ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that Priscilla's journey from Sydney to Kings Canyon and back primarily marks a camp invasion of ostensibly masculine, yet extremely paranoid terrain, i.e. the sublime, which seeks to undermine this terrain's dominant cultural construction and to reclaim it for all genders. Camp exposes the cosmetics that romanticise rubble as ruggedness and mud as magnificence. To speak of a camp invasion is to refer to a view of camp put forward by Jonathan Dollimore, who argues that it is "misleading to say that camp is the gay sensibility; camp is an invasion and subversion of other sensibilities, and works via parody, pastiche, and exaggeration". The ludicrous, the ridiculous, and the burlesque are of course distinct features of camp, permanently advancing its avowed project of undermining notions of the "natural" and of authenticity. Camp spoils sublime mystifications by literally dragging them through the mire.
