Kitsch and the Modern Predicament

You're a grad student, aren't you.

So was I once, and so is Josh our moderator. Got a problem with that? ;-)

I must say I don't understand the essay at all.

what 3rd path? where? did i read the same article you read?

Scruton is a reactionary, a theist, a pompous class-conscious English nitwit who thinks that kitsch is necessarily cheap and trashy, rather than a thought-provoking act of recontextualisation, thinks that 'real' things are better than 'fake' and thinks that 'unsupported by faith, however, the ethical vision falters'. In other words, we need God.

'Kitsch reflects our failure not merely to value the human spirit but to perform those sacrificial acts that create it.' So there's no human spirit unless I kill my son on an altar or something? What is he talking about? 'It is a vivid reminder that the human spirit cannot be taken for granted, that it does not exist in all social conditions, but is an achievement that must be constantly renewed through the demands that we make on others and on ourselves.'

This sounds like that famous Brecht poem inspired by the East German government's pronouncement that the people had forfeited its trust and had to renew it by redoubling their efforts. 'In that case,' said Brecht, 'why doesn't the government dissolve the people and elect a new one?'

Yeah, and what's with that shit about Bambi's mother dying not being real?

Oh you softies! Phil likes this stuff IRONICALLY!!

Pärt = überkitsch on a stick on stilts, which somewhat ruins RS's "point". Unless RS is being ironic as well! How much did he end up paying the Pet Shop Boys for top art goof of the DECADE!

Every ceremony, every ritual, every public display of emotion can be kitsched—and inevitably will be kitsched, unless controlled by some severe critical discipline

the whole article read like DH Lawrence to me: the same triumphalist, weasely tone, the same reactionary view of what is "natural". A naked, wrestling Oliver Reed as the "severe critical discipline", a braying Scruton "corrected" from his "infected" public display of emotion. This is essentially a fantasy of ferocious nannies and headmasters.

Don't have much time now, but for one thing:

Momus sez --

Scruton...thinks that 'unsupported by faith, however, the ethical vision falters'. In other words, we need God.

No, I don't think that's true. Immediately afterward, he says:

"Whether it ought to falter may be doubted; but it does so, and the proof of this is romanticism."

The point being not that we "need God", but rather something that I had thought obvious -- that maintaining an ethical vision is infinitely more difficult in a secular world (i.e. without a punitive/rewarding deity to ensure that we Act Good). Nietzsche, Hegel, etc. did not deem this a trivial question, and nor should we. The question of using secular principles to establish a code for ethical action is one that has preoccupied philosophy since the Enlightenment!

What I find most disturbing is that people here are actually taking Scruton seriously.

A few choice quotes from that article:

"Think of the Disneyland versions of monarchical and state occasions that are rapidly replacing the old stately forms"

"The day-to-day services of the Christian churches are embarrassing reminders of the fact that religion is losing its sublime godwardness and turning instead towards the world of fake sentiment"

"Waiting, too, is that winsome, folk-inspired evocation of adolescent love"

You get the picture. Momus put this far better than I could, but Scruton is a repressed, emotionally strict and ludicrously precise, Englishman of the worst sort: the cultural identity of the nursery, with an absurdly pompous loathing of the modern world and of flexibility, and of any art that does not fit into his strict Enlightenment criteria. I never resist a chance to attack him: at least other anti-pop curmudgeons like Richard Hoggart, while equally misled in that respect, had the saving grace of socialism.

I like Scruton. 'Fake emotion' should be rooted out of everything as a matter of principle, the casualties are martyrs to art and that's cool enough for me.

"I like Scruton"

But then you read the Spectator, Dave, what can I expect?

I haven't read the article. Alasdair Mac's dismissal of it was devastating. I detest Scruton "on principle", the way some do re. the Dead.

>>> "Waiting, too, is that winsome, folk-inspired evocation of adolescent love"

Cor! That sounds good! What's it about?

I am a curmudgeon. I am pro-pop - it is practically my reason for living - but I don't think that I think that everyone who is "anti- pop" (or has been, at other historical moments) is automatically bad as a result.

