Trump: The Politics of Perverse Camp
How Camp Culture is utilised for Political Ends
To take a critical theory position is to look awry at what is in front of us, in order to see things from a different perspective, and to illuminate what is hidden1 . This looking awry approach led to the connections that were revealed between the politics of Trump and Camp culture. The MAGA movement performs ‘Trump’ in a particular way e.g. hyper macho, enjoying excess and exaggeration and plenty of transgression and kitsch. This is not only a commentary on Trump the individual but also on Trumpland2 i.e. the wider culture of the MAGA movement.
What is Camp?
Camp is a style or sensibility characterized by its embrace of the exaggerated, artificial, theatrical. Coined and popularized by the essay "Notes on Camp3" by Susan Sontag in 1964, Camp is less about a strict definition and more about an attitude or sensibility. It celebrates the aesthetic value of things that might traditionally be considered kitschy or "bad" by conventional standards but are enjoyed for their sheer excess or audaciousness. Camp often involves subversion, parody, and the mixing of high and low culture.
The first English definition of the term Camp, appeared in a 1909 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary: “ostentatious, exaggerated, affected, theatrical; effeminate or pertaining to, characteristic of, homosexuals…”
Key Elements of Camp:
Exaggeration: Over-the-top aesthetics, emotions, or behaviors.
Artificiality: Emphasis on artifice, theatricality, and deliberate non-realism.
Irony: An underlying tone of humor, mockery, or satire.
Nostalgia and Kitsch: A fondness for things that are outdated or overly sentimental.
Playfulness: A refusal to take things too seriously, even while being serious about the artistry or intent.
The relationship between Trumpland and the Camp aesthetic arose within me when sat in Soho London (a cultural home of Camp and Gay culture) reading Susan Sontag’s brilliant ‘Notes of Camp’. As I read, I couldn’t help but see the overlaps between Sontag’s analysis of Camp, and Trumps world. Like Sontag I am ‘strongly drawn to Camp’ and particularly its transgressive approach to a high culture aesthetic, and its use of excess as a form of playfulness. The playful, generous and joyful side of Camp takes a darker turn in Trumpland, hence the term Perverse Camp used in the title, which I will say more about later.
Why is looking through this lens important?
Sontag writes, “One may capture the ideas (intellectual history) and the behavoiur (social history) of an epoch without ever touching upon the sensibility or taste that informed those ideas, that behaviour”. Capturing the sensibility of Trumpland is important, as it informs how the political libidinal economy works to mobilise support.
When discussing the Libidinal economy in politics I refer to the unconscious drives, emotions and affects that underpin any political movement and which have become more important in our era of social media driven emotional and attention focused content. Understanding the psychosocial and libidinal dynamics of politics is as important as understanding the rational and ideological positions. Ideas and plans don’t work unless we are emotionally connected, and this is both a conscious and unconscious process.
I am not trying to fit authoritarian leaders and Trumpland into a neat Camp Box, as Camp itself is very hard to define, and constantly changes. As Sontag writes, Camp is “a sensibility (as distinct from an idea) that is one of the hardest things to talk about”. What I am attempting to do, is make a link between a sensibility that informs and supports a political ideology. I am suggesting that the Politics of Perverse Camp acts as a gateway into, and a cover for, more sinister politics.
I will first point to some of the characteristics that align Trump and the MAGA movement with perverse Camp, and then summarise the meaning.
Trumpland and Camp
At Trumps Madison Garden final election rally we saw the full perverse Camp show, exaggeration, excess, transgression and bling, the event was wrapped up with Trump dancing to the Gay anthem YMCA.
Trump followed a line of speakers saying outrageous and racist things which some say ‘have clear autocratic sympathies and political qualities that are firmly in line with fascism movements historically”4 (Makuch 2024).
