catapult magazine

Kitsch is the absolute denial of shit.
-Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Dan

you have hit the nail on the proverbial head.

which, suprisingly, i appreciate.

now we have started a thread worth starting.

finally.

i HATE kitsch.

Ed.

I know this is just the “Quotes” forum, but I suppose we can discuss here too.
What constitutes kitsch? There are the obvious Precious Moments figurines, but is all sentimental pop art kitsch?

Everyone who is even slightly interested in this topic should read Part 6 (The Grand March) of “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”. I have never encountered a better text on kitsch. Here’s a bit more to whet your library card:

“Kitsch is a folding screen set up to curtain off death.”

“Before we are forgotten [after we die] we will be turned into kitsch. Kitsch is the stopover between being and oblivion.”

This one is for Eddie: “As soon as kitsch is recognized for the lie it is, it moves into the context of non-kitsch, thus losing its authoritarian power and becoming as touching as any other human weakness. For none among us is superman enough to escape kitsch completely. No matter how we scorn it, kitsch is an integral part of the human condition.”

I think that kitsch is to the imagination as sugar is to the diet. It occupies a tiny place at the top of the food pyramid. A little bit is O.K. now and then for dessert, as long as you’re getting your “three squares” of the four food groups, but if you try to live on it, aesthetically speaking, (as shockingly many people try to do) it will soon do to your mind what a steady diet of sugar will do to your body.

Hmm. I can see a new line of *cino t-shirts already: This is your brain on kitsch.

I like Kundera’s idea that, given its proper context in relation to the reality of death, even kitsch can be transformed. There’s a wonderful book by Alfred Appel, Jr. called “Jazz Modernism” that describes how a lot of early jazz performers like Fats Waller and Louis Armstrong transformed sentimental, kitschy tunes of the day into art by deconstructing them and reinterpreting them in the context of their own music and experience. Kitsch as a denial of death is a denial of life. By acknowledging and confronting death, suffering and oppression, kitsch can be transformed into celebration.