Finding Kitsch’s Inner Beauty

At the National Post , Robert Fulford reviews Roger Scruton’s new book, Beauty :

So what’s wrong with kitsch, exactly? It’s garish, tasteless and sentimental, of course. Garden gnomes and conventions of Elvis impersonators may be its most outlandish examples, but you can find kitsch every day in every corner of the mass media. Manufacturers of movies, TV shows and best-selling novels build empires on the essence of kitsch — an imitation of human feeling wrapped in a thick layer of cuteness.

Still, if nearly everyone likes it, how bad can it be? “Kitsch is the daily art of our time, as the vase or the hymn was for earlier generations,” said Harold Rosenberg, the great art critic. Milan Kundera argued, “No matter how much we scorn it, kitsch is an integral part of the human condition.” And they were writing before the appearance of “reality” television, which repackages kitschy old conventions of popular drama as public competition, bringing to “real” people the humiliation and cruelty traditionally endured by imaginary losers in mass-culture fiction.

Kitsch has its defenders, often articulate ones. Typically, they find it endearing because full-bore kitsch can be enjoyed in two ways at the same moment, for itself and as a parody of itself. A one-size-fits-all style, it’s designed to satisfy audiences at any level of sophistication.

On the back jacket of Roger Scruton’s new book, Beauty (Oxford), you can find a tiny drawing of a garden gnome. On the front there’s a woman’s face by Sandro Botticelli. The two illustrations point us toward the sharp line that runs through the book: Thoughtful Renaissance beauty is good, brainless gnomes with pointed hats bad.