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THE CAMP TRACE IN CORPORATE AMERICA 143
performance and toward life (MacCannell 27). It also stresses integration and the
element of similarity against a background of differences (Wagner 116). The
emphasis is on uniformity of action and mass appeal. As such, it constitutes what
Roy Wagner calls a collectivizing, or rationalist, approach to symbolization in
contrast to a differentiating one (passim). In its emphasis on uniformity, it masks
all paradox and contradiction so that the ideology that flows from it has the
appearance of neutrality and seems both spontaneous and genuine, as
MacCannell suggests. Moreover, it also focuses and conditions awareness by
abstracting out the conventional as the proper prescription for human action
(Wagner 44– 45) MacAloon speaks of this “strange double dynamic,”
concluding that
while spectacle takes the “realities” of life and defuses them by converting
them into appearances to be played with like toys, then cast away, it
simultaneously rescues “reality” from “mere appearances” and re-presents
it in evocative form as the subject for new thought and action.
(275)
It is precisely in this double dynamic that the essential power of spectacle resides,
but the viewer must subscribe to a realist conception of representation that
distinguishes between reality and illusion, between depth and surface. As
harmless appearance, a mere entertainment, just for show, spectacle presents
itself as illusion, pure fantasy, and yet it is enormously persuasive because of its
ability to focus and condition awareness and to engender communitas through an
amassing of spectators and an overwhelming display of technology.
Spectacle operates as what Victor Turner called ideological communitas
(132), a constructed model intended to engender a spontaneous sense of
community in a group (e.g. existential communitas). What this means, then, is
that the ideology underpinning the event is in fact persuasive without ever
making the audience consciously aware of being persuaded. It is hegemonic. In
effect, spectacle represents (represents) political ideology, but masquerades as
neutrality. By saying “admire but do not be deceived by ‘mere images’” in the
metacommunication of the spectacle frame, the deception exposes itself as
illusion at one level (MacAloon 265). But simultaneously that same illusion
diverts attention (and indeed MacAloon’s attention seems to have been diverted)
from the ultimate deception that it successfully masks.
This more deceiving of the two deceptions is that what is actually politically
loaded form and content appears neutral, merely entertaining, and therefore
impotent. I should point out that Camp performance shares with spectacle the
primacy of visual sensory and symbolic codes. Like spectacle, this privileging of
the visual and the elaboration of surfaces in Camp has in the past led it to be
theorized uncritically as apolitical, harmless appearance, merely entertaining, and
thus impotent. However, the ideology of Camp as a gay signifying practice is by
its very nature counterhegemonic, but I will return to this point later. Suffice it to