I will now share some of Sontag’s Notes on Camp that struck me as having parallels in Trumpland: Sontag writes:
Quotes from Sontag’s ‘Notes on Camp’
Sontag “The hallmark of Camp is the spirit of extravagance…. The love of the exaggerated”
Trumps Perverse Camp Trumps language, his speeches and performances, his grandiosity, his Mar-a-Largo home… all are exaggerated
Sontag Camp is…“Of things being of what they are not”
Trumps Perverse Camp Trump and his MAGA friends knowingly lie, it has become part of their political performance. They enjoy telling lies, and the audience enjoys hearing ‘things being what they are not’ for example:
Haitian immigrants devouring cats and dogs; the execution of babies after birth are just some of the falsehoods and wild claims made
Sontag: “To perceive Camp, is to understand Being-as-Playing-a-Role”
Trumps Perverse Camp Trumps whole Being is playing a role. His exaggerated hair quiff, his orange fake tan, all an exaggerated Camp role performance. He plays the rich guy “People can’t help but think that Trump has money, but he doesn’t. He’s never really had money. His whole notion is that you have to believe that he has money. But he’s never been able to pay his own debts.” Timothy Snyder
Sontag Camp - “The relation to the past is extremely sentimental”
Trumps Perverse Camp Trumps core message focuses on ‘Make America Great Again: the word ‘again’ conjures up a to return to a nostalgic, sentimentalised past, a pure 1950s USA culture; patriarchal, hopeful, stable and white-dominated.
Sontag “Camp effaces nature or contradicts it outright”
Trumps Perverse Camp Sontag explains how Camp loves the unnatural, as does Trump (check his tan). His attack on the environment is an attempt to efface nature. His climate denial and ‘drill baby drill’ mantra contradicts all climate science
Sontag Camp “Pure examples of Camp are unintentional: they are deadly serious”
Trumps Perverse Camp Trumpland actors are not playing at Camp, they would refute any linkage. They are deadly serious about their own self-importance and their political mission. Hence they are an example of pure Perverse Camp – they do it unintentionally
Sontag Camp “Without passion, one get pseudo camp”
Trumps Perverse Camp The MAGA movement won the election due to its passionate engagement. No pseudo camp here.
Sontag “Camp is the glorification of character…”
Trumps Perverse Camp Trumps character acts as an avatar for the MAGA movement, and is glorified to the extent some believed him to be a new saviour sent by God to save the USA
Sontag “The whole point of Camp is to dethrone seriousness”
Trumps Perverse Camp Kamala Harris said “In many ways Donald Trump is an unserious man…. But the consequences of him are extremely serious”. Trumps politics are serious, but his performance is unserious. He lies, exaggerates, dances and relentlessly mocks ‘serious politicians’ name calling and insulting them. His unserious ways delight his audiences as they see how he mocks the ‘serious elites’ in the media and the Democrats who they despise.
Sontag “Camp proposes a comic vision of the world”
Trumps Perverse Camp Examples: Immigrants eating dogs? …Dancing on stage for 39 minutes during a political rally..
Sontag “Camp appreciates vulgarity”
Trumps Perverse Camp An inverted cultural ethos is enacted. Transgressing normal boundaries, vulgar and attacking others with outright hatred and racism; calling VP Harris mentally defective for example.
Camp is solvent of morality. It neutralizes moral indignity, sponsors playfulness…..
Sontag “Camp sensibility is apolitical”
Trumps Perverse Camp This helps us understand how Trumpland infiltrates popular culture. They talk politics with an apolitical, playful, Perverse Camp voice, gaining support in a way that traditional, serious, politicians fail to. Trump is playful but in a sinister way.
Sontag “Camp shows the sensibility of high culture has no monopoly on refinement”
Trumps Perverse Camp Trumps Mar-a-Largo lifestyle and his tacky campaign sales such as the Trump Bible, are an attack on the high culture which is denigrated.
Sontag “Homosexuals constitute the vanguard-and the most sophisticated audience of Camp. Homosexuals more or less invented Camp.”
