It wasn’t until the other night, when watching the MTV Awards, that we realised that ‘camp’ is still alive and well! We had wrongly assumed it was just one of the things hastily discarded by Generation X as being irrelevant and outdated.  But then again, we guess it’s hard to be rid of a verb that the Oxford English Dictionary notes was used since at least the 1500s!  Over the years, its definition has been tinkered with but has always been rooted in a specifically queer sensibility, informed by queer identity and culture.

At one time it was used as another derogatory term for gay men, but just like ‘queer’ we claimed it back as our own.  Then it became totally socially acceptable in 2019  when  Vogue Editor Anna Wintour decided that the  Met Gala‘s theme was Camp: Notes on Fashion.

Now singer Conan Gray, a 25-year-old, ex You-Tuber, has released his third music album that includes a track called Vodka Cranberry.  At the time of its release, he explained, “It’s one of those songs where I think it’s more indicative of my irrational fear of people leaving me. I think I was so afraid of what was going on, so confused, that there was always this instinct of me of like, ‘Oh I should just cut it off so that I’m the one who gets to have a say in whether I’m being dumped or not’.

When he performed it at the MTV Awards the other night the setting was a very gay Romeo and ‘Juliet’ ……complete wih a bevy of white angels paying violins proving that camp is very much alive and well.