Defining Kitsch

In this piece my social commentary and cultural musings somehow turned out more bitchy than usual (and that's an understatement). I guess Donald brings out the best in me, huh? Not for the faint-hearted! Skip this entry or beware: you're in for a healthy dose of my super-bitch rantings.


So recently, a friend of mine, who happens to be French (fresh-off-the-boat) asked me what the word 'Kitsch' meant and i stopped dead in my tracks, the way most people who have come to know and use a word for decades do when they realize they can't really describe it without using the word 'like' a dozen times:

- uhm, it's like art but like, not very genuine, you know? uhm, like too much of it, like a lot to the point of bad taste. but not like just cheap, like it's not about price, but it could look cheap, you know?

That's how i sounded in my head, so i decided to save myself the embarrassment of of having a public blond moment by skipping the definition and going right for the Examples (that's all that us foreigners understand anyway. seriously, have you ever tried communicating with one of us?)

So in case you're ever caught off-guard having to define the same word, this visual-aid may come in handy: The Trump Towers. And I know my towers! Having spent most of my New York career shuffling between UES & UWS where those hideous structures are splattered.

Actually, why even mention the hideously bombastic towers? The Donald himself is Kitsch, and for that matters, so is his wife (OMG, Ivana Trump? Classic Eastern European Kitsch-on-wheels). Divorcée you say? well, you don't suppose I was going to talk about his current middle-america-Super-Model-before-stretch-marks-ended-her-career new trophy wife, huh? But at least she's a Trophy wife! that's something, right? Zeus knows, i always wanted to be a trophy wife. But no house chores! you know that crap would never work, i can't even supervise a maid without f***ing it up (kidding! I don't have a maid. honest. cross my heart). No, I'll just stick to the sex duties and shoe shopping. I have nothing to worry about, no man ever left his trophy wife because she couldn't supervise the maids...hello? that's why they have butlers!

But I digress. Back to the Trumps: they're so Kitsch, their offspring look like pink flamingos. I mean whatever happened to that rule of thumb, that all babies are cute? whoever made that up clearly never laid eyes on a Trump baby. Clearly those ugly apples didn't fall far from that ugly tree. And then The Donald had the audacity to name his son Barron, Barron Trump! And then publicly announce his chubby arrival to this world (C-section, for sure) on Imus in the Morning. Yup, the show that got canceled because Don Imus called someone a n***y-head. V. Classy.

Nevermind the 10 million tower/eyesores that dot every major city in America (and by America, I mean USA because Canadians know better than to let him build anything, and the Mexicans...well, whatever he built there we probably never heard of because it blends in with its surroundings, i.e other gaudy gold-plated third-world cement-structures)

I'm not even questioning the artistic and architectural integrity of the buildings . I'm just saying that the architect who designed these aforementioned gold-plated gems should be guillotined a la french, so these atrocities never happen again.

And of course, it wouldn't be a Trump Tower if it didn't have the words Trump Tower gold-plated and affixed on its entrance, as if there was some ambiguity. Like a dog who sprays the bushes to mark his territory, Trump marks his by gold-plating it.

Two notable exceptions are the Trump World Towers (called the world towers because they face the U.N headquarters in midtown, which apparently makes the neighboring Trump building by association v. worldy) and the Trump International Hotel (As opposed to what? local hotels? are they made for New Yorkers to stay in when they're just bored of their apartments?)

And I'm not forgetting the hair piece: his sister - a prominent NJ judge - wears one too (how the defendants maintain a straight face, i don't know) I'm wondering, does the hairpiece run in the family? or did they get a family group discount at the wig salon?

Hillary, Simone & Mythic Queens

Apparently I wasn't the only one who found their voice this week.

I wanted Hillary to win from the very first moment the New York Times divulged her candidacy-in-the-making back in 2004. My obsession with her had nothing to do with her politics: She tends to hold Centrist-Left positions, and is corporate-oriented, interest-group-serving. Hardly a treat for my radical-left politics (as if anyone that wasn't nominated by the Green party would be). Yet, somehow, this woman has captured by awe and infatuation.

I couldn't put my finger exactly on what drew me in, until i read this poll this morning, that showed (to my horror) 80% of Gay men in NY supported her for presidency.

More importantly, it dawned on my that her imposing presence, dominant personality and somewhat hawkish political stances exuded sex-appeal (or Wonderlust, or whatever new coined term-du-jour).

This is somewhat consistent with my choices of childhood heroines. I always felt sorry for Snow White, yet I could never get myself to denounce her Queen Step-Mother. The Queen spelt elegance, extravagant beauty, and perhaps, a hint of Evil: qualities that for some reason I find (till this day) v. appealing in women.

