The first quote is bollocks when considered in the context of people for whom 'shielding themselves from the sordid perils of actual existence' requires a hell of a lot more than 'art'. Palestinian refugees would be an example, or victims of the Nazis. Or the many victims of the British Empire. It is crass in the extreme to suggest that many of them, who were forced to take to armed resistance purely in order to survive, could have turned to art instead. Wilde's comment is typical of up-their-own-backside aesthetes who like to make ridiculously exalted claims for art and see all other people's existences purely in terms of their own.

As regards the second comment, maybe he was gently mocking, but do you not think irony is a too-useful 'get-out-of-jail-free-card' at times? Having heard, seen, read, so many examples of simply bad art which invoke such a thing in their defence. Wilde's mocking, which I know pervades much of his work, doesn't seem to bother some of the very types of people mocked, who frequent and adore his work. Same thing could be said of Ades's Powder Her Face.

What I really want to know, Ian, is why you think (if you do, but you seem to) that this whole subject of camp is so interesting and important...

Regarding your question, as you know there are writings of Wilde which address social concerns very directly, "The Soul of Man under Socialism" being the most obvious example.

But Oscar Wilde knew nothing of Nazi victims or Palestinian refugees. Neither did he try to set himself up as the successor to Charles Dickens. Even Dickens was insensitive to the effects of the British empire (is it Martin Chuzzlewit where he mocks those who give charity to "Borrioboolagaa" land or Bleak House?). But has music (and other forms of art) been ineffective in helping to cope with oppression, or even inspiring the overthrow of tyrants? What about Finlandia? Did inmates scoff at those who played music in the concentration camps?

At the risk of being controversial - since this thread has already hit rock-bottom with a reductio ad Hitlerum, after which few debates ever last long - may I ask what purpose you do see Art as having, Ian? 

If our only criteria of the worth of anything (Art, Medicine, Calculus, Metallurgy) is "did it stop the Nazis", then all argument and discussion becomes pointless.  I'm reminded of Edward Lear's man who was shipwrecked on a desert island - he contemplates doing all the sensible things people in desert-island stories do (building a shelter, exploring the island, finding fresh water etc), but since none of it will get him home again "he wrapped himself in a blanket, and waited to be saved".

Anyhow, I will see your argument, Ian,  since I have recently worked on a piece which seems to counter what you say.  Viktor Ullmann was an jew born in Teshen (then Austria, now Cesky Tesin, Czech Republic) in 1898. He had studied with Schoenberg, among others. He was working at the Opera Theatre of Frankfurt-am-Oder (the other "Frankfurt", which sits on the German/Polish border) when he was arrested by officers of the Third Reich.  He was subsequently transferred to KZL Theresienstadt ("Terezin"), the infamous Nazi Concentration Camp.  (We must be careful with terminology here - it was not an extermination camp like Dachau, or Auschwitz-Birkenau - it was a detention centre whose regime was based on forced manual labour for the Reich in exchange for below-starvation-level rations.  The majority of the occupants died of hunger, maltreatment, or exhaustion).  Whilst in the Theresienstadt camp, Ullmann was not idle.  He founded a Philosophical Debating Society, a Collegium Musicum, and a School for New Composition.  He also began work on his opera THE KAISER OF ATLANTIS.

THE KAISER OF ATLANTIS presents us with a mad "Emperor Uberalles" who lives in a "castle" and fears to meet his people - instead he rules by pronouncements made through a Loudspeaker (the Loudspeaker is a character in its own right). We meet a bizarre cross-section of people in the Emperor's kingdom...  a young Soldier (who might be a soldier in an opposing army - or perhaps there is civil war inside the country... this isn't clear)...  a Drummer-Girl, who is morally ambiguous and offers a commentary of her own on events which seems slanted to the Emperor's views, but which she presents as objective comment - she may be a jew who has collaborated with the authorities... Harlequin, the famous pantomime-figure, who laughs his way through everything and cannot seem to grasp the horror of the situation..  a Flapper-Girl, still attired in her nightclub dress... and Death Himself.

The plot is a strange, philosophical deeply-black comedy.  Death goes on strike, because the number of people the "Emperor" is mass-murdering has knocked the bottom out of his business - he simply can't compete.  As if there wasn't already chaos, this sends the Markets into meltdown...  if there's no more Death, then the pension-funds will go bankrupt.  In a forest, the fleeing Flapper-Girl confronts the Soldier: "Well, go on then, shoot me, it's your job? Are you some kind of coward?".  But bullets no longer kill, and in the absence of other Orders, the young couple have sex in the bushes, while the Drummer-Girl proffers a moral commentary.  Finally the Emperor agrees to be the first to try "New Reinvented Death", a version of Death dreamed-up to pacify Death. The Drummer-Girl sings an insulting parody of the National Anthem, appearing to change sides (this is in fact "Deutschland, Deutschland, uber alles" sung in a jewish kletzmer key, with flattened supertonic and mediant notes).  Finally anyone left alive sings a Hymn To Death, imploring him to save them by killing them as quickly as possible, and return to his normal work. (This is a ghastly heretical version of the Lutheran chorale "Ein' feste Burg", sung to the words "Come Death, O Death, into our hearts").  "O Death, we'll never take the piss out of you again!" sing the assembled company, as the curtain falls.  (Or, in my production, as a huge barbed-wire fence and searchlights enveloped the cast).

