Abstrakt
The presentation will provide both content and formal analysis of the Czech Instagram meme account "Přiznání gayů" (Gay Confessions). Although being made by and for homosexual men, the page's content is often centered around women of specific kind.
Czech actresses, female singers or politicians are used as a site for identification of gay men, as evidenced by numerous "when you" meme templates. I will conceptualize the production of the account's content as led by camp sensibility, as described by Susan Sontag and analyzed by David Halperin.
Halperin explains the double irony of camp as a result of gay subjectivity that stems from identification with women's roles in heteronormative narratives. The gay subjects use the women personas as a proxy identity, they are like them (in liking men) and unlike them (being men).
This results in simultaneously engaged and disengaged ironical stance that favors specific kind of "melodramatic" women who combine glamour and abjection. The "Přiznání gayů" account can be understood as evidence of such campy identifications.
The subcultural sensibility is thus made visible for general public in memes, that are characterized, following Ryan Milner, by the principles of collectivism and reappropriation. The account's owners directly remix the campy media texts and by that provide material trace of gay men's complex experience with gender and sexual roles and their expression.