Analogy: David Thomson, the world's greatest cinema critic (??!!), is anti-cinema.

I agree with Robin and don't think he was saying Hoggart was bad, just that he was misled as regards pop.

Scruton (he could surely have only had one nickname at school?) flounders horribly around ideas of 'real' kitsch and intentionality, which isn't too surprising.

I think Mr Maclean's "fantasy of ferocious nannies and headmasters" is just begging for the decent Spoonerism I haven't the wit to invent.

"David Thomson, the world's greatest cinema critic (??!!), is anti-cinema": erm, now I'm gonna do to you what you did to me re "post-structuralism" on this, pf. The word I think is being misused in this phrase is "anti"...

DT is indeed grate.

MS: Fine, fine. I was just sketching with a big pencil. My point was that sometimes very acute and gifted and valuable commentators are sceptical of [eg. the 'moral implications of'] modern / popular forms. DT does a sort of exaggerated, melodramatic worrying at What Cinema Has Done To Us. Although this has become a mannerism, it is part of, rather than opposed to, his Grateness.

Roger Scuton. Don't go there. The Pet Shop Boys made me so ecstatically happy by suing the motherfucker for libel.

Spot on, Tim. I think a lot of "The Uses of Literacy" is fine: it's just his puritan socialist dismissal of pop that I disagree with. Hoggart and John Major may have been political opposites, but they were united in a false defence of the supposed "purity" of white British society of the 50s.

Pinefox: I also hate Scruton *on principle*. In fact, I hate him even more than Peter Hitchens.

When will Dave Q attempt to defend the Spectator?

I suppose I hate him more than Hitchens. But, hm, that's a tough one. I suppose Hitchens is more of a TV buffoon.

Has anyone else ever thought: cor - there is such pathos, such familial sadness, in the utter political transatlantic estrangement of the Hitchens Bros, who only get back together to attack each other on TV?

Jeez, I had no idea this guy was such a reviled figure in the UK; clearly, British ILM members have a lot more context about him than I do.

Still, I haven't read much criticism of the essay itself -- other than Momus's bit, which hasn't really swayed me (you're going to have to explain to me how kitsch can be "a thought-provoking act of recontextualisation", rather than the celebration of the fake, insincere, and ironic that it's always seemed to be to me).

A quick perusal of my CD collection -- not to mention my presence here -- would establish that I personally am certainly not "anti-pop". But then again, what does that mean? I personally have never had any compositional interest in kitsch, nor in formalism; it's always seemed to me like barking up the wrong tree in extremis -- as though the world of interior decorators were divided into two camps, one insisting on furnishing exclusively with wrought iron and stainless steel, and the other demanding fake fur and Formica. As with nearly anything, moderation has always struck me as the ideal -- making music that neither endlessly recombines and retreads the clichés of the past, nor ignores the possibility of affect and emotional resonance. It feels bizarre that I've ended up on the opposite side of this from two musicians (Momus and Alasdair) whose work I particularly enjoy; neither's music has ever struck me as "formalist" nor "kitsch", but just plain good -- Momus' for its wit, Alasdair's for its beauty and grace.

Anyway, if nothing else but for the sake of those who, like me, don't know the history of any of Scruton's apparent transgressions, could we focus on the essay? If anyone is willing to refute particular points with cogent argumentation, I'd like to read it. His choices of particular modern artists are probably suspect at least part of the time. I groaned a bit at the choice of Arvo Pärt, too -- although I strongly disagree that he's "überkitsch on stilts"; his best work is quite good, and his lesser works are pretty dull. But he's way overdone, and is rapidly becoming the Philip Glass of the casually-classical set (i.e. "Oh, I listen to modern classical music, you know, like John Taverner, Arvo Pärt, Glass, Gorecki...").

I can think of at least one thing he's wrong about: "That's why kitsch tragedy tends so often to be played out with animals—like the mother deer's death in Walt Disney's Bambi, which elicits grief harmlessly because the character is— literally—a cartoon." I remember seeing Bambi in early elementary school, crying and being very upset, and refusing to watch the movie for years. It sounds stupid, but it had a huge effect on me.

