
Came here for Notes on Camp and thought that essay was really well done although i don't agree with everything Sontag says. The second one, however, i didn't like nor care for (though it would be interesting to hear her thoughts on the current AI committing art theft situation). Felt like a whole lotta words to say very little. I can't stand pretentious academic writing (most of the time). Seems ironic that Sontag's writing is pretty inaccessible, considering her criticism of the supposed chasm between "high" and "low" culture.
The ultimate camp statement: it's good because it's awful.
Many things in the world have not been named; and many things, even if they have been named, have never been described. One of these is the sensibility— unmistakably modern, a variant of sophistication but hardly identical with it— that goes by the cult name of 'Camp'.
To talk about Camp is therefore to betray it.
Nothing is more decisive. There is taste in people, visual taste, taste in emotion— and there is taste in acts, taste in morality. Intelligence, as well, is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas.
Camp is a vision of the world in terms of style— but a particular kind of style. It is the love of the exaggerated, the 'off', of things-being-what-they-are-not.
'It's absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.'
— Lady Windermere's Fan
Camp taste turns its back on the good-bad axis of ordinary aesthetic judgment. Camp doesn't reverse things. It doesn't argue that the good is bad, or the bad is good. What it does is to offer for art (and life) a different — and supplementary — set of standards.
From the vantage point of this new sensibility, the beauty of a machine or of the solution to a mathematical problem, of a painting by Jasper Johns, of a film by Jean-Luc Godard, and of the personalities and music of the Beatles is equally accessible.
Many things in the world have not been named; and many things, even if they have been named, have never been described. One of these is the sensibility— unmistakably modern, a variant of sophistication but hardly identical with it— that goes by the cult name of 'Camp'.
To talk about Camp is therefore to betray it.
Nothing is more decisive. There is taste in people, visual taste, taste in emotion— and there is taste in acts, taste in morality. Intelligence, as well, is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas.
Camp is a vision of the world in terms of style— but a particular kind of style. It is the love of the exaggerated, the 'off', of things-being-what-they-are-not.
'It's absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.'
— Lady Windermere's Fan
Camp taste turns its back on the good-bad axis of ordinary aesthetic judgment. Camp doesn't reverse things. It doesn't argue that the good is bad, or the bad is good. What it does is to offer for art (and life) a different — and supplementary — set of standards.
From the vantage point of this new sensibility, the beauty of a machine or of the solution to a mathematical problem, of a painting by Jasper Johns, of a film by Jean-Luc Godard, and of the personalities and music of the Beatles is equally accessible.
informative
reflective
fast-paced
informative
reflective
medium-paced
a little harder to understand but very interesting!
Both great essays, I think her ideas on the new sensibility are really interesting. Much more importantly, I now have a scholarly reference to back up my assertion that the CW's Riverdale is a camp masterpiece.
came for ‘Notes on Camp’, stayed for ‘One Culture and the New Sensiblity’.
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
I really liked this! It made me question my understanding of culture, camp, and what is considered art. Kind of all I could ask for in a book.
informative
medium-paced
challenging
informative
reflective
A lot of this likely went over my head, but I highlighted lots of gemstone passages. I feel like I have a greater appreciation for the true essence of camp now, but that won't stop me from labelling everything I love as camp, accurately or not. (Susan Sontag is camp).