Pop Culture, ‘‘Camp’’ and Ethics
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This proposal could be considered in light of my earlier argument that objects can be
valued not simply for their purpose or use, but also for their stylishness.
We are all encouraged as children and young adults to adopt certain styles
and fads. Later in our lives, we come to see that these styles and fads are now found
only in thrift stores, garage sales and flea markets. To this observation we add our
beliefs and values, and the result is that we come to believe that our ethics are quite
similar to our past, abandoned interests. Someone with the camp sensitivity is not
out to discover answers to metaphysical questions and has grown away from focusing
on ethical dilemmas. The camp sensibility encourages creativity and results in
solidarity and prods us to recognize the power we have to make the unique things
around us the things we value the most.
University of Findlay
Matt Stolick
Notes
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4.
As Hilda Nelson emphasized to me in discussing this paper, there are “cultures embedded
within cultures,” and continual clashes in our lives. I am not attempting to specify the
boundaries o f any particular culture, but only highlighting the point that there are ways
o f life that we identify with certain cultures, and that these ways o f life are available to
us in the world o f camp.
There is a distinction to be made between parody, camp, and retro that I do not make
here in the interests o f space, but which is worthy o f discussion.
Justification in ethics, as I sec it, is a problem for all theories which ultimately finds its
support in utilitarian and pragmatic grounds. Therefore, I am not defending the ethics
o f the camp sensibility here. Furthemiore, as I am implicitly sympathetic to the ethics
o f the camp sensibility in this essay on camp, any justification presented would arguably
violate my own camp sensibility.
Note that what is important is that the systems propose to justify themselves.