The rules of aesthetic hypertrophy. Genuinely unnatural

Dolly Parton has passed away, and much has been written about her – with the utmost respect: about her role in pop culture and her undisputed supremacy in country music; about her effervescent personality and unrivalled style; about her wit and her charitable work, carried out with a discretion that is in proportion to her flamboyance on stage. With this artist, however, we also lose the last representative of a category that, in the collective imagination, has always occupied a marginal yet highly influential position. It is the multifaceted and multicoloured universe of the Excessive, the Exaggerated, the Exorbitant: faces and personalities who have made hyperbole the defining feature of their image and character. These are emphatic and irreverent figures who counter established rules and prescriptive stereotypes with apparent disorder, proud defiance, and a recklessness that is instinctive rather than the result of a cunning communication strategy: were that the case, these protagonists would last little more than a season. Madonna herself, who has made recklessness her religion, has been forced to constantly reinvent herself for over forty years – a sort of biblical curse to remain at the top and stay in tune with public tastes; but, often, her transformations still betray the voices and signs from the table around which her collaborators, undoubtedly under her direction and inspiration, have laboured to identify a new provocation – or at least one that appears to be so. 

Dolly Parton was undoubtedly the most dazzling representative of this category for a whole host of reasons. Because she had managed to find her balance in excess, and the reason for her success in extravagance. Her secret lay in a contrast that made her a living oxymoron: unnatural to the highest degree, yet authentic. What Parton created, nurtured and embellished was a highly contrived construct designed to convey the messages of a personality that had remained admirably genuine.  While fashion dictated a tedious, stale notion of good taste and women took refuge in little black dresses and stifling, characterless suits, she pushed the boundaries of bad taste to the very limit: dissonances can prove more unforgettable – even on first listen – than predictable harmonies. Fashion designers pointed to the example of the established icons of elegance – the Jackies, the Audreys – women for whom ‘diminutio’ was as much a part of their name as it was of their wardrobe; yet she puffed out her bust and fluffed up her hairstyle, appearing colourful and voluptuous just when women across half the world were striving to look flat and monotonous.  “Would you have liked to have been born a man?” asked a young man from the audience during a live television broadcast in the late 1970s. “Oh, Lord, no! If I’d been born a man, I’d have been a drag queen.”

Dolly understood human beings and their needs, and she knew that the public demands content and a style that entertain, distract and break with bourgeois conventions. Irresistibly witty, she played along with this game because it was second nature to her; her intelligence and irony meant she could even laugh at herself and her persona.  A figure who deserves credit for bringing, even into the homes of the most puritanical American families, that taste and love – along with the boundless enjoyment that follows – for the artificial and the exaggerated, which Susan Sontag identified in the 1960s as the constitutive and indispensable elements of ‘camp’ – a concept that cannot be separated from kitsch and the absence of snobbery, ostentation and theatricality. Of this language, of this subculture so pervasive in the world of the arts, Dolly was queen and high priestess, interpreter and prophetess; and through that natural unnaturality, she poured out, via music and television programmes, love songs and silly laughter, winks and activism, the cause of the LGBTQIA+ community, which identified with her and had elected her as their patron, and the promotion of reading as a means of escape from an unhappy fate. What made her irresistible and etched her into hearts and minds was a trait common to figures of her calibre: the embodiment of duality. In most cases, the coexistence of the person and the character takes the form of a clash, a conflict, in the least peaceful sense these terms can convey. Think of Dalida, the perfect representative of this great family that brings together so many artists. Feminine and joyful, dazzling in sequins whilst singing ‘Laissez-moi danser’ or ‘Gigi in paradisco’, yet tormented and restless in her personal life – a conflict so exhausting that it led Jolanda Gigliotti, in 1987, to ‘kill’ the woman and the traumas that inhabited her soul, in order to separate herself forever from that diva Dalida who was so distant from her, even though she herself had created her.

In Parton’s case, however, this contrast was an intelligent, honest and serene dialogue, handled with the sound mastery of life that a girl born in the Black Mountains of Tennessee at the end of the war might possess. A down-to-earth quality with which she reconciled an artistic career characterised by ‘too much’ with a private life so tranquil as to seem almost mundane – certainly not in keeping with the romantic lives of those in showbiz, and in spite of a great clandestine love affair that was never spoken of but much whispered about.The woman who, when asked the cheeky question “What do you do when you wake up in the morning?”, would reply mischievously, “I get up, get dressed and go back to my own home”—a quip recycled by thousands of gay men of all ages—was, in reality, what the Latins would call a ‘univira’, married to the same man for almost sixty years until his death separated them two years ago: as the woman who first wrote and sang ‘I Will Always Love You’, she kept her word. 

