Totalitarian regimes are wedding consumerism with Christianity and patriotism through traditional kitsch, using its concept as a mechanism of social control and political manipulation – through the cynical and empty propaganda, they are promising to protect our lives from interruptions and disturbances that might induce reflection, discomfort, or introspection, by bringing back old values of family, country, god and home.

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“Kitsch is lacking intrinsic content of its own, and instead possessing only effect, kitsch could be infused with propaganda and thus operate as an ideal mechanism of political manipulation and social control. In part, this is because kitsch supplies readily digestible morsels for passive consumption, but also because kitsch intimates that its proffered emotions are universally shared. Like ideology, kitsch has no inside: its mixture of truth and untruth envelops and distracts the critical attempt to locate it. Thus, seen from obstinately outsidish standpoint, kitsch shows itself to soothe the masses.”

(KITSCH: History, Theory, Practice; Monica Kjellman-Chapin)

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                                          _________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

Long live imitation, mass production, display, entertainment,

fast and passive consumption, embellishment, clichés,
and phony feelings

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“Kitsch does not necessarily reside in the object, but in the response to the object. Kitsch supplants genuine art with pretense, as it usurps real emotion and replaces it with phony feeling.”

(KITSCH: History, Theory, Practice; Monica Kjellman-Chapin)

 

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Glory to sentiment and nostalgia

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“Kitsch has taste for the sentiment: kitsch sweetens raw human feeling with melancholy and nostalgia. Kitsch reduces all the complexity, desperation, and paradox of human experience to simple sentiment, replacing the novelty of a revealed deeper meaning with a teary eye and a lump in the throat.”

(Kitsch as a repetitive system; a problem for the theory of a taste hierarchy; Sam Binkley)

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Glory to instant satisfaction, pleasing, and soothing the masses

Long live bourgeoise

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Kitsch has its beginnings in the original anxiety faced by European bourgeoise of the 19th century, men of favourable economic fortune struggling to come to terms with their new positions of cultural dominance. The new middle classes advanced the enlightened libertinage which permitted them an expressive departure from convention, an indulgence in sensuality, pleasure, and a decorative affirmation of daily life. With indulgence, however, usually comes anxiety, and the limitless freedom to create proved too much for this new indulgent class, who ultimately longed for closure. From the mid-19th century on the bourgeois system of art developed its own ‘anti-system’ – kitsch, the closing of an artistic system that is premised on its creative openness. Soon, the bourgeois open system gradually closed upon itself, composing its own fixed systemic limits, whose symbols and meaning were not invented, but imitated. As bourgeois art routinized its innovations, kitsch appeared as an imitative cultural system, which, without ever relinquishing its claim to the cosmic relevance once bestowed upon original art, became duplicitous, imitative, and corrupt.

[…]

Since the industrial revolution, an unprecedented volume of durable goods, many with domestic, decorative functions, has glutted urban markets, presenting even the most pauperized consumer with aesthetic choices unknown to previous generations. These chattels were widely disdained as ‘kitsch’: knock-off imitation luxury products, ‘fine art’ items crudely and glibly manufactured to resemble the posh, high art objects of the old aristocracy, and soon became the common token of even the lowest wage earner of the industrialized world. The rise of kitsch has been variously blamed for the erosion of elite ‘high culture’, for the eclipse of revolutionary consciousness, for the depletion of moral solidarities necessary for a healthy civic culture, and for the uprooting of pre-industrial folk and ethnic traditions.

(Kitsch as a repetitive system; a problem for the theory of a taste hierarchy; Sam Binkley)

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Long live cheap souvenirs, mass-produced objects

with little merit, taste, and no aesthetic value

Glory to universal taste, and universally shared emotions

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“As objects become designated as kitsch, they take part, momentarily, in circuits of value, but kitsch is never their only value. Kitsch is a hierarchical social system but objects exist in a network of social systems which produce value in different ways. To say that taste is universal is to impose a single standard with which disagreement can only ever represent lack. To say that it is entirely a product of class fails to acknowledge the intersectionalities of identity.”
(Kitsch!: Cultural Politics & Taste; Ruth Holliday and Tracey Potts)

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Glory to comfort, safety, security, and habits

Long live cultural elitism and hierarchical social system

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Kitsch not only ignores but actively conceals the issue of race, ethnicity, and sexuality. It is very suggestive about class, taste, and social positioning, and functions as a reflective, proscriptive, and constructive device in culture - for French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, kitsch functions as a signifier that serves to produce, and in some cases protect social differences and class distinctions. A preference for kitsch might be taken as an indicator of poor taste, but might just as easily be a signpost of cultural conditioning for the facile, lack of education, class distinction, or a knowing and ironic appreciation for the aesthetically glib.

