It was Christopher Isherwood who first added the word ‘camp’ to literature in the brilliant 1954 novel, The World in the Evening. Our hapless bisexual protagonist is chatting to the gay physical therapist he’s been allotted after a car accident. The two gentlemen discuss what is and isn’t camp. Mozart? ‘Camp.’ Beethoven. ‘Not camp.’ Flaubert? ‘God, no.’ El Greco? ‘Certainly.’ High Camp, asserts the scholarly therapist, ‘is the whole emotional basis for the ballet and Baroque art’.
If we were to transpose Isherwood’s dialogue into 2023, the first pit-stop in the conversation would surely be the Eurovision Song Contest. The annual musical bun fight is a high-voltage shockwave of transcontinental camp, dotted with occasional moments of sparkling sincerity. Eurovision flicks a limp wrist at the calendar each year, appearing to make Saturday night last forever. It ends in the crowning of a fleeting musical hero whose career will implode in the blink of an eye shortly thereafter. This year’s French number, La Zarra’s ‘Evidemment’, a slick hybrid of mid-period Daft Punk with early Edith Piaf, delivers everything hardcore Eurovision fans desire from the contest — in a statement hat. 2023 will struggle to find anything camper.