It is striking to note that on the very same day that Dolly shone for the last time, on 25 August, Tim Curry also passed away: it was a truly dark day for the camp scene. As always happens in such cases, social media was flooded with the grimaces, irreverence, fishnet stockings and curls that allowed The Rocky Horror Picture Show and its Dr Frank-N-Furter to sow ambiguity in a world that still clung to a measure of moralism despite the recent revolution in sexual mores. Camp thus became the vehicle for an unbridled and mocking vision of the concept of sexual identity, laying bare all its limitations. With his theatrical gestures and his proudly ramshackle character, Curry seeped into the most sensitive and thirsty minds like a stimulating substance—bitter and sweet at the same time—injecting a new perception of beauty and desire into the veins; and just as camp demands and dictates, he expanded the aesthetic boundaries to include categories, styles, languages and forms that had until then been considered repulsive, immoral and unacceptable. The outcome of this revolution was complete and effective, thanks in part to the credibility of the British artist, who was the ideal representative of this phenomenon: at his final appearance, confined to a wheelchair following a stroke, Curry took to the stage surrounded by a swarm of muscular young men, clad only in golden glitter. It was a fitting testament to his status as an iconic figure of camp.

As devoted as we are and always will be, even in the absence of celebrations worthy of her artistic stature and the place she occupied in Italian and international pop culture, we cannot fail to recall, through these two events, how Italy too produced a venerable and rightly revered high priestess of camp and exaggeration. Raffaella Carrà brought to Italian television and to packed South American stadiums a feminine image previously unknown before her arrival: that of a woman who displayed a sensuality that was free, spontaneous and joyful – and therefore not alarming. 

Recognisability as the key strategy for building loyalty. Costume designer Luca Sabatelli, who skilfully contributed to her image and that of the leading ladies of Italian variety shows, explained that dressing Carrà meant respecting her immutability: the blonde bob, the shoulder straps, the shimmering dresses and the ruffles were the elements that allowed the public to recognise her immediately and, he added, “We recognise the Virgin Mary by her blue mantle”, applying this principle to the creation of Raffaella’s looks.

Carrà and Parton share numerous similarities, not just in terms of their appearance. Both have managed to be desired by men, idolised by gay men and seen by women as friendly figures rather than rivals. Carrà, too – just like Parton in ‘Jolene’ – addressed the woman who might take her beloved away from her in 1979 with empathetic words: ‘Go to her, and say hello for me. I sincerely hope that what happened to me never happens to her’. Like her American counterpart, she championed LGBTQIA+ rights by speaking out in favour of same-sex marriage, singing about ‘Luca’ who prefers to disappear with a blond boy, and bringing the experience of a young gay man to Rai’s afternoon television, which was still steeped in the Christian Democrat dictates of the early 1990s.  She, too, possessed the gift of the improbable: what would have seemed ridiculous, if not downright grotesque, on others, sat with incredible naturalness on her persona. Although she was repeatedly targeted by censors, she never appeared vulgar: not when she danced at midday in a red leotard more suited to a fetishist’s fantasy, not when she paired a nun’s habit with visible hold-ups, as in “Ma che sera” in 1978, and certainly not in the almost childlike “Tuca Tuca”. Whenever there was a risk of appearing overly sensual, her innocent, childlike grace always prevailed – the grace of a little girl who senses the storms of adolescence approaching but still indulges a little longer in games whose full meaning she does not yet fully grasp. 

Just like Dolly, Raffaella too had made a name for herself with a resounding ‘no’: the former had turned down Elvis, who demanded half the royalties to sing ‘I Will Always Love You’, while the latter turned her back on Hollywood and the (apparently rather persistent) advances of Frank Sinatra – both women’s courage was richly rewarded, with the former pocketing millions of dollars thanks to Whitney Houston’s rendition and the latter becoming the Saturday-night starlet of the Latin world, from Italy to Spain and South America. Even in matters of the heart, the Raffaella who invited us to make love ‘from Trieste downwards’ and to come to terms with the end of a relationship by finding someone else more handsome who has no problems, resembled the very much married Parton: her long-standing relationship with Gianni Boncompagni had given way to a deeply affectionate friendship, and so the end of her romance with Sergio Japino did not put a stop to their professional collaboration, affection and mutual understanding.

Raffaella Carrà was Mrs Pelloni’s greatest stroke of genius, a world away in terms of habits and desires from the blonde doll who swayed her hips for the camera. Those who encountered her in everyday life took a few seconds to recognise her: the woman who, on stage, was a riot of Swarovski crystals, was, on the street, a quiet lady who loved reindeer-print jackets, neutral colours, and a Burberry scarf as her greatest concession to fashion; at the Argentario – a place where Pelloni seemed to take a break from that flamboyant character she had brought to life – she appeared even less concerned with her image: her hair tied back in a ponytail, wearing a cap, a vest top and shorts, with make-up and high heels a distant memory. 

Dolls created by other dolls. Dolly erecting a monument to the creature of her imagination. Tim crafting his most successful character just as one might create a fetish. La Pelloni playing with the boisterous version of herself. The queens are dead, and we, seeing no new heirs on the horizon, feel the need to wish the camp a long life.