Abstract
How camp has been defined, to whom it ‘belongs’, its politics and its pleasures have been the subject of vigorous debate since the 1960s. Although the bulk of discourse on camp has been associated with queer scholarship, camp is a useful framework for looking at Pacific Island popular culture in Aotearoa New Zealand. Not only are camp’s constituent elements of incongruity, theatricality, humor, irony and aestheticism found in Pacific Island broadcast imagery, but there are also broader arguments for the existence of an Antipodean camp within which Pacific Island variants of camp can be situated. While Pacific television comedy is ‘campy’ because it features drag and makes liberal references to popular cultural iconography, it also positions itself within a minority racial discourse of marginalization. This article explores how some performances of Pacific camp incorporate incisive political critiques about social, economic and cultural marginality within scenarios that have been dubbed ‘camp lite’.
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