Thank you for bringing out such a new word. To learn is to surf on --
Tomáš Kulka, in Kitsch and Art, starts from two basic facts: that kitsch "has an undeniable mass appeal" and "considered bad" by the art-educated elite", and then proposes three essential conditions:
- Kitsch depicts a beautiful or highly emotionally charged subject.
- The depicted subject is instantly and effortlessly identifiable.
- Kitsch does not substantially enrich our associations related to the depicted subject.[11][1
Kitsch in Milan Kundera's [The Unbearable Lightness of Being]:
The concept of kitsch is a central motif in Milan Kundera's 1984 novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Towards the end of the novel, the book's narrator posits that the act of defecation (and specifically, the shame that surrounds it) poses a metaphysical challenge to the theory of divine creation: "Either/or: either shit is acceptable (in which case don't lock yourself in the bathroom!) or we are created in an unacceptable manner".[13] Thus, in order for us to continue to believe in the essential propriety and rightness of the universe (what the narrator calls "the categorical agreement with being"), we live in a world "in which shit is denied and everyone acts as though it did not exist". For Kundera's narrator, this is the definition of kitsch: an "aesthetic ideal" which "excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence".
The novel goes on to relate this definition of kitsch to politics, and specifically—given the novel's setting in Prague around the time of the 1968 invasion by the Soviet Union—to communism and totalitarianism. He gives the example of the Communist May Day ceremony, and of the sight of children running on the grass and the feeling this is supposed to provoke. This emphasis on feeling is fundamental to how kitsch operates:
According to the narrator, kitsch is "the aesthetic ideal of all politicians and all political parties and movements"; however, where a society is dominated by a single political movement, the result is "totalitarian kitsch":
Kundera's concept of "totalitarian kitsch" has since been invoked in the study of the art and culture of regimes such as Stalin's Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Iraq under Saddam Hussein.[15] Kundera's narrator ends up condemning kitsch for its "true function" as an ideological tool under such regimes, calling it "a folding screen set up to curtain off death".[16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitsch#:~:text=Kitsch%20(%2Fk%C9%AAt%CA%83%2F,common%20example%20of%20modern%20kitsch.?
