banal ?

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In Art Forum this month they described a series of C Prints of Execution Chambers as banal , as a way to reinforce versimillitude. When is banal not an insult ?

― anthony, Tuesday, 8 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

When you're looking to be banal.

― Gage-o, Tuesday, 8 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

When the person who's using it is a snob (although not always even then).

― Tom, Tuesday, 8 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

How does this reinforce verisimilitude? That sentence doesn't make any sense to me.

― N., Tuesday, 8 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

"Boring Postcards" seems germane once again.

― Alan Trewartha, Tuesday, 8 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

nick: in age of hi-tec fx and gorgeous ubertrained hollywood actoRzoR, the excfiting = the fake => the boring = the true

― mark s, Tuesday, 8 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Like the English "common", "banal" is derived from the French word meaning land "shared by tenants in a feudal jurisdiction". There's nothing necessarily negative about this, but historically that which is shared or commonplace has come to take on a derogatory meaning. (There's a discussion of the history of these concepts in Meaghan Morris's "Banality and Cultural Studies", which I've linked to before, but can't find right now.)

― Edna Welthorpe, Mrs, Tuesday, 8 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

cheap maybe, but when banality is used as a backdrop for something horrific, ie: golden egg - the banality of a murderer?

― gareth, Tuesday, 8 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I'm so bored of the banality of evil.

― N., Tuesday, 8 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

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