International Intrigue: Pop Spy and Chic Secrets of the Sixties

Fabio Cleto

kwartalnik.filmowy@ispan.pl
Università degli studi di Bergamo (Italy)

Abstract

The essay addresses the New York scene of late 1964 as the stage for the emergence of camp, framing contemporary issues of visual and celebrity culture, conspicuous consumption, gender, subcultural subversion, appropriation and reclaiming. The paradoxical economy of pop secrecy of the mid-Sixties is charted by enacting a complex narrative that intermingle three icons of survival (James Bond, Susan Sontag, Victor J. Banis) differently deployed as star spies on the spectrum of cultural visibility. Ranging from the James Bond ironic reassertion of British superiority and the male gaze, to the female challenge to high culture sacredness of Sontag’s camp, to the ambiguous survival strategy of Banis’s pulp hero, the gay secret agent Jackie Holmes, these three camps stand for the complex use of camp by institutions, intellectuals, women and gays, a use that foregrounds a competition as well as a proximity that inscribes them all in the spectacular cultural scene of the time, peopled by moles, double crossers, and hidden schemes.

  • The text is a translation of the chapter Intrigo Internazionale. Spie pop e segreti chic degli anni Sessanta from the book PopCamp, vol. 2, ed. F. Cleto, Marcos y Marcos, Milan 2008. © 2008 by Marcos y Marcos.

Due to copyright restrictions the article is available in the print version only.


Keywords:

camp, Susan Sontag, James Bond, Victor J. Banis

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Published
2009-06-30

Cited by

Cleto, F. (2009) “International Intrigue: Pop Spy and Chic Secrets of the Sixties”, Kwartalnik Filmowy, (66), pp. 6–36. doi: 10.36744/kf.3052.

Authors

Fabio Cleto 
kwartalnik.filmowy@ispan.pl
Università degli studi di Bergamo Italy

Profesor Uniwersytetu w Bergamo we Włoszech. Autor publikacji dotyczących teorii queer i gender, campu, polityki reprezentacji i historii literatury. Autor książki Percorsi del dissenso nel secondo Ottocento britannico (2001), Per una definizione del discorso camp (2006). Redaktor i współautor antologii Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject (1999), PopCamp (2008). Redaktor książek i wspomnień amerykańskiego twórcy literatury „pop-gejowskiej” Victora J. Banisa.



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Copyright (c) 2009 Fabio Cleto

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