Dinner...I will finish the essay, and my reply, later.

Scruton (along with Greenberg--if there are people who haven't read the essay Scruton references in the article, I highly recommend doing so, as it's one of the most famous essays in the history of art criticism) commits what I feel to be a very serious flaw in the consideration of kitsch and all it's factors: the assumption that kitsch is some sort of inherent quality, that certain things are just kitschy by nature because of various contributing factors (their manufacture, things which are "telling [you] what they mean, while meaning nothing," etc.). If one assumes this to be true, then Scruton's argument holds water, whether or not one agrees with it. However, I disagree with his premise. Kitsch is certainly in the eye of the beholder; indeed, many people have highly "kitschy" taste according to many other people's perspectives without even knowing it. Hummel is still very much in business, and a very small percentage of it comes from East Village hipsters.

So, if a random object's kitsch value varies according to the person rating it, either consciously or unconsciously, the very type of value itself varies as well. On one point of the star, there are people at level zero: people who are not acknowledging the kitsch. On another point, there are people who think that kitsch is a totem to the ridiculousness of former existence (see: aforementioned village indie kids). On yet another point, there are people who believe, as Momus does, that kitsch is "a thought-provoking act of recontextualization."

I'm with Momus on this one. "Positive kitsch" is the term a certain friend of mine gives to this phenomenon, which he likens to the way that certain painters admired and collected Japanese rice-paper paintings by the dozens--he and I are similarly interested in the artifacts (both current and past) of our culture, studying their details and regarding them as small parcels of information that belie often-hidden facts about their manufacturers and users.

Scruton is far too convinced, as far as I'm concerned, that this whole silly postmodernism thing was just a 60-year lapse in the collective conscious, and soon, everyone will go back to being Enlightened. Postmodernism is/was a stepping stone, not a distraction or a backtrack, and kitsch, however one acknowledges it, is an idea firmly cemented in postmodernism. We can learn from it by digesting it without spitting it up over and over again.

Oh I don't know, Matthew - if a Hummel figure falls off the novelty shelf and breaks, it's definately heard as kitsch. For example, I've seen arguments that camp is a burlesque of having too much information (ie - referentialmania) -- so, if kitsch as heir to this legacy (those who want to argue this obviously haven't been to a flea market/swap meet with yours truly), it's having bad (ok - risky to use this, let's say 'reformatted for consumption') information that betrays a weakness in the social-grid. Of course Scruton and Pomo-phobes would fear this as the signs of empire in decay, when in fact, they act as a successful flowchart of power and it's many forms.

A question to those who are well-versed in postmodernism: is the following paragraph, which I got from this essay, representative of its ethos?

But--while postmodernism seems very much like modernism in these ways, it differs from modernism in its attitude toward a lot of these trends. Modernism, for example, tends to present a fragmented view of human subjectivity and history (think of The Wasteland, for instance, or of Woolf's To the Lighthouse), but presents that fragmentation as something tragic, something to be lamented and mourned as a loss. Many modernist works try to uphold the idea that works of art can provide the unity, coherence, and meaning which has been lost in most of modern life; art will do what other human institutions fail to do. Postmodernism, in contrast, doesn't lament the idea of fragmentation, provisionality, or incoherence, but rather celebrates that. The world is meaningless? Let's not pretend that art can make meaning then, let's just play with nonsense. (emphasis mine)

If it is, in fact, representative, then I can comfortably say that I have no interest in having any truck with postmodernism, as I categorically reject the notion that "the world is meaningless", and find the idea of "playing with nonsense" a rather abhorrent betrayal of everything I value in the arts.

Uh. Don't take that as representative. Aside from the fact that she's putting a bit of a rhetorical twist on it, "postmodernism" isn't some monolithic set of beliefs or ideas. Just look at the number of different takes on postmodernity that she gives. And anyway "play" is often a much different notion in this stuff than you might be thinking.

