Mark, this is sober & clarifying for me. Thanks. By the way, I've taken
another whack at discussing the sentimental, this time using a John Crow
Ransom poem, over at Sharp
Sand<http://www.sharpsand.net/2007/10/26/not-sentimental/>
.
jd
On 10/26/07, Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> This is an interesting thread, nbot least because
> we all seem to mean somewhat different things by
> each of the terms but assume that we're all in
> agreement. For the record, the bit about the
> composer immersed in popular culture is a
> paraphrase of Peter Cudmore. I don't think it's
> any truer that kitsch is the commodification of
> high culture. Jeff Koons achieves kitsch, for
> instance, equally by appropriating already kitsch
> children's toys and greek sculpture. This gets me
> closer. Koons' second-level kitsch is a kind of
> camp--an ironic look at the already kitschy. So,
> a distancing from a distancing, the commentary
> inherent therein expressed as market value, with
> a sneer at those foolish enough to pay the price.
> Profoundly corrupt. Whereas there was a certain
> innocence to the primary kitsch.
>
> Corrupt, but not particularly dangerous, except
> to the degree that a segment of gallery culture
> matters at all. It parts fools from their money,
> and in exchange valorizes their taste. But those
> who fart in church and boast about it would do so anyway.
>
> Sentimentality is another matter. Its contrivance
> cheapens and makes a mockery of human feeling. At
> its base is a kind of nihilism, as practiced by
> those Joe Green professes not to have
> encountered: "Who writes a poem [to manipulate
> feeling]? Who thinks "ah, if I do this the
> reader will…?" Utterly strange to me." Their name is legion.
>
> Mark
>
>
> At 07:52 PM 10/26/2007, you wrote:
> ><snip>
> >It is one thing to *have* information; it is another thing to be able to
> >*interpret* it. [PC]
> ><snip>
> >
> >I wouldn't put it quite that way. Surely *interpretation* (induction,
> >abduction and worse) doesn't operate upon full information but rather in
> its
> >absence? To array data is to summon into being some sort of ideology.
> >
> >That said, the 'disparity' I referred to has much in common with the
> causes
> >of inflation, exchange rate movements and so forth. Indeed the modern
> sense
> >of 'sentimentality' is, I would imagine, comparatively late.
> >
> ><snip>
> >Class has something to do with it, as does ideology, as does the
> breakdown
> >of common cultural points of reference. [JD]
> ><snip>
> >
> >All of that. At some level there's a connection between Bourdieu's
> 'cultural
> >capital' and Marx's 'general intellect'. The key, presumably, is
> >*appropriation*.
> >
> ><snip>
> >If [Brendel] takes issue with a composer being immersed in the popular
> >culture of his day ... [MW]
> ><snip>
> >
> >Surely kitsch is the commodification of high culture (of which Vivaldi in
> >lifts is certainly an example) not the appropriation of low or popular
> >culture?
> >
> >[...]
> >Isn't camp always in the eye or ear of the beholder? [JD]
> ><snip>
> >
> >Interestingly put. I'd see camp ('It's not a lamp, but a "lamp",' as
> Sontag
> >said in her *Notes*) at least in part as recovery; in the sense that
> 'queer'
> >and 'nigger' have been partially recovered.
> >
> >CW
> >_______________________________________________
> >
> >'The possibility now arises that art will no longer find time to
> > adapt somehow to technological processes.'
> >(Walter Benjamin)
>
--
Joseph Duemer
Professor of Humanities
Clarkson University
[sharpsand.net]
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