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Kitsch and Contemporary Culture

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Kitsch and Contemporary Culture Kitsch and contemporary culture Bert Olivier Philosophy, Centre for Advanced Studies, University of Port Elizabeth, South Africa. E-mail: [email protected] This paper addresses the question of kitsch by interpreting it as :'bad" a:t of a partic~lar kind. It draws mainl~, but not exclusively, on Karsten Harries's phenomenological exploratIOn of kItsch to pr?vIde a. framewor~ from whIch to approach kitsch in contemporary (postmodern) culture. It is shown that, by u.ncovenng attnb~tes of kItsch su~h as the self-enjoyment of the spectator and lack of reflective distance, Harries provIdes valuable pomters for assessmg what is ultimately the anaesthetizing political function of kitsch in contemporary culture. Kitsch is one of the major problems of the remembered and the sentimentalism which present. This claim may seem far-fetched to pervades it (that is, the wallowing in the some people, especially to those who take a feelings that accomp-any the memories). certain delight in "art objects" which do not The point is that kitsch manifests itself hide their status as "kitsch", like a "retro"­ whenever feelings seem to have lost their telephone in the shape of a 50s pink Cadillac correlates, their "objects"; whenever the whose roof serves as the receiver. 1 But this world, objects, and even other people, seem is not really surprising - those objects derive to have retreated, to be out of reach, so that their charm from the aura of nostalgia which "enjoyment" is ultimately enjoyment of surrounds them, something that is one's feelings and sensations for their own paradoxically reminiscent of a more sake instead of for the sake of "authentic" era, despite the artificiality of communicating with others or with things in the "art object". Hence, what is charming the world. When Fredric Jameson (1993: 10- about the pink Cadillac-cum-telephone is 16) talks about the "waning of affect" in what it represents - its "bygone" referent, as postmodernity, and reminds readers that this it were, namely the historical era which it does make room for experiencing feeling in evokes so powerfully on the part of people a different register, namely that of who are old enough to be transported to their "intensities", I believe he is on the same rock "n roll youth by its sight. There is terrain, although he does not mention kitsch another reason why it is paradoxical, by name. Perhaps this is because kitsch has however. There is no doubt that the become the rule in popular culture from sentimentalism with which people may painting to television soapies and regard the miniature Cadillac-phone marks it mainstream Hollywood movies. as kitsch, but the memories of authenticity But what, precisely, is kitsch? evoked by it tend to undermine its Answering this question would certainly kitschiness precisely because these are clarify what was said above, and Karsten probably memories of excitement and desire Harries (1968: 73-83; 149-152) is an - desire that can be attached, in memory, to invaluable source of insight in this regard. I specific individuals, like lovers and friends. shall try to give a succinct account of Conversely, the sentimentalism so typical of Harries's fairly extended phenomenology of kitsch tends to subvert the authenticity of the kitsch, because it dates back to the late memories in question. The paradox , then , 1960s and I would like to expand on it by consists in the tension between what is relating it to the present. Harries reminds 104 Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library Services one that a theory or philosophy of art should aestheticall y exemplary by being make room for the recognition of bad art as "harmonious", unified and technically well as of good or "great" art - so-called faultless, even "perfect" - as Canaday "masterpieces"; otherwise there would by observed about Bouguereau's paintings and implication only be great art and non-art. His Kerman about Richard Strauss's operatic analysis of kitsch as "bad" art of a certain music (specifically Salome and Der variety places it in a broader context than Rosenkavalier). The nature of this what might be expected, by showing that it "perfection" is hinted at in Canaday's involves moral considerations as well, rather description of Bouguereau's work as than merely aesthetic ones.2 In fact, one "perfectly false", and as perfection of "a might say that Harries's interpretation of perverse kind" (quoted in Harries 1968: 76). kitsch reveals that it is an index of the Kerman's description of Strauss's Salome, impossibility of isolating art from ethics. namely that it has been composed with the Harries discusses the historical "greatest skill", and that it "carries harmonic provenance of the term "kitsch" in the audacity farther than ever