Theory Diaries: Susan Sontag and the Elegance of Camp

 📝 #TheoryDiaries: Susan Sontag and the Elegance of Camp 

📖 Who I’m Reading
Susan Sontag’s Notes on 'Camp'
Christopher Isherwood’s The World in the Evening (1954) – esp. the “High vs. Low Camp” passage

✍️ What It Stirred in Me
Camp isn’t fluff—it’s fierce. Sontag and Isherwood help me see camp (especially glam rock’s version of it) as a survival tactic dressed in glitter. It’s not gender parody; it’s gender alchemy. Bowie didn’t mock masculinity or femininity—he reimagined embodiment itself. And it reminded me that joy, irony, and aesthetics can be deeply political and personal. Reading Sontag's Notes on 'Camp', I think about how often queer-coded or queer-derived aesthetics are trivialized in mainstream culture—but Sontag and Isherwood insist that Camp, when done right, matters deeply.

🌍 Who/What I’m Thinking 
Where hippies emphasized naturalism and punks leaned into raw aggression, glam rock carved out a space for androgynous theatricality. Ziggy Stardust was not of this world—and that was the point. Bowie, in full alien drag, was not aiming for realism—he was aiming for a rupture. Glam performers weren’t escaping identity; they were performing it out loud, with rhinestones and sincerity. Where hippies embraced naturalism and communal love, glam rockers embraced constructedness and solo stardom—but still questioned heteronormativity and binaries. In the 21st century, RuPaul’s Drag Race is where glam, satire, tragedy, and brilliance all converge on the runway. In the 2020's it's Chappell Roan and Pink Pony Club as a glam-pop priestess channeling glitter, grief, and resistance in every lyric. It's Drag Queen Story Hour a space where camp acts as a counter-narrative to weaponized morality. This is glam rock’s legacy too—drag’s roots are punk, baroque, vaudeville, disco, and resistance. 

🪞What I Saw in It 
David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust is High Camp: serious play. When Ziggy performs, it isn’t drag in the traditional sense—it’s mythmaking.

And when I think of this in contemporary terms, I look at Janelle Monáe or Ezra Miller: artists who understand the performativity of gender but use it to build new worlds, not just to parody old ones.

What if Ziggy Stardust crash-landed into a present-day K-pop video shoot—an alien recognizing their descendants in a choreography of eyeliner, fandom, and flashbulbs?

High Camp never died—it just keeps changing wigs.

🌀 Tag: #TheoryDiaries

🎤Your Turn
How do you see the digital world reshaping our understanding of sex, power, and identity today? Where do you spot High Camp now—in pop stars, TikTok trends, street fashion, or unexpected places? And what does it mean to take joy seriously?

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