On the Met Gala and camp’s origins in the queer POC community

Every year, attendees of the Met Gala are tasked with dressing to fit a theme, like “Heavenly Bodies” in 2018 and “Fashion in the Age of Technology” in 2016. The theme of the 2019 Gala was “Camp,” or “Camp: Notes on Fashion” — a reference to Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay “Notes on ‘Camp.’” According to the Met, the theme was meant to “explore the origins of camp’s exuberant aesthetic and how the sensibility evolved from a place of marginality to become an important influence on mainstream culture.” Since Sontag’s articulation of camp, however, camp has been elevated to a new cultural meaning and enactment, primarily by the LGBTQ community, and even more specifically by people of color in that community — a reality the Met Gala theme failed to acknowledge.

Camp as it is understood today was originated by and within marginalized communities in an effort to circumnavigate the traditional binaries of gender, sexuality, class, and race, and to elude the restrictions that regulate identity within the confines of those conventions. Black drag queens have always employed hyperbolic and curated presentations in order to assert their agency and space. Because black queer people have to navigate a particularly tricky intersection between homophobia and racism in their daily lives, their cultivation of camp is a unique performance, style, and language created to contend with that specific experience of oppression.

Despite originating and being honed in black culture, however, camp is more often than not rendered through a white lens in mainstream pop culture. When camp is not specifically attributed to Sontag, it is often attributed to white queer men or white female celebrities. Take

white artists like Madonna, Katy Perry, and Lady Gaga, all of whom have manufactured a visually unrestrained aesthetic that both embodies the spirit of camp and undermines it in one fell swoop. Whiteness brings with it palatability, and these mainstream artists’ uses of camp made it digestible for wider audiences. This form of mimicry, however, erases the origins of cultural language, mannerisms, and aesthetics that were created by queer people of color, thereby misappropriating the multitude of artifice and elegance that many black people have used to navigate and evade discrimination.

This whitewashing of camp was evident in that the curation of the evening and of the exhibitions inspired by “Notes on ‘Camp’” on display inside the Met gala were devoid of references to or representations of queer women and men of color. The entire display seemed to emphasize ostentatiousness itself more than an understanding of the roots of camp, most notably its origins in inclusivity and subversion. Camp heroes like Prince or Grace Jones were strikingly absent, as were black designers like Dapper Dan and Patrick Kelly. Dapper Dan revolutionized the intersection of hip-hop and fashion by bridging the two after luxury fashion had largely excluded rap from its purview in the 1980s. Patrick Kelly, who preceded Dapper Dan, was a black queer designer who worked in the reclamation of oppressive black imagery, blending controversial iconography and camp aesthetic, delivering fashion that mixed spectacle with design.

This discounting of black culture’s influence on camp is just one example in a long line of pop culture events in which the black experience is erased. Specifically, the turbulence and tribulations of the black experience are so often the hallmarks of its prominent interpretation that many overlook the vibrancy and animated spirit that personify the experience as well. The prevailing narrative of the black experience in dominant media has focused on hardship and ignored forms of subversion and jubilation that are central to the black experience as well. Camp is not just self-expression, but in many ways an act of self-preservation, especially for queer black women and men. It’s an unfair assessment of camp when we neglect to recognize the conservation and celebration of self pioneered by these queer black men and women, in spite of their persecution. If we were to expand on even just the predominant interpretations of the black experience, we would find that throughout and following generations of exploitation and subjugation are triumph, agency, and disruption, the bedrock of camp.

Thankfully, the form and style that was suspiciously missing from the actual exhibitions inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art were more than made up for on the pink carpet that heralded the Met Gala arrivals. Black and queer voices took center stage en masse in a manner that did more to define and exemplify camp than to commodify it. Take Lena Waithe, who walked the pink carpet in a Pyer Moss suit — it was pinstipped with lyrics from drag queen anthems, like Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" and Diana Ross’ "I'm Coming Out.” Written across the back was the message “Black Drag Queens Inventend Camp” intentionally misspelled in reference to other colloquialisms born out of queer black culture. As Waithe tweeted, “First there was “Periodt” ... and Kerby and I wanted to give y’all another one “Inventend.” Waithe’s jacket was a silent rejection of the attempt at erasure in the space she occupied — a space that often values style over substance.

Ultimately, the absence of black acknowledgement at this event illustrates the need for an examination of camp that doesn’t use Sontag’s piece as gospel. In a world that hinges on whiteness and heteronormativity, it’s hard to balance the commodification of camp with maintaining it as a space for those for whom it was meant in the first place. So much of camp is about being unapologetic and unabashedly oneself, in the most theatrical sense, but as we celebrate its many forms we must also recognize and adulate those who spearheaded its creation, remaining both brazen and obeisant.