 

Alexis L. Boylan demonstrates how conversations about kitsch have frequently denied race as a factor in assessing how culture operates, both at the high and low ends of the cultural spectrum. The high/low paradigm so prevalent in considerations of kitsch fails to accommodate minorities because they cannot inhabit fully either pole of such a binary structure. ‘Low’ or popular culture is especially fraught for racial minorities, she argues because often they are set up, as is frequently the case with collectibles, as the ‘joke’ or stereotypical body in the image. The choices are then limited to either accepting or reproducing themselves as the racialized ‘joke’ or rejecting and excluding the offending imagery.
(KITSCH: History, Theory, Practice; Monica Kjellman-Chapin)

 

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Death to irony and parody!

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“Kitsch always means what it says, and says is literally. There are no two ways of reading kitsch. Once kitsch is interpreted ironically, or as a parody, it ceases to be kitsch.”

(Tomaš Kulka)

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Slovenian version:

 

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Totalitarni režimi združujejo potrošništvo s krščanstvom in patriotizmom v konceptu tradicionalnega kiča; uporabljajo ga kot mehanizem za družben nadzor in politične manipulacije – s cinično in prazno propagando (ki vsebuje stare vrednote družine, države, boga in doma) obljubljajo, da bodo zaščitili naša življenja pred motnjami, ki bi lahko povzročile razmislek, nelagodje ali introspekcijo.

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»Ker kiču primanjkuje lastne vsebine in namesto tega vsebuje zgolj učinek, bi lahko, če je prežet s propagando, deloval kot idealen mehanizem politične manipulacije in družbenega nadzora. Deloma zato, ker nas kič oskrbuje z lahko prebavljivo hrano za pasivno (upo)rabo, pa tudi zato, ker kič namiguje, da so čustva, ki jih ponuja, univerzalno deljena. Tako kot ideologija tudi kič nima notranjosti: njegova mešanica resnice in neresnice obdaja in odvrača kritični pokus njegovega lociranja. Tako se kič, gledano z brezkompromisno zunanjega stališča, uporablja za pomiritev množic.«
(KITSCH: History, Theory, Practice; Monica Kjellman-Chapin)

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Živela imitacija, masovna proizvodnja,

nastopaštvo, zabavljaštvo, hitra in pasivna (u)poraba,

okrasitev, klišeji in lažnivi občutki

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“Kič ne nujno biva v predmetu, ampak v odzivu na predmet. Kič nadomesti pristno umetnost s pretvarjanjem, saj si prisvoji resnično čustvo in ga nadomesti z lažnim občutkom.”
(KITSCH: History, Theory, Practice; Monica Kjellman-Chapin)

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Slava sentimentu in nostalgiji

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“Kič ima okus za sentiment: sladká surov človeški občutek z melanholijo in nostalgijo. Kič zmanjšuje vso kompleksnost, obup in paradoks človeškega izkustva na preprost sentiment, ter novost razkritega globljega pomena nadomešča s solznim očesom in cmokom v grlu.”
(Kitsch as a repetitive system; a problem for the theory of a taste hierarchy; Sam Binkley)

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slava instantni zadovoljitvi, ugajanju in pomirjanju množice

ŽIVELA buržoazija

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“Kič ima svoje začetke v prvotni tesnobi, s katero se je soočala evropska buržoazija 19. stoletja - ljudje ugodnega ekonomskega bogastva, ki so se trudili sprijazniti s svojim novim položajem kulturne prevlade. Novi srednji razredi so razvili razsvetljeno svobodomiselnost, ki jim je dovoljevala izrazit odmik od konvencije, prepuščanje čutnosti, užitku in dekorativni potrditvi vsakdanjega življenja. S prepuščanjem užitkom pa se navadno pojavi tesnoba; neomejena svoboda ustvarjanja se je za ta nov, uživalski razred, ki je konec koncev hrepenel po zaprtju, izkazala za preveč. Od sredine 19. stoletja naprej je meščanski umetniški sistem razvil svoj lastni ‘anti-sistem’ – kič, zaprtje umetniškega sistema, ki temelji na svoji ustvarjalni odprtosti. Kmalu se je meščanski odprti sistem postopoma zaprl vase in sestavil svoje lastne, fiksne sistemske meje, katerih simboli in pomeni niso bili iznajdeni, ampak posnemani. Ko je meščanska umetnost rutinirala svoje inovacije, se je pojavil kič kot imitacijski kulturni sistem. Ta je, ne da bi opustil svojo zahtevo po kozmični pomembnosti, ki je bila nekoč podarjena originalni umetnosti, postal dvoličen, posnemajoč in koruptiven.
[…]

