Camp!, Paul Baker
Camp!, Paul Baker
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49

Camp!
The Story of the Attitude That Conquered The World

Author: Paul Baker

Narrator: Paul Baker

Unabridged: 10 hr 21 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 09/05/2023


Synopsis

Fabulously unrestrained and ever-evolving, camp has captured the cultural imagination for at least 150 years. The term possibly derives from the French se camper, meaning to pose in a bold, provocative, or exaggerated fashion. Frequently used to define or deride young heterosexual men, the upper classes, Black people, older women, and gay men, camp has also played a key role in equality movements.

Paul Baker's highly anticipated reappraisal of camp surveys its touchstones across history and the changing ways that it has been understood. He traces the history of camp from the courts of Louis XIV and trials of Oscar Wilde to the archetypical dandy Beau Brummell and the celebrated playwright Noel Coward; from The Valley of the Dolls, Harlem's drag balls, and Brazilian telenovelas through to the modern day divas of Donna Summer, Madonna, and Britney Spears.

Celebrating camp as an aesthetic, a sensibility, and a way of life, this essential dive into an often-derided phenomenon, shows how camp has been a place of refuge and renewal, of heroism and hedonism, and how it is more powerful than ever.

About Paul Baker

Paul Baker is a professor of English language at Lancaster University and has written over twenty books, for both academic and popular audiences. These include Fabulosa: The Story of Polari and Outrageous! The Story of Section 28 and the Battle for LGBT Education. Paul is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Gerhard on April 08, 2023

I see a set of possible futures, based on where society might be heading. Imagine, if you will, a world where science and technology have solved most of our problems, and democracy is much less likely to be gamed than it currently is, leaving us in a glorious utopia where everyone has more than enou......more

Goodreads review by Sophy on December 26, 2023

Absolutely fabulosa darling! I loved this, I loved everything about it. I ravished the words with glee. Randomly my copy is a paperback uncorrected proof copy (bought secondhand) so no Josephine Baker on the front for me 😕 and no barcode to enter into GR but who cares, still fabulous and I'ma keepin......more

Goodreads review by Dave on November 12, 2023

FAB-U-LOUS!!!!!!!!! I've written pretty extensively on Susan Sontag's 1964 essay "Notes on Camp," but this is a HISTORY of camp that starts with Louis XIV, its inventor, and proceeds into the 21st century, ending - well, not quite but close - with the 2019 Met Gala, the subject of which was "Camp".......more

Goodreads review by Piper on August 22, 2023

i love camp. 5/5......more

Goodreads review by Logan on April 02, 2024

I've been reading a lot of Sontag lately and stumbled upon this book while reading Against Interpretation and Other Essays. As a result, I had expectations that weren't necessarily set by the author himself. This is not nearly as analytical as "Notes on 'Camp'," but that's a high bar that almost no......more