Any chance, then, that you might (describe/enumerate for me/tell me about) those postmodern scholars who postulate an ethical center for human behavior, and on what grounds or principles they postulate it?

Kitsch is a bad thing, inauthentic and cheapening to the human spirit.

Who says? Why shouldn't kitsch be enriching? Doesn't context change everything? Might not yesterday's kitsch be tomorrow's ostranenie, enriching estrangement?

Who decides what is kitsch anyway? God? Some government committee? Scruton himself? 'All right-thinking people'?

Throwing away kitsch, these puritans would be in danger of throwing out the baby with the bath water. Much great classical music is based on reworkings of folk music, for instance. Great literature (Shakespeare) reworks populist or kitsch motifs. (Isn't 'The Tempest' full of little goblins and sprites fit only for a garden centre?)

Scruton says 'the human spirit' is only present in certain noble works or in moments of personal or social sacrifice. I couldn't agree less. The human spirit is the sum total of all human dreams, thoughts, productions. As such, it's messy, good, evil, silly, serious, all at once.

As in an individual, the creativity of 'the human spirit' is a complex mesh of its best and worst qualities. Can we imagine Fassbinder without his drama queenery, his drugs? Freud or Sartre without copious quantities of self-regard and coke? Picasso without violence and the harming of innocent bulls? Cage's aleatory music without a slightly worrying whiff of the abdication of human agency?

The Indians had it right when they made Shiva god of both destruction and creation. Scruton, if he met Shiva, would no doubt try to talk him out of his usual arson and mayhem, and probably attempted to convert him to Christianity. Shiva would reply with a white hot scalding pillar of flame. All that would be left of of Scruton would be a little pile of ash, which would be stored in an unintentionally kitsch Constable- themed urn.

In answer to Phil's question above, we live in a post-ideological age. Nobody is looking to a single god, guru or philosopher to provide a unified ethical structure for life. Yes, we are fragmented, and yes, unlike the modernists we rather like it. But another way of putting that is that we are flexible. We can assume different identities in different contexts, and we can play.

So rather than looking for people to give us 'objective' ethical guidelines, we need people to teach us how to play, how to travel, how to listen, how to erect and take down structures (exhibitions or houses or cities or operating systems or ideas or trends) quickly. For this, I'd suggest reading books like Rem Koolhaas' 'S,M,L,XL' (ostensibly thoughts about architecture) or seeing exhibitions curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist.

Your question ties in closely with some of my thoughts about how we're no longer in an ethical age, but a textural one. So it's only natural that people who deal with textures, sounds and colours are more important to us now than philosophers and linguists. It's as if we've passed from Kierkegaard's married man (a Christian, and ethical) to his seducer (single, amoral, in love with the colours and tastes and textures of life). (cf. Kierkegaard, 'Either/Or')

Needless to say, this fits perfectly with global consumerism. Slight return of the ethical visible recently in the anti-Globalism protests, and in the new book 'Empire' by Negri and Hardt.

I am looking at this essay from the perspective of one who doesn't know much art or theory.

It strikes me as ridiculous.

Scruton seems to be saying that artists can somehow avoid creating art and humans can somehow avoid feeling with kitsch, that people can make themselves fake. I don't think things are that simple. When you try to be fake for too long, you forget what parts of your mind are "real" and what parts are not...and it all ends up real, because you can't shrug it off.

I also disagree with his examples of grand emotions: "pride, loyalty, self-sacrifice, tragic grief, and joyful surrender." Why in the world are all of them necessary? Pride, for instance? You'd have to have a very idealistic, romantic worldview to insist on all of those. Also, a couple of them are simply hard to avoid-grief, joy, and surrender. Self-sacrifice comes about when you find something more important than yourself.

There is a difference between trappings and reality...but trappings can be wonderful, too. I do not see any reason to insist on some things ("authenticity") and exclude other things ("kitsch"). Easter is beautiful and tragic, but Santa Claus is a delight. There is no reason to call for fewer interesting things in the world!