before" (quoted in second half of the 19th century. It is linked to Harries 1968: 76) is similar. Even though he the English verb "sketch", on the one hand, recognizes Strauss's masterly technique, and the unfamiliar German word, "kitschen" however, he denounces it for "the most (to play with mud), on the other. He gives banal sound" in opera, and for its "sugary more credence to the latter derivation, orgasm". pointing to the similarities between If these epithets do not yet convey what smoothed-out mud and the texture or colour is distinctive about kitsch in art and music, of many 19th.;.century academic paintings. Kerman's insistence, that these two operas The term "kitsch" was probably first used to by Strauss "are false works in which refer to certain genre paintings such as those everything goes depressingly right" (quoted which, with the tourist market in mind, in Harries 1968: 76) must surely strike a represented "pure", unspoilt Alpine familiar chord with early 21 st-century mountain scenes. Importantly, Harries viewers who have been overexposed to (1968: 75) observes that: mainstream Hollywood movies and television soaps of the "Everything-will-and­ The word soon acquired overtones of moral disapproval: those paintings were called Kitsch does-work-out-in-the-end"-variety. I am which seemed to show a lack of integrity and which referring to the kind of movie that was catered to the longings of the sentimental bourgeois. ruthlessly parodied in Aronofsky's recent It is in this sense that the word appears in art criticism today ... Kitsch is considered bad art; on critical film, Requiem for a Dream (2001):1 the other hand, Kitsch is not simply bad art, but bad Goethe's well-known dictum comes to art of a particular kind. Here 'bad' is used not so mind, that nothing is as depressing as a much in an aesthetic as in a moral sense. Kitsch is perverted art, and to understand this perversion, we succession of good days. Why? Because in have to relate art to a standard of truth or morality. human life as it is, full of trials and If aesthetics conceives itself to be only an tribulations, everyday experience teaches autonomous discipline, divorced from ethics and ontology, it must fail to understand Kitsch, for one to "expect the unexpected,,:4 mishaps, Kitsch is a hybrid. accidents, unanticipated debts, illnesses and so forth. Hence, as Goethe keenly observed, This may appear incongruous, given the when things have been going smoothly for startling fact - as Harries (1968: 75) points longer than usual, one tends to wonder, out - that kitsch often strikes one as being semi-superstitiously, when the "inevitable" 105 Digitised by the University of Pretoria, Library Services mishap will occur. And the point about is accompanied by a bracketing-out of kitsch is that it covers up this salient trait of everyday, practical concerns, matched by a human experience under a layer of fleshing-out of the experience (as sentimentalism, illusion and falsity which "aesthetic") on a new perceptual basis functions like an anaesthetic or worse, a created by the "distance" in question.6 powerful narcotic, inducing a kind of stupor Phenomenologically speaking, this distance that consists in a denial of these inescapable varies from person to person according to features of human finitude. Is it at all their ability to sustain it, as well as regarding surprising, then, that so many people whom the kind of object depicted and the manner Marxists would call bourgeois adorn their or style in which it has been done. A still life lounges and dining rooms with kitsch of food may remind someone of his or her paintings or reproductions suffused with hunger, while a nude may arouse someone sentimentalism, such as a picture of a wide­ sexually because of an inability on the eyed, vulnerable-looking child whose eyes spectator's part to sustain the "distance" are filled with tears - an act that offers no required for an aesthetic experience.7 guarantee that such people are capable of Needless to say, in these instances the works bestowing genuine care or love on their own would not succeed as art. children. But what is the relevance of this for the This is not to argue that an unmitigated dubious moral status of kitsch? As Harries existential pessimism should, ideally, be (1968: 77) suggests, one might conclude that reflected in art. After all, if mishaps are to a kitsch is art without the proper "distance", greater or lesser degree inescapable, it is also keeping in mind the dependence of such true that pleasurable, fulfilling experiences distance on the individual's distancing are usually intertwined with these in those ability as well as on formal qualities of the human lives that are fortunately not subject artwork itself. That the matter is more to conditions of utter material deprivation or complex than Bullough's treatment of the poverty.
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