Matei Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism,
Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism. Durham: Duke University
Press, 1987. 395p.
KITCH
Bad Taste, Ideology, and Hedonism (240)
Kitsch recent - needed means to systematize and institutionalize to reach large numbers
Bad taste in modern times is an ideologically ,manipulated illusion of taste
Distinction between genuine art and mass culture 9240-41)
Lowenthal - Frankfurt school - Art as mere reflection of society is exactly the legitimate
concept to be applied to mass culture
Kitsch is false aesthetic consciousness
Adorno - kitsch is parody of catharsis, parody of aesthetic consciousness
Adorno - notion of culture industry "supplying the (pseudo) cultural market with products
specifically designed to induce _relaxation_."
"Customers of musical entertainment are themselves objects or, indeed, products of the
same mechanism which produces popular music."
Popular culture - when kitsch - responds primarily to middle class psyychological needs.
(242)
Adorno - "People want to have fun. A fully concentrated and conscious experience
of art is possible only to those whose lives do not put such a strain on them that in their spare
time they want relief from both boredom and effort simultaneously."
Reasons for the growth of kitsch - (Dwight Macdonald) "business enterprise found a
profitable market in cultural demands of newly awakened masses, and the advance technology
made possible the cheap production of books, pictures, music, and furniture in sufficient
quantities to satisfy the market." (242)
Gorgeous kitsch is the privilege of the rich (243)e
Second half of the 19th century - la belle epoque
Popular taste throughout centuries
folk art and culture
highly elaborated and refined
Macdonald (243)
folk art grew from below
Mass culture is imposed from above
Kitsch is sociologically and psychologically expression of a life style (244) - of
bourgois or middle class
Relations to objects- ascetic, hedonist, aggressive, acquisitive, surrealist, functionalist or
cybernetic, and kitsch
Hedonism of middle-class mentality
middle of the road - principle of mediocrity
hedonism in use of spare time, of relaxation
fly from daily reality
in time - kitsch souvenir, idyll of history, science fiction
in space - travel
practical - gadgets to reduce effort
desire to consume
vs. traditional civilizations - virtue of saving
All-pervasive sense of change
increasing pace of change
decreasing trust in stability or continuity
traditional societies - homogeneous time
belief in basic unity of existence
Christian ethic of postponement
dawn of modernity - myth of progress
myth of progress now seems exhausted (247)
Great psychological[ discovery (for kitsch) nearly everything associated with artistic
culture can be turned into something sit for immediate consumption
culture industry is there to imitate, duplicate, reproduce and standardize for compulsive
consumer to enjoy
Uniqueness and rarity are anachronous
kitsch is efficient art, expendable
Kitsch linked to modernity (248)
rapid rise of middle classes
reaction against terror of change
easy way of killing time
Kitsch and Modernity
Kitsch, Camp, and
High Art
Etymology, Contexts of Usage, and the "Law of
Aesthetic Inadequacy"
Kitsch and Romanticism
Bad Taste, Ideology, and Hedonism
Some Stylistic Considerations
Kitsch and Cultural Industrialization
The "Kitsch-Man"
Links and Abbreviations (links are abbreviated by using the initials)