Kitsch shouldn't be thought of being limited to 'art'.

Kitsch is a constant (to some degree) in most of our interactions with one another. Smiling when you see someone when you're not really particularly happy to see them. Withholding negatives and pretending that things are fine, etc. Kitsch is about being dishonest; about hiding or withholding that which would make us real live human beings. Or at least ignoring negatives...

Kitsch is about saying that you're absolutely not a nonconformist and you see nothing really wrong with this status quo.

And it doesn't take a totalitarian state for it to thrive, although I imagine it helps.

What was done to art inside the Iron Curtain was awful. Here today, the concept of kitsch matters more outside of art.

But then the concept grows and maybe becomes too vague; where any selling out becomes kitsch, the second half of Office Space where everything works out just swell, etc...

So then, that one 'smearer' at work. I don't think of either as 'smearers' for starters. That was just as opposed to her actual name. What other defining characteristics does she have? She's I'd guess 5'10" 260 and holds her weight remarkably well. If only she'd been a man surely she would have been great at football

Anyway, a number of nurses were complaining/smearing her behind her back. A few decided to have a talk with her. Then in turn she later complains/smears to a couple people about those two who talked to her. I happened to be in the room at this time and she asks me my opinion of her.

My actual opinion is far more complex then what I put down in this blog.

I do think she is similar to me in having a problem with her sense of humor. It's a problem in that it's a little bit outside the majority's sense of humor. What's unexpectedly wrong is funny. For her it's unexpectedly wrong to have a bit of a go at people. To constantly criticize their work performance, etc. And she's been living it up at work recently in this respect to the extent a few other people (both more experienced nurses) took her aside.

So I attempted to answer her by first praising how much fun she is compared to others and then what little I was critical about I attempted to more direct it at me, just suggesting she slightly shared a trait I had and one had to be careful with some people about being misunderstood.

All the same she continued (before this time) to put me down at work all day. Was she just kidding? The end result is to make it look that I'm incompetent. It's the bad humor of an angel (when I do it anyway and I'll suppose her also.) To such angels it is unexpectedly wrong to really be having any kind of a go at others, etc. To 'normal' people: what the heck? Why are you bullying me, etc?
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...But the Fake Smile ties into pretending in general to be happy. If two or more people do so with one another the feedback can make the happiness 'real'.

And then a movie such as Life is Beautiful.

It is a pretending. And pretending, of course, isn't always a bad thing.

It is moral to pretend certain sufferings don't exist?

This pretend happiness is kitsch. Is kitsch always such a bad thing?

When the suffering can't be changed, perhaps the best thing to do is go off into one fantasy or another. But how can you know for sure if it can't be changed? You can't. Ideally a certain minority of the populace should think ALL the suffering can be solved. While the majority ignores certain sufferings.... The minority should do so to the extent they can stand it.

This only works in a nondystopia. Problem in this actual world is the slavemasters attack that minority as they're giving their solutions. And everyone else is too clueless to realize it thanks to their general ignorance of the suffering/problems.

What delusion, if any, should we all believe?

Depends on how long term or short them our thinking.
Depends on our level of intelligence and creativity how much of a delusion we can manage. But then with more intelligence it's more possible to successfully just face the suffering.

The very pretending, while a meagre short term solution, can it lead to something more meaningful long term?

Fakish happiness with 'friends'. Fun times, etc. Then disaster. And stony silence. 'Friends' disappear.

You've passed behind the curtain of suffering and must be ignored. You should ignore yourself. Certainly should have enough consideration to keep quiet...

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-Those who HAD to pretend but their situation has changed and unfortunately it's become habit.
-Society ruled by sadistic tyrant. Extreme kitsch art is the rule. Exaggerated happiness in hell. Pen ran out of ink...

Do I think better, worse, or the same at end of 33 hours of work out of 40? Surely I don't think as well but may feel bad enough that creativity might be more turned on.

Camus' The Plague

Didn't like this novel. Finally put it down in annoyance 30 pages short of the finish (300 pages long). Very rare that I'd read so far into something that just wasn't getting the job done. But I've always found the bubonic plague fascinating and also really like Camus' The Absurd/Myth of Sisyphus. And really wanted to give him a chance.