I'm not sure if any of that made sense.

I think that's a pretty loaded question, Phil. But I'll send you some email in the near future.

Momus: an interesting reply -- admittedly one with which I have some quibbles (especially the implied equivalency of ideology and ethics, which I don't believe is valid), but no matter for the moment. Let me then ask you: what is your own stance? Do you embrace this "textural" age, steeped as it is (as you said) in consumerism? Or do you find it repugnant? Or, as I suspect is the case, something else again?

For that matter, what is your own moral code, and from what do you derive it? What grounds, for instance (to invoke a somewhat tired and very old chestnut), would you have to refrain from offing someone you disliked who had something you wanted, if you knew you wouldn't get caught? Since that is, after all, the first question with which any secular system of morality must contend -- "Why shouldn't I do whatever I want, to whomever I want, if I know I'll go unpunished for it?"

Lyra:

When you try to be fake for too long, you forget what parts of your mind are "real" and what parts are not...and it all ends up real, because you can't shrug it off.

A great deal of thought in psychiatry has been devoted to that very question, I think. From what little I know, the majority opinion seems to be that a life of dissembling -- "living a lie", as it were -- generally leads to psychiatric disturbances of varying degrees of severity. There's a difference, I think, between the formation of a habit, and the permanent modification of one's character. Obviously, some would argue that personality is a completely plastic thing, but I don't think the evidence bears that out. But anyway, I certainly think that people can become incapable of expressing sincere and spontaneous emotion -- I've seen it happen! -- and that reasonable grounds exist for one to believe that that's a psychologically unhealthy state to be in.

Josh: of course it's a loaded question! ;-) But it's also a sincere one, since I do find myself unable to reconcile what I know of postmodernism, which would seem to preclude any ethical standard whatsoever, with the stances that some of its practitioners take regarding issues such as racism and sexism, stances which to me would seem to require some sort of reference to an ethical standard.

In any event, I look forward to your mail.

Phil: when you have a minute, click here and read. This is MY masterpiece haha on ethics and true feeling (with xgau cast in the Scruton role?: but have not yet felt strong enuff to READ Scruton, who defines himself as an Authoritarian Conservative, and generally has a slky-sinister tone and manner that paralyses me with rage).

I think Lyra's questions are spot on, and that your answer — which is dismissive and patronising and thoughtlessly cruel (though I totally accept you don't see that or mean it like that) – is also weak, even evasive, in your own terms. She nods to Scruton's emotional hierarchy: well, one thing I want to say is this, that a world in which AWE morally trumps FLIPPANCY is a world in which I am a criminal. If that's "objectivity" then let the war begin.

I very much think you are trying to reinstate God under a new name: which is totally kewl subjectively and abhorrent "objectively" (if your pt abt living a falsehood is valid, where does this LEAVE eg Pärt? A criminal like me, by "objective" standards, since his deep belife = cottoncandyland), because it has implications for ME.

Postmodernism: well, one route towards discovering its ethics might be JF Lyotard himself, who introduced the word into the [rubbish word alert] discourse. JFL wrote abt NOTHING ELSE but ethics, after all, in the latter part of his life. I don't buy his solution (kind of a souped-up Nietzschean Kantianism), but I totally buy the honesty of his intent. But PoMo is an ill-formed ragbag of a concept now, with too many foax raging for or against selectively pick'n'mixed elements. The word just ain't salvageable: what I mean by it, what you mean, what Josh or Frank Kogan mean — we would spend MONTHS (more) jerking ourselves around to come up with something we agreed on. By which time the Morally Weak One wd have buried a hatchet in the head of the others, rifled their meagre pockets and hurried off to Vegas.

