Notes on Kitsch: Janice Harrington’s “Yard Show”

“As witness of this exaltation of the gaudy, the poet reclaims kitsch as a redemptive force, a vital stream of art, when it is mindfully connected to a set of local traditions, the heritage of a group that had to strive hard to find its native expression using the materials at hand.”

I used to teach a literary theory course titled “Camp, Kitsch, and Folklore: The Modern Search for Tradition.” These three terms were treated as modes for art and literature as they exist within culture, especially popular imagination. Susan Sontag’s 1964 “Notes on Camp” was one of the readings.

In it, she defines a “cult” of aficionados, in this case gay men from New York City. In that way, she establishes how a proper understanding of certain concepts relies on considering the sub-group of humanity from which it is issued. Meaning is created, not sub specie aeternitatis but, rather, as a function of the lived historical experience of a particular group.

“A sensibility (as distinct from an idea) is one of the hardest things to talk about; but there are special reasons why Camp, in particular, has never been discussed. It is not a natural mode of sensibility, if there be any such. Indeed, the essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration. And Camp is esoteric—something of a private code, a badge of identity even, among small urban cliques.”