In her now iconic essay ‘Notes on Camp’ Susan Sontag explores the sensibility of ‘Camp’ and the ‘affinity and overlap’ between homosexuality and ‘Camp.’ The Fast Show (Charlie Higson and Paul Whitehouse, Uk, 1994-2014) was a comedy sketch show featuring comics Harry and Paul. Two reoccurring characters are known as ‘The Old Tories.’ They are often seen in a private members club, decorated so stereotypically upper-class and British that it becomes visually camp. The pair sit discussing celebrities sexualities and reading the newspaper.
The sketches are humorous as the audience laugh at the pair. The creators invert expectations as the two traditional men become the laughing stock not the ‘Queer’ people who you expect an older series to make fun of. ‘Camp’ is ‘the love of the exaggerated.’ The upper-class men are ‘camp’ figures who are over the top and theatrical. The rich white male stereotype is exaggerated, with stuffy formal clothes, comically large prosthetic ears. They use formal vocabulary and frightfully posh RP accents to a point where they sound ridiculous. The pair are exaggerated to the point of absurdity which is fundamentally ‘Camp.’
The pair are always hopelessly wrong when discussing in celebrities, another layer comedy, as these supposedly well-educated men are so incorrect. They use their catchphrase, He looks like a queer and sounds like a queer, so he must be a queer” to assign politician David Cameron. The pairs values and the things they say are outlandish and outdated which means it is difficult to take the scene seriously but they are being serious which only adds to the humor. The word ‘queer’ is repeated to the point of excess and wordplay is also used to create laughs, “queers the pitch against him being a queer.”
The pair often ask Bunny, presumably the only gay person they know, to chime in. Who is also just as wrong, convinced queer icon Elton John is straight. They are all out of touch, its past being insultingly ignorant and becomes comical.
The political satire, The Fast Show subverts expectation, the ‘campness’ unexpectantly actually comes from the two straight, cis, white, conservative characters. ‘Camp sees everything in quotation marks.’ The sketch uses irony and heightened characterization, nothing is taken at face value.
The Fast Show (Charlie Higson and Paul Whitehouse, Uk, 1994-2014)
Susan Sontag, ‘Notes on Camp,” [1966], Against Interpretation and Other Essays (New York: Picador, 1996), 275-292.