Vse od industrijske revolucije je neprimerljiv obseg trajnih dobrin, mnogih z gospodinjskimi in dekorativnimi funkcijami, preplavil urbane trge, in tudi najbolj osiromašenim potrošnikom ponujal estetske izbire, nepoznane prejšnjim generacijam. Ti izdelki so bili na široko prezirani kot 'kič': imitacije luksuznih produktov, 'likovni' predmeti - surovo in nepremišljeno izdelani - ki spominjajo na fine predmete pretekle aristokracije, so kmalu postali splošen znak tudi najnižjih zaslužkarjev industrializiranega sveta. Vzpon kiča je bil vsestranski krivec za erozijo elitne 'visoke kulture', za mrk revolucionarne zavesti, za izčrpanje moralnih solidarnosti, ki so bile potrebne za zdravo državljansko kulturo, in za izkoreninjenje predindustrijske ljudske in etnične tradicije.«
(Kitsch as a repetitive system; a problem for the theory of a taste hierarchy; Sam Binkley)

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živeli poceni suvenirji,

masovna izdelava predmetov brez okusa in estetske vrednosti

slava univerzalnemu okusu in univerzalno deljenim čustvom

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»Ko so predmeti označeni kot kič, ti začasno zavzamejo mesto v vrednostnih krogih, a kič ni nikoli njihova edina vrednost. Kič je hierarhičen družbeni sistem. A predmeti obstajajo v mreži družbenih sistemov, ki ustvarjajo vrednost na različne načine. Reči, da je okus univerzalen, pomeni vsiljevanje enega samega standarda, in vsakršno nestrinjanje z njim lahko predstavlja zgolj pomanjkanje. Če rečemo, da je kič v celoti produkt razreda, s tem ne priznavamo identitetnih presekov.«
(Kitsch!: Cultural Politics & Taste; Ruth Holliday and Tracey Potts)

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Slava udobju, varnosti in navadam

živel kulturni elitizem in hierarhični družbeni sistem

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»Kič ne le ignorira, ampak aktivno prikriva vprašanja rase, narodnosti in spolnosti. Je zelo sugestiven glede razreda, okusa in družbenega položaja, in deluje zgolj kot refleksivna, prepovedujoča in konstruktivna naprava v kulturi. Za francoskega sociologa Pierra Bourdieuja kič deluje kot označevalec, ki služi za produciranje in, v nekaterih primerih, ščitenje družbenih razlik in razredne raznolikosti. Preferiranje kiča je lahko razumljeno kot indikacija slabega okusa, prav lahko pa je tudi pokazatelj kulturne pogojenosti za enostavnost, pomanjkanje izobrazbe in razrednega razlikovanja, ali pa poznavanja in ironičnega cenjenja estetske površnosti in plehkosti.«

Alexis L. Boylan prikazuje, kako so pogovori o kiču pogosto zavračali raso kot dejavnik pri ocenjevanju delovanja kulture, tako na visokih kot na nizkih koncih kulturnega spektra. Visoka/nizka paradigma, ki je precej razširjena pri obravnavanju kiča, neuspešno vključuje manjšine, ker le te ne zmorejo v celoti naseliti ne enega ne drugega pola takšne binarne strukture. 'Nizka' ali popularna kultura je še posebej problematična za rasne manjšine, ker so pogosto predstavljeni, kot je pogosto primer pri zbirateljski predmetih, kot 'šala' ali stereotipno telo na sliki. Možnosti so potem omejene na sprejetje in reproduciranje sebe kot rasne 'šale', ali pa zavrnitev in izključitev žaljive podobe.«
(KITSCH: History, Theory, Practice; Monica Kjellman-Chapin)

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smrt ironiji in parodiji!

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“Kič vedno misli točno to, kar pravi, in to pove dobesedno. Ni dveh načinov razumevanja kiča. Ko je kič interpretiran ironično, ali kot parodija, le ta preneha biti kič.”
(Tomaš Kulka)

 

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