#5 Kitsch - Olivia

I have often pondered life without Garfield, the cat.

Without the fat, orange, sarcastic feline with an inclination for waking up in lasagna pans, where would we be?  And if not Garfield, what would take his place?  Would some other mildly asinine creature crawl out of mid-western obscurity?  Or would it be something else, a mineral or vegetable?

Or is Garfield the cat the merciful option compared to whatever might replace him in this alternate reality?  We may never know.

Without Garfield, Jon would probably date more at the very least.  A man who let's his cat talk back to him and eat all his Italian food translates to a red flag in my book.  Then again, even without Garfield, Jon may still have some problems ...

And yet, I think we may need Garfield.

I think Garfield officially became kitsch when he started showing up in plush form, suction cupped to the back window of station wagons.  Or maybe it was when he started popping up on t-shirts as an icon to the phrase "Not My Problem."  Either way, he has most joined the ranks of all that could be considered campy, washed up, or cliché.

Kitsch is bad taste, but harmless.  Kitsch has good intentions, but perhaps misguided execution.  Kitsch is iconic for all the wrong reasons.

Kitsch is, in essence, the Fig Newton.

However, despite being the weeds in the garden of pop culture, kitsch-y things still have their  place under the sun.  And I do mean besides fodder for irony and ridicule.

The kitsch item is often a ripple, a reaction to a bigger, stronger, more influential and probably more sophisticated idea.  It draws our eye to what is really shaking us up while we look at the cultural pop-ups in it's wake.

I'll be honest, I have no idea what ever made Garfield culturally relevant.  Please, don't tell me it's because he's funny.  Maybe someone else can ponder that one.

But I can tell you about what is on the rise, and we all know that what comes up, must come down: Twilight.

I don't want to get too deep into this because sometime next year, I'm going to write a whole post on vampire culture, but it is a prime example.

It seems that there is a cultural fixation with the un-dead in general, but especially within the realm of gentlemen blood-suckers.  Are girls attracted to their scruples?  Their cold, rock-hard bods?  The sparkles?  Probably all of the above.  But that alone is not enough for what we have here, as in cultural kudzu.  All of those things secretly spell out some kind of decent stability.  Even the sparkles of his perfect vampire skin will glimmer in sun exposure every time.  And frankly, in this national climate, stability in any form has never looked better.

But the fanaticism won't last forever, even if in theory, Edward's chiseled features could.  Even if he doesn't age, we do.  The masses bore quickly.

Twilight fans, you know your day is coming, if it is not here already.  Someday, your vampire swag will no longer be hot (cold?) and it'll crowd yard-sale tables for years to come.  That or you'll have to store it in a closet or attic, right next to your Beanie Baby collection.  But don't worry, someone will buy it.

That's what makes it kitsch.

Don replies:


After reading your post, I was left wondering which is more pathetic: Jon without Garfield or Bella without Edward?  I'd guess that while both Garfield and Twilight have their fans, what's really interesting is how vocal the people are who are not their fans.  


I'm mean, most often when people don't care for something arty or literary (okay, okay, I may be stretching the terms "arty" and "literary" here), they just ignore what they don't like in favor of spending time with other material they do like.  After all, no one is making anyone read/watch Garfield or Twilight (at least not yet; perhaps in a few years Twilight might become required reading after the coming apocalypse and it's discovered that reading the sparkling vampire series is the best method for doing serious penitence and ridding oneself of some seriously bad karma).


People who don't like Garfield and/or Twilight, however, don't just smile politely and step aside while they see you reaching for the DVD version in the video store, they'll point you out and try to shame you right then and there.  It's not enough that they don't enjoy cynical cartoon cats or whiny self-absorbed vampires, they don't want anyone else enjoying them either.  


I'm not a big fan of neither Garfield nor Twilight, but as a big fan of greasy, ready-made gas station cuisine, I feel a twinge of sympathy for those people who do like either one and feel they risk becoming social pariahs merely by letting others know their secret (albeit unfathomable) pleasure in their reading/viewing choices.  If someday soon a hybrid Garfield/Twilight book comes out (you know like the immensely popular Pride and Prejudice and Zombies), I only hope I can be well out of town when the screaming and crying begins at the bookstores as people line up to buy the book and another line forms to smack those people in the face for buying the book.


It might be because I've been thinking a lot about this topic this week, but kitsch seems to be increasing at an exponential pace.  How long, I wonder, before everything we watch, read, or listen to begins to emit that faint whiff of cheddar?  Okay, enough said.  Time to go listen to The Beatles; a sure cure for overcoming kitsch saturation (unless, of course, "Piggies," "Yellow Submarine," or "Octopus's Garden" happens to pop up in the mix, and then, dag, it's back to square one).