Oxford Handbook of Camp and Screen Cultures
For at least the last fifty years, critics, commentators, and celebrity cognoscenti have repeatedly resounded the death knell of camp. First, facing the political crucibles of the queer civil rights and feminist protests of the 1960s and 1970s, gay men, lesbians, and trans folks were supposed to abandon the shameful practice and kill their darlings. Yet, twenty years later, they found camp coming gloriously back into vogue, striking a pose on the ironic drag stages of the queer 1990s. Now, come forward another twenty years, when self-conscious postmodern parody and biting double entendre are the fuel that makes meme culture go, and we are obliged to wonder at camp’s ubiquity and to question its possible utility.