Talk:Kitsch

This seems like more of a dictionary entry than an encyclopedia article, and I can't see how it can develop into a good one. --Robert Merkel 13:12 Oct 2, 2002 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment, Robert. I'm pretty sure Kitsch becomes a lengthy article, since #no decent dictionary definition can give anyone a clue what it is #without plenty of examples, it's meaningless, #it's a cultural/artistic phenomenon, not just a word.

When this becomes a full-size article, it should include:

Types of Kitsch

...

Examples

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Kitsch Cultural Phenomena (by country)

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Links to Kitsch Art, Commentary, and Fan Clubs

...

Also, For those trying to do a better job on defining Kitsch, (or myself when I have some time) I've found some good thoughts here at http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~djb/aatseel/1999/abstract-28.html

My excerpt:

(kitsch is) art or literature of a cheap, garish, or sentimental

nature, while allowing that kitsch may be utilized in a work of art without having to relegate that work to the status of "bad art" or "anti-art."

Second, I will treat kitsch in its aesthetic context only, and

largely ignore the socio-historical question (with its attendant and important questions of cultural relativism, elitism, imperialism, etc). Finally, I will propose a definition of kitsch specifically for the written work of art. I suggest that kitsch as a literary device is a function of irony. Often it is sentimentalism or mawkishness put to use by the narrator, whose ironic tone is a signal to the reader to "read this as kitsch." In the absence of an ironic narrator or subtext, the sentimentalism; or mawkishness (the kitsch as such) stands. This may be called "unmitigated kitsch." In an effort to further elaborate this kitsch-irony interaction, I will draw on the categories of irony that Wayne Booth sets out in his Rhetoric of Irony, namely his threefold criteria of stable/unstable, local/universal, and overt/covert. If kitsch and irony are as closely related as I postulate, then it will be possible and productive to apply these categories of irony to kitsch.

I promise, if nobody else does, to use this stuff and more to make a worthy article out of Kitsch. Steve Rapaport

OK, I'm glad you intend to turn this into a decent article. A couple of points:

Wikipedia isn't the place for original research (so if you are

presenting your own new theories of kitsch, this isn't the place to introduce the world to them).

Can you achieve a neutral point of view discussion of kitsch?

I've no doubt you can, but I think these are important things to keep in mind as you write the article. --Robert Merkel