Setting aside that I don't see its usefulness, or – more precisely – how it could ever be used, seems to me step one of determining OBJECTIVITY is to include the passions and insights of Everyone Now Living, and work from there. Any less that that is a subjective shortcut enacted by an empowered minority, masquerading as Objectivity. Scruton actively demands something like this: the majority are subhumans with false emotions to him, who need Guidance from the likes of his Enthroned Self. I don't for a second believe you accede to anything LIKE this: but to me yr unconscious put-down of Lyra, the way you simply ignored the deepest point s/he was making (at the same time demanding elsewhere that WE THINK PROPERLY AND DEEPLY about ethics, and that you are a DEEPLY MORAL PERSON) was disrespectful... Well, look, maybe ethics is an activity not a programme: maybe the way we behave towards one another here (which we possibly disagree abt) is the subject at hand, not Why Killing is Bad (which only Dave Q will "disagree" abt: go tarden go).

I don't know whether I agree with the bulk of Mark S's last mail there, which looks to me rather over-heated. But as far as I can tell I do agree with him on one thing: attempts to define Postmodernism - which has been around for decades and has been appropriated by all and sundry - are likely to be a waste of time. I vote, as I have done for years, for the word not to be used at all.

overheated? sorry if so: i don't post unflippantly if there isn't something juicing me — I can't split myself from a View of Scruton from what he actually says and does and what what he says does...

But anyway: consider the ethics question to include my behaviour on-line, obviously. Part of my beef here is that Abstract Talk abt Objectivity and Ethics seems not quite to apply to consideration of the actual ethics of the process at hand. Which I *totally* don't believe I am Lord-On-High Declarer-and- Decider abt. (Which you might not think, considering how I sometimes behave.)

(Ain't it funny the fings we unexpectedly agree abt, pinefox...?: you are such an intriguing mystery to me)

"can't split myself from a View of Scruton from what he actually says and does and what what he says does" in decent english = "can't myself split a View of Scruton from what he actually says and does and what what he says does"

Mark S - the problem with casting Xgau in the 'Scruton role' is that you can actually WRITE. Most subjective reactions are not similarly mediated. Did you feel the same about your subject when you STARTED the piece as when you finished the final draft?

So what are you saying, DQ?: that in the course of my defence of "kitsch", so-called, I transmute it with My Actual Writing into "beautiful genuine art", so-called? Heh. As a brutal critique of my work, I think I can stand this. Anyway, even if I’m not the Grate Artist in question, the potential for that to happen disproves Scruton, don't it? (Still haven't read it: I'm doing a pinefox...)

Ans to easier question: I'm totally not sure. What I feel is a product of how I interract with others, it's not something pure and inwardly distilled and preset. It moves around. For example my dad is probably going to go on-line in a few months, and (if he's anything like me, which is fairly likely), he will google first HIS name (he's a retired academic, a botanist, in fact), then those of his children. And one day he will find this: and I don't know what he will think or feel. So — as this is currently a bit in my head — I don't know what I think or feel. Generally I only know what a piece is actually really about, or says, when I talk to others (readers; the audience) afterwards. They're much better judges than me. Which is why I iz such a \|/h0r3 for feedback.

Phil;

A great deal of thought in psychiatry has been devoted to that very question, I think. From what little I know, the majority opinion seems to be that a life of dissembling -- "living a lie", as it were - - generally leads to psychiatric disturbances of varying degrees of severity. There's a difference, I think, between the formation of a habit, and the permanent modification of one's character. Obviously, some would argue that personality is a completely plastic thing, but I don't think the evidence bears that out. But anyway, I certainly think that people can become incapable of expressing sincere and spontaneous emotion -- I've seen it happen! -- and that reasonable grounds exist for one to believe that that's a psychologically unhealthy state to be in.

I don't know much psychology. What little I have seen of it in theory makes healthy people sound sick, so I stay away.

You say "there's a difference between the formation of a habit, and the permanent modification of one's character." Isn't that just a question of speed? Every habit I've made, every song I've listened to, every shirt I've worn has permanently modified my character. Personality is plastic simply because it's constantly developing, and it's not finished until you die.

