Charles Hawtrey, Kenneth Williams, and Susan Sontag: Campaigners of Camp and the Carry On films.

Abstract

If Camp was the twentieth century carminative for fear of "Being-as-Playing-a-Role," (Sontag 280) Queer, its efficacy as a laxative for such a depraving "social disease" in the twenty-first century, is quite ineffective. As Roger Lewis points out, "Everything has to be Camp now, from Eddie Izzard to Graham Norton" (68). To be Camp is not to be a la commodious. It has passed into the mainstream. It is a la mode. How has this happened? Homosexuality had to be douched by lavatorial comedy.