Ullmann never saw the premiere of this work (which was written for a scratch-ensemble of whatever was available in the camp, and presumably for the entertainment of his fellow inmates). It's hard to imagine that the Camp Authorities at Thereisenstadt would have enjoyed hearing the Hymn Of The Third Reich parodied to the words "Ruler of the Indies! Duke of Ophir! High Priest of Astarte! Lord of Hungary! Cardinal of Ravenna! King Of The Jews!" - let's not for a moment suggest that this was a work written to entertain the captors.  In the middle of rehearsals, he was transferred to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where his poor physical condition after his time in Theresienstadt, and lack of any skills useful to the Reich, marked him out for quick assignment to the "showers".  His own working copy of the score of DER KAISER was left in the hands of his assistants back at Theresienstadt - perhaps he still believed it would be performed in his absence?  It never was, but the score somehow made it to the USA after the war.

If it's really true that Art has no power to shield us from the worst imaginable circumstances on earth - then why did Ullmann write THE KAISER OF ATLANTIS?   A work whose themes are calculated to mirror and parody those very circumstances in a way intended to encourage discussion of the ideas?   What possible benefit might Ullmann have derived from writing the work otherwise?  It seems to have cost him his life to write,  since the transfer to Auschwitz was a punishment sentence.

Nor was this an isolated example, although obviously the number of works which survived the Camps is greatly fewer than were really written.  I am currently doing some research on Hans Krasa,  whose fate was similar to Ullmann's.

I apologise that none of this extensive discourse has anything to do with the original topic of "camp", except in the most wretched of poor associations with the word.  However, I didn't want to see Wilde's words on the topic be written-off as "bollocks" so very lightly, and on the basis of the notorious argumental fallacy of "reductio ad Hitlerum".

Bravo, George - excellent point about the power of "camp" to deflate and emasculate threatening ideas.

We didn't have to wait until "Cabaret" for camp send-ups of the Nazis, of course - they were being done at the time, too (none of the material in "Cabaret" dates from the period, it was all purpose-written for the show).  Quite a lot of this original material has been recorded by Ute Lemper, and is worth catching, although her slick arrangements are very different from the original recordings that survive.  "Kick all the men out of the Reichstag!" has obvious political clout, but the original recording (made by Claire Waldoff) is a strangely drunken yodel that seems to parody the "feminist" singing the song, rather than those on the receiving end (which rather echoes your point about camp that ends-up defeating itself).  However - and you may have had this one in mind when you wrote? - Mischa Spoliansky's "The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name" is indeed high camp, and was the "lesbian anthem" of the era... with a chorus in pseudo-Horst-Wessel march-tempo that runs "We're not afraid to be queer and different - you march in goose-step, we prefer to dance..."

There's an obvious comedic potential in pitting opposites against each other, that runs the gamut from Plautus to It Ain't Half Hot, Mum. (Probably the whole essence of comedy arises from a purposeful defeat of assumed norms?). I think part of this is also related to the British habit of supporting the underdog in any given situation (I note with some alarm that this tradition seems to be on its last legs in the UK currently).  What would we make of John Williams's portrayal of real-life Vietnam War DJ Adrian Cronauer in "Good Morning, Vietnam!"?  Again, the same pitching of rigid military inflexibility against an anarchic yet lovable rule-breaker...  who turns out to be utterly wrong at the end of the film.  Is Cronauer "camp"?  Or merely a misfit?

And, err, what is "camp" in musical terms (a question so far ducked by everyone, I think?)

Actually I'm not sure that (or rather its generalisation) is really true, is it?  'Art', including much-derided 'popular art' just to spoil things further , can have a considerable effect in pointing up the ludicrousness of homophobia, for example, or having laws to proscribe where people can put parts of their anatomy in private. I think we tend to underestimate the subversive power of "Oh, don't be so silly' and art can be rather effective at expressing that.

Does 'forcibly confronting' the poor old police, except on very rare occasions indeed, usually do much more than annoy (members of another down-trodden minority?) who would much rather be at home than having to work overtime on a Saturday afternoon. Rightly or wrongly, the ones who have to put up with having 'alf a brick heaved at them tend not to be the decision-makers. Annoying your fellow-oppressed seems as if it could be just as much of a failure as Wilde failing to annoy the oppressors (if that is what he was trying to do). 

I'm moderately serious about this 'Don't be so silly' business. It often, as far as I can see, marks the tipping point at which the balance changes. The Wilberforce Act was primarily (of course) about outrage but the point when the argument could be said to be won was when defending slave ownership became not merely evil, but seen to be ludicrous. Owning other people wan't only a moral outrage, but derisively and ludicrously silly and obviously untenable. Again, men but not women having the vote was always offensively unjust but change happened when it came to be seen as just laughably silly.

Oh yes, forgot that bit . I've really no idea and I can't actually think of any examples.

Tippett's 'Songs of Dov'? Sort of, but it doesn't quite fit because it is too humane and cares too much. Another Tippett, the character of Astron in The Ice Break : "Saviour?! Hero?! Me?! You must be joking!" Possibly. Astron's (or is it Astrons'?) actual music, as well as his/their words are perhaps a deliberate attempt at camp?   

I suppose Britten's treatment of A Midsummer Night's Dream 'camps up' the original in some places (the deflating of the seriousness of other people's operas in 'Pyramus and Thisbe' for example) but the overall feeling isn't so much 'camp' as 'androgynising' Shakespeare's play further than it already is, which is a slightly different thing.  

There are many pieces which I suppose count as 'kitsch' and (therefore?) ripe for camp-fodder. ALW's 'Pie Jesu' floats unbidden to mind. But I don't see them as camp in themselves. (Oh, Lordy, I can see we are heading towards 'is camp in the eye of the beholder or in the object itself?' I think I'll jump ship at this point.)  

I still can't work out how to put a picture into a message. I know there were postings on it yesterday but it still doesn't work for me. I click the button second from the left on the second row and that gives me a couple of square brackets but how do you put the picture between them? I've tried cutting, pasting, dragging, the lot.

Anyway, below is a picture of Frank Thornton as Major Murgatroyd.