Trumps Perverse Camp Toxic masculinity and hyper-machismo, the hatred of LGBTQ+ and Trans people in the MAGA world can be read through the Freudian lens as repressed sexual conflicts being projected onto others. Their vitriolic dislike of the LGBTQ+ perhaps can be read as ‘you protest too much’.
Trumps rally favourite songs are “it’s a Mans Mans world” and what many consider to be 1970s Gay Camp disco anthem YMCA. During the song he dances a weird kind of Dad dance and pouts. Another musician Lemoine, complained about Trump using his song Run Boy Run, “which is an LGBT+ anthem written by me a proud LGBT+ musician. How Ironic”
How ironic indeed!
Sontag “Camp above all is mode of enjoyment, of appreciation – not judgement. Camp is generous, it wants to enjoy”
Trumps Perverse Camp This is where Trumpland Camp become Perverse Camp. It cannot be denied that Trump rallies are places where the crowds and Trump do gain pleasure and enjoyment. The flip-side of this the pleasure is not generous. It is playful but only at the expense of others. The enjoyment comes from being cruel and vindictive to the other.
Whilst researching Camp, I found that others had made this link, for example LaBruce (2014) writes about Gay Conservative Camp, saying:
“This phenomenon has also led to the rise of what I call “conservative camp.” For what are Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Bill O’Reilly, Donald Trump, and Herman Cain other than conservative camp icons enacting a kind of reactionary burlesque on the American political stage? Wholly without substance, their rhetoric exaggerated and stylized, evincing a carefully contrived posture of “compassionate conservatism,” they function merely as a crude spectacle that mocks the unwashed masses by pretending to be one of them while simultaneously offering them policies that are directly antithetical to their authentic needs.”5
As I thought more about Camp culture and politics, other authoritarian leaders came to mind. Nigel Farage who led the Brexit campaign and friend of Trump, has been likened to a character in the old British ‘Carry on..’ Films which were wholly Camp. I then thought of our current batch of authoritarian leaning leaders, and the image of Putin riding bareback on a horse came to mind, and his famous Gunslinger Gait and the long, long walk along the grandiose Kremlin corridors as he took power…. very Camp!
Mel Brooks Camp film ‘The Producers: Springtime for Hitler’ came to mind as did Charlie Chaplins earlier work The Great Dictator. Perhaps these were hits because Hitler was an easy target due to his Perverse Camp mannerisms.
Elon Musk and his increasingly exaggerated and excessive public commentary and his pout, perhaps lean into Camp as well. Sontag writes; “The public manner and rhetoric of Charles de Gaulle, often are pure Camp” showing how the link between politicians and Camp have been made before.
Perverse Camp, in Lacanian psychoanalytic terms, is an ‘objet petit a’, a cover for lack. The MAGA movement is driven by lack - blaming the bad other for what is doesn’t have. Perverse Camp gives Trump and his supporters a performance vehicle to be transgressive, an outrageous showman, whilst saying racist and troubling statements and holding policies that evoke fear into millions of USA families who feel threatened.
The meaning of Trump 2.0 is that Perverse Camp is new way of doing politics, one that is fitting to the digital age. A politics of excess, of flippancy, one that enables Trump to say the unsayable, to exaggerate, to be kitsch, whilst pursuing politics of nationalism and hatred. A new politics of enjoyment is born, one that relies on mobilising pleasure which comes through the displeasure of others. On reflection perhaps this is not a new way of doing politics, just a remembering and reframing of how politics in 1930s Europe, took a similar approach with devastating impact.
Zizek, S. (1992). Looking awry: An introduction to Jacques Lacan through popular culture. MIT press.
I use the term Trumpland as a shorthand for describing the culture and worldview around the Trump social object
Sontag, S. (2018/1964). Notes on" Camp" (pp. 53-65). London: Penguin Books.
LaBruce, B. (2014). Notes on Camp--and Anti-Camp. Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, 21(2). https://glreview.org/article/notes-on-camp-and-anti-camp-2/