Caity Croft
SWMS 215
Blog Post #2
“Style is a simple way of saying complicated things”
-Jean Cocteau
“Create your own visual style… let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable for others” -Orson Welles
I watched DragU: Episode 8, Season 2: A Family that Drags Together. Part of what draws us to drag is, as Susan Sontag might say, what offends us about it. The fact that I have known who RuPaul is my entire life speaks to the fascination that “campy” forms of expression inspire within us. The concept of the show itself is so inherently “campy,” that, although I normally never watch TV, let alone reality TV, could not help but watch the episode with a mixture of naïve curiosity and amusement. The show related back to Sontag’s Notes on Camp, in multiple ways, namely, Sontag’s explanation of a certain aspect of camp, “To perceive Camp in objects and persons is to understand Being-as-Playing-a-Role. It is the farthest extension, in sensibility, of the metaphor of life as theater” (Sontag). I had never thought about drag in this way, but drag is the height of theatricality, those dressed in drag, “Beings-as-Playing-a-Role.” The lavish costumes and makeup in addition to the sassy, hilariously ego-centric, larger-than-life personalities that are associated with drag are the epitome of both the Camp and the theatricality Sontag describes.
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/j/jeancoctea379269.html
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/o/orsonwelle109681.html
Sontag, Susan. Notes on Camp. 1964. http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/theory/Sontag- NotesOnCamp-1964.html
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