A scalding day this past summer, I ducked into the Oakland Museum — appropriately enough, to check out their “Birth of the Cool” exhibit, all about the mod culture of the late ’50s and early ’60s, with all the accordant design ramifications. I wrote a small semi-essay on that, for my own purposes. It was a pretty snazzy show, all things considered.
I can’t find the essay at the moment. Basically, I noticed that the artifacts of the “cool” movement were often, from a contemporary perspective, kind of kitsch.
I then prodded out the possible reason for that perception. Whereas that whole movement was a reaction against the perceived irrationalism of WWII — if we all just keep our heads, all will be dandy — the sterility of the movement tended to pass over the heads of normal people, who just shrugged and adapted its cultural artifacts to their own lives, making them as practical as they could. It’s like using an iPod to prop up a table, because you don’t know what else to do with it.
The whole idea of kitsch — the humor of it — seems to come from this abstract, bizarrely elitist cultural theory being dragged down to earth and made practical by people who couldn’t be fussed with the pretense. It’s kind of hilarious on two fronts: first the out-of-touch ideas behind the movement, and then the mundane can’t-be-fussed reaction.
So there’s this uncomfortable, slightly sad, dissonance at work; a sense of failed culture. Which would explain why art that focuses on kitsch — like John Waters — feels so bombed-out and bereft. Quaintly post-apocalyptic, on a spiritual level.
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