Some changes are bigger than others, and maybe that's an adjustment problem for people. Still, whether you're living a life that's "real" or "fake" you're still human, so under all of that you are real, whether you acknowledge that or not. Perhaps my definition of "living a lie" is different than yours; I mean that any aspect of personality you wish to change can be replaced by another, and that doesn't make you any less yourself. You're absolutely free to think however you want, and to act accordingly. (I don't think many people believe this fully, even if they say it.) When you say "living a lie" it sounds almost like you're talking about a witness protection program, and that's not voluntary change, it's forced.

I don't see how any of the above contributes to being unable to feel deeply. Perhaps a continual, voluntary hardening and closing of your mind, but certainly not an opening!

Perhaps people who have less feelings than most (ie. Scruton) can therefore correspondingly feel those feelings more deeply.

Phil- the most beautiful (though maybe not the most complete) definition of pomo I've seen is by Eco: (paraphrase) "A man wants to tell a woman 'I love you madly' but he knows and she knows (and he knows she knows) this has already been said by so-and-so at such-and-such a time. So he says instead, 'As so-and-so would say, "I love you madly."' By doing this he avoids FALSE [emphasis mine] sincerity but has still expressed his love." (and in a playful way, I might add).

I wish Scruton and other conservative reactionaries would define "true emotion" for us, or at least give us a convincing example of a work that doesn't depend on context for at least part of its effect. And you shouldn't be surprised to find yourself on the nether side of Momus on all this. Poking holes in the true<-->false dichotomy is one of the most prominent themes in his work. In fact, he practically bludgeons you over the head with it on Folktronic.

As far as pomo writers who are interested explicitly in ethics, check out Rorty. Start with _Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity_.

One of the major problems with this thread is that in our culture people who align themselves with "The Good, The True, The Honest, The Sincere" automatically gain a halo of moral rightness and respectability without ever having to explain what these things are. This is why I recommend Rorty: he draws our attention to the fact that when we look at these large abstractions what we really find are jumbles of perceptions cast on historical events or works conditioned by ideologies which are themselves contingent on historical and other factors. So the Sincere<-->Ironic/Kitsch dichotomy which Scruto engages wholeheartedly in is mostly bullroar. There's a far longer and more eloquent trashing of it here than anything I could do.

I also find it ironic that Scruto constrasts Nazi and Stalinist kitsch with "true" art and emotion. The Nazis and Russian Realists thought they were the ones making "true" art! They saw themselves as "tragic heroes" having "sacrificed" a great deal, all concepts Scruto claims to admire. As whoever said above, "One man's art is another's kitsch." What seems to be the common factor in both sides' claims is they are the sole representatives of the "True." Well, we all know where that led, don't we? So why not throw the concept out?

"Sorry," for all the "quotation marks" in the above "posts." "Really."

Well, Rorty now hates the term "postmodernism," though this might have to do with his silly idea that the prefix "post" should mean "comes after" rather than "precedes" or "similar to" or "has nothing to do with."

I also think that his book would have been better titled Contingency, Morrissette, and Solidarity.

Bowdlerization!

"so-and-so" = Danielle Steel.

Unless it was Barbara Cartland.

You're right, it was BC. Didn't have the book w/ me at the time.

Whether Rorty still uses the term or not, his ideas are still relevant to Phil's question.

Scruton sayeth:

"And it [critical consensus, I guess] should select from...

BLAH BLAH BLAH INSERT NAMES OF REPUTABLE ARTISTS HERE BLAH BLAH BLAH

..not that they are without faults, but they have retained the ability to distinguish the true from the false emotion and so offer comfort to the contrite heart."

This is one of the kitschiest, lousiest things I've ever heard! Out with the degenerates, comrades!

I can't trust someone whose idea of kitsch is the quaint music in his grandmother's piano bench. In my home, that would have been high art! I mean, they had a piano and someone knew how to play it and cared enough to collect sheet music? If he goes back to live his life again among the strip-malls, Lawrence Welk marathons, toilets-turned-into-planters, and TV sit-coms of MY midwestern American youth, maybe I could begin to trust him.

I wish I could dress this up with some snazzy fonts and kitschy emoticons, but I'm not good at that sort of thing.

Zebrawood Regular in size 4, with a blinking background. 8-)