Case-in-point: I recently rediscovered the poise and power of Nina Simone's voice on a scenic trip in my manager's car, back from Jersey. In reading her biography, I discovered her psychotic tantrums, her violent behavior and her dominant presence, onstage and off. The discovery only crystallized her iconic stature in my eyes. (Also, yet again, she too apparently had a huge gay following).

Perhaps the roots of this fascination lies in the community's collective pyche: marginalized by society-at-large (and historically deemed subversive), is it no wonder that we idolize characters that were on constant defience of roles adhered to them by society? Hillary in shedding the skin of Mrs. Clinton and stepping out of his shadows, not to mention daring to be the first Ms. President!; Nina, rejecting her Methodist upbringing and singing the Songs of the Devil, even denouncing 'Racist' America alltogether and relocating to the South of France; The 'Evil' Queen, the antithesis of Snow White who optimized mid-century WASP women of good upbringing and good breeding: Soft-spoken, plain-beauty, child-like, do-gooder, simple-minded, Virgin..and White.

Defiance and insubordination, are sexy traits.

I resurrected this blog from its deathly state, after an exciting 2-month run in early 2006. I couldn't help but marvel, reading my posts from back then (and deleting several of them, out of shame) how my (writer's) voice changed in a mere 2 years. Perhaps it is simply a reflection of my state of mind (then & now) than it is a sign of progression of thought or intellect (or god forbid, personal growth)



Circumstantial evidence point to my nocturnal habits as a college students: all my postings back then were logged at an ungodly hour of the morning, possibly in-between pending papers or exam-cramming exercises.



Perhaps my voice at the time (which seems so foreign to me now) is result of a combination of anxiety, sleep deprivation and ADD (propelling me to drop my paper and write amusing nonsense that no one else read). Perhaps I am at a different place now, and feel disconnected with my former self.



Or perhaps, I have yet to find my writer's voice, condemned to always read my own writings as if for the first time, as if written by someone else. I cannot read anything I ever write without feeling a tingly need to edit it into oblivion, even 4th grade essays my mother saved.

Memory

Dalida, lyrics of her song "Avec le temps", 1971

Avec le temps, va, tout s'en va
On oublie le visage et l'on oublie la voix
Le cœur quand ça bat plus
C'est pas la peine d'aller chercher plus loin
Faut laisser faire, c'est très bien.


Avec le temps,
Avec le temps, va, tout s'en va
L'autre qu'on adorait, qu'on cherchait sous la pluie
L'autre qu'on devinait au détour d'un regard
Entre les lignes, entre les mots et sous le fard
D'un serment maquillé qui s'en va faire sa nuit
Avec le temps tout s'évanouit


Avec le temps
Avec le temps, va tout s'en va
Même les plus chouettes souvenirs.
Ça, t'as une de ces gueules !
À la galerie, j'farfouille dans les rayons de la mort
Le samedi soir quand la tendresse s'en va toute seule


Avec le temps
Avec le temps, va, tout s'en va
L'autre à qui l'on croyait, pour un rhume, pour un rien
L'autre à qui l'on donnait du vent et des bijoux
Pour qui l'on eût vendu son âme pour quelques sous
Devant quoi l'on s'traînait comme traînent les chiens
Avec le temps, va, tout va bien


Avec le temps
Avec le temps va tout s'en va
On oublie les passions et l'on oublie les voix
Qui vous disaient tout bas, les mots des pauvres gens
"Ne rentre pas trop tard surtout ne prends pas froid"


Avec le temps
Avec le temps, va tout s'en va
Et l'on se sent blanchi comme un cheval fourbu
Et l'on se sent glacé dans un lit de hasard
Et l'on se sent tout seul, peut-être mais peinard
Et l'on se sent floué par les années perdues
Alors vraiment
Avec le temps on n'aime plus.

The Terrible Pleasure of a Double Life

Excerpts from Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Grey

"Too much of yourself in it! Upon my word, Basil, I didn't know you were so vain; and I really can't see any resemblance between you, with your rugged strong face and your coal-black hair, and this young Adonis, who looks as if he was made out of ivory and rose-leaves. Why, my dear Basil, he is a Narcissus, and you--well, of course you have an intellectual expression, and all that. But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don't think. A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, and as a natural consequence he always looks absolutely delightful. Your mysterious young friend, whose name you have never told me, but whose picture really fascinates me, never thinks. I feel quite sure of that. He is some brainless, beautiful creature, who should be always here in winter when we have no flowers to look at, and always here in summer when we want something to chill our intelligence. Don't flatter yourself, Basil: you are not in the least like him."