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18 THE POLITICS AND POETICS OF CAMP
162–163). Richard Dyer, on the other hand, identifies Camp as a gay discourse, but
then proceeds to define the performances of nongay stars as “Camp.” Dyer offers a
detailed analysis of Judy Garland as Camp (178ff.), but without addressing the
problem of her nongay sexual identity, and without a political analysis of the
relationship between gay discourse and nongay producers of Camp.
6 It is not my goal, here, to explain the invisibility of the queer in representation.
This has been done admirably in two other essays, Sue-Ellen Case’s “Tracking the
Vampire,” and Cynthia Morrill’s “Revamping the Gay Sensibility” (elsewhere in
this volume).
7 I use Andrew Ross’s essay as the basis for a critique of Pop appropriation of Camp
precisely because it has had such a major impact upon Camp theorizing. After
Sontag’s “Notes,” Ross’s “Uses of Camp,” in my opinion, stands as one of the
most significant contemporary documents on the subject. In the current trend to
reread Sontag, Ross’s essay has been overlooked. Yet, if we are to recover the
discourse of Camp from the Sontagian formulation, Ross’s essay, grounded as it is
on that earlier work, must be included in the ongoing critique of “Notes.”
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