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Popular Culture Review
Ethical Implications of ^^Camp’’
This section describes the implications of the camp sensibility for the general
ethical stance assumed and defended by our society.^ Quite simply, all talk of religion
and ethics which has a grounding in (or even an implication of) a universal truth or
otherworldly powers are prime targets for those with a camp sensibility. As stated
above, camp items are those which take themselves too seriously and fail to maintain
such seriousness. As religions and authorities of all kinds propose to assume a moral
high-ground, we who are proposed to attempt to find their justification for such an
assumption. However, we have found nothing but tradition, superstition, and/or
utilitarian/pragmatic justifications for these types of behaviors which we have been
taught since childhood. We are being sold things that are peddled as inherently
valuable. But, as a result of the lack of justification for this inherent value, these
systems become all style and no content; hence, they are not taken seriously and
become prime targets for the camp subculture. Things with inherent value are an
endangered species, killed (that is, redefined or reinterpreted) by those who are taking
these artifacts and making them mean something entirely unintended by the
originators.
A major implication for all current systems of ethics in light of the growing
camp sensibility, is clear. They will have to include a justification for their views.
Otherwise these systems will be used for something other than originally intended.
If no strong justification can be found, only those that “make the most sense” and are
accepted by the culture as having “contenf ’ will be taken seriously. More and more
traditions in ethics will be challenged, especially those that have previously been
accepted based on their traditional-status alone. Those systems which both propose
to justify themselves, and fall short of justification, will be seen as all style and no
content.'^ Consider the televangelist as an example of someone who dresses up in
traditional and orthodox garb intending to speak “the truth.” Those with a camp
sensitivity are likely to enjoy the performance, but will see it as art, and not as a
statement of “truth.”
The same can be applied to ethical systems as well. Claims of ethical
superiority, of valuing the world and human lives in “the right way” and proposing a
social system of positive and negative reinforcements for particular behaviors, are
all symptomatic of the ethic which the camp sensibility enjoys and redefines. These
are not simply ways of acting which a person has accepted as just the way she does
things in the world, one way among many. These are ways that are being defended
seriously by proponents of these ethics. It is this seriousness about the ethics promoted
and justified which makes them campy.
A more implicit ethic, one based on a standard of openness to difference,
and one which considers authenticity to be important, may replace not only the
codifications of ethics of old, but the cost/benefit analysis of utilitarianism as well.