RuPaul Has Declared Who Actually Served Camp At This Year’s Met Gala
"Now I'll tell you something, most people don't understand it."
Before, during, and after the Met Gala this week, there’s been a lot of confusion over the theme, ‘Camp’, with everyone on the internet either becoming self-professed postmodernism experts, or openly admitting they have no idea what the hell was happening. To help us out, patron-saint of camp RuPaul has spelt it all out in an interview with Stephen Colbert.
On Wednesday night’s edition of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, RuPaul discussed the First Monday in May, and what the theme — taken from Susan Sontag’s influential 1964 essay ‘Notes On Camp’ — actually means.
While we’ve given it a good crack ourselves, RuPaul breaks down the idea to its core.
“Now I’ll tell you something, most people don’t understand it,” he begins. “Because [with] camp, you have to be able to see the façade of life. I’m going to get real philosophical up in here: you have to see the absurdity of life from outside of yourself.”
“See, the idea of drag is camp because we’re saying, ‘I’m not this body, I’m actually God in drag in this body, playing humanity, right?”
Since Sontag says camp is about “dethroning the serious”, RuPaul, is, of course, on the money. But to further help us out, RuPaul went through some looks with Colbert.
First up, Céline Dion, which he describes as “borderline camp” because it’s “too beautiful”. Ultimately, he’s won over, because, in his own words, “Céline Dion is wacky crazy and I love her and she’s campy because she’s in on the joke. That’s the answer!”
RuPaul also evaluates his own Gala look as “pure camp, baby!”. He also defends his choice to not come in drag, instead opting for an overblown, purposefully misshapen pink-and-black zebra-striped suit with sequins, designed by Zaldi.
He says he thought it’d be a “sea of drag queens”, and wanted to buck the trend — then again, he famously doesn’t do drag unless he’s getting cash.
Unfortunately they just stick to the two looks. If you’re looking for more of a breakdown, we have a pretty extensive one — and we’re pretty gay, so we know what we’re talking about, too.
Watch the interview below, and keep up to date with our rucaps of Drag Race S11 here.