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106 REVAMPING THE GAY SENSIBILITY
consequences of a confrontation with Delores, a situation that parallels the
narrator’s relationship to the dominant order. By means of gallows humor, the
narrator precludes herself from acting in anger toward Delores or the cultural
economy of the un-queer. Instead, she “saves” herself by “repudiating reality and
serving illusion.”
Interestingly, the narrator’s pursuit of vengeance for Punkette is played
entirely outside of the purview of the state. The narrator is not required to face
the consequences for engaging in vigilante justice because the state is not
interested in either Punkette’s murder or the welfare of her murderer (the taxi
driver). After Delores presents a social apparatus that endeavors to maintain a
climate of homophobia while it simultaneously works to deny the existence of an
economically depressed and violent urban underclass. Without advocating the
narrator’s alternative response of homicidal violence, the narrator’s Camp
performance of gallows humor provides a containment mechanism for her anger,
serving to inhibit an active response.
Andrew Ross’s description of the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion provides an
interesting case in point. Although Ross defines the “uses of Camp” within an
argument that accommodates Sontag’s notion of Camp as a “taste” and denies
the homosexual specificity of Camp (Ross argues that Camp is a “cultural
economy” that overturns the hegemony of dominant culture), he situates his
discussion through four key historical events, including the beginning of the
current lesbian and gay liberation movement. Ross describes:
1969: The evening of the funeral of Judy Garland (a long time gay icon),
members of the New York City Vice Squad come under fire, from beer
cans, bottles, coins, and cobblestones, as they try to arrest some of the
regulars at the Stonewall Inn in Christopher Street. The mood of the
protesters, many of them street queens in full drag, had changed from that
of reveling in the spectacle of the arrest, even posing for it, to one of anger
and rage, as one of the detainees, a lesbian, struggled to resist her arrest.
Some of those present thought they heard the chant “Gay Power,” while
others only saw a more defiant than usual show of posing; it wasn’t clear
whether this confrontation was “the Hairpin Drop Heard Around the
World” or the “Boston Tea Party” of a new social movement.
(135–136)
Regardless of the “intentions” of the unknown lesbian who resisted, of the
protesters who supported her resistance, Ross’s description of a change in
“mood” would appear to mark the transformation of Camp humor into a riot.
Regardless of the conservative effects of Camp, the expression of the queer
subject’s proscription from dominant culture need not be foreclosed by Camp
humor. Indeed, alternative responses remain possible and, to some degree, Camp
discourse registers their likely probability.