Yes, if it is a fact that people like to have examples given them, men of the type they call heroic, and if it is absolutely necessary that this narrative should include a "hero," the narrator commends to his readers, with, to his thinking, perfect justice, this insignificant and obscure hero who had to his credit only a little goodness of heart and a seemingly absurd ideal. This will render to the truth its due, to the addition of two and two its sum of four, and to heroism the secondary place that rightly falls to it, just after, never before, the noble claim of happiness. It will also give this chronicle its character, which is intended to be that of a narrative made with good feelings--that is to say, feelings that are neither demonstrably bad nor overcharged with emotion in the ugly manner of a stage play.

This is one of two paragraphs strangely stuck in this novel attempting to defend why he's gone about it the way he has. I can't say I'm sure of a better way but despite winning the nobel prize in literature it really didn't seem a good read.

One would think the plague itself would be a much better example of the absurd then such sidebars as this sad absurd man, a horrifically failed writer, who could have been stuck in a romantic comedy as well as he was put here.

This worry on Camus' part of being like a stage play, although I understand not wanting to be kitsch, something rings false, reminds me of this again.

After sparing us the nitty gritty for 200 plus pages he does finally describe in great detail the horrible death of a young boy. Seemed the way the novel should have been begun. The first 200 pags just cut out. Definitely a short story padded. This scene which was finally good didn't seem "overcharged". It seemed one of the few scenes that wasn't sleepwalking. As to what he means by "feelings which are demonstrably bad" but it seems like there are levels of kitsch at work here. Probably I should use another word. I'm still just using the word to mean unreal I think. Camus takes pains to avoid the unrealness of the stage play and in some ways is even way too honest while at the same time he seems to be avoiding some of what he would consider vulgar (which is to say he's selectively dishonest still).

Plus his main character is a stoic. It works for Vance, not for Camus'. Maybe if the setting was more fantastic. And the middle of a plague outbreak in full force could be fantastic. But he only vaguely tells us, he rarely ever shows us. He dilutes it so much.

No, the real plague had nothing in common with the grandiose imaginings that had haunted Rieux's mind at its outbreak. It was above all, a shrewd, unflagging adversary; a skilled organizer, doing his work thoroughly and well. That, it may be said in passing, is why, so as not to play false to the facts, and, still more, so as not to play false to himself, the narrator has aimed at objectivity. He has made hardly any changes for the sake of artistic effect, except those elementary adjustments needed to present his narrative in a more or less coherent form.

He seems so awfully earnest. But there is already plenty of nonfiction about the bubonic plague. I read about ten books in college for a paper. For fiction you have to be unreal to examine things actually worth examining. This isn't supposed to be journalism.

So "earnest," it's an awful word to me. To me it manages to express a sort of negative truthfulness, (where really the truth ought never be a negative thing...)



I really disliked this novel despite loving the idea of a novel about the plague told by the philosopher who introduced the idea of The Absurd.

No Exit

Supposedly the best fiction Sartre wrote. From which came the phrase, "Hell is other people." If it had been me I would have chucked it. Which isn't to say it's bad. Mostly an unfortunate comment about me.

Inez is tortured through feeling rejected by Estelle and is also jealous of Estelle and Garcin getting it on.
Garcin is tortured about whether he was a coward in his life with plenty of help from Inez.
Estelle is tortured mainly in that she can't manage to get it on with Garcin for a combination of reasons: Garcin not really thinking much at all of her, Inez doing everything she can to stop them, etc.

It's very unreal. Very kitsch. But then plays seem to always be that way. And really any fiction writing it seems that's readable to me ultimately seems kitsch, or ...unreal. That seems to be crucial. The vulgar truth is just no good. One must lie...

I was forced to act just a little in a play in high school and my god I couldn't stand it. It was literally screaming inside at the kitschness of it. The few plays I've gone to see I could barely stand to sit in the audience.

Also I can't stand to watch romantic comedies where lies pile on. I have some kind of honesty conditioning... It's like A Clockwork Orange, him being tortured/forced to watch things he can't stand anymore...

But the word kitsch. Unreal and kitsch aren't the same exact thing. Words are so annoying. Nothing I say is really true. Which, again, drives me just a little nutty. Just a little.