But when applying the definition provided by tocharian, here, which says: "a type of creation that reaffirms rather than challenges the collective norm", Rock is more often certainly Kitsch, right? Or are we then heading towards the slippery slope of breaking it down genre by genre, Kitsch/Not Kitsch? Like say, 'Avant-Garde Rock' is therefore not Kitsch? But Branca's already been deemed Camp. And certainly the aforementioned Fugazi and Slint, are "melodramatic, sentimentalistic," and therefore Kitsch. So what Rock are we saying is not Kitsch?

M_a_x wrote:following from Jong's "Notes On Camp"

Sontag, sweetie. Sontag.

JDanger wrote:But when applying the definition provided by tocharian, here, which says: "a type of creation that reaffirms rather than challenges the collective norm", Rock is more often certainly Kitsch, right? Or are we then heading towards the slippery slope of breaking it down genre by genre, Kitsch/Not Kitsch? Like say, 'Avant-Garde Rock' is therefore not Kitsch? But Branca's already been deemed Camp. And certainly the aforementioned Fugazi and Slint, are "melodramatic, sentimentalistic," and therefore Kitsch. So what Rock are we saying is not Kitsch?

Jesus....am I supposed to take that link point by point? Here's a good one:

A fully concentrated and conscious experience of art is possible only to those whose lives do not put such a strain on them that in their spare time they want relief from both boredom and effort simultaneously.

Reaffirms rather than challenges....I think there's a lot of challenge to good rock. Kitsch isn't created at the creator level but the audience level. Slint ESPECIALLY back in the day were very challenging, so much that billions of other bands took up the challenge. Compare that to Sheena Easton records. I would definitely say the 'kitsch' moment is the audiences reaction - reaffirming vs challenging?
I've never talked about Rock Music in general, because (as I said on the classical thread) huge broad defintions bore me, and are meaningless (does 'rock' equal Jerry Lee Lewis, Cream, Chrome, Judas Priest, Tom Tom Club, and Neutral Milk Hotel equally??) I have always stressed what I thought of as good rock music. The challenging stuff, most of it I imagine was created with a spirit of fun, playfulness, experimentalism, whether it be Eno's early solo records or Elvis' Sun Sessions or The Birthday Party.

tocharian wrote:

M_a_x wrote:following from Jong's "Notes On Camp"

Sontag, sweetie. Sontag.

Sontag. My (very) bad. Mixed up on Chesterians. But all this 'precious' and 'sweetie' affectations.......are pissing me off.

M_a_x wrote:Right. It's just hipster doofus irony...going by tocharian's academic definition.

Sorta. Keep going.

Sontag wrote:Camp is a certain mode of aestheticism. It is one way of seeing the world as an aesthetic phenomenon. That way, the way of Camp, is not in terms of beauty, but in terms of the degree of artifice, of stylization.

Sontag wrote:Camp is a vision of the world in terms of style -- but a particular kind of style. It is the love of the exaggerated, the "off," of things-being-what-they-are-not.

Sontag wrote:As a taste in persons, Camp responds particularly to the markedly attenuated and to the strongly exaggerated.

Sontag wrote:In naïve, or pure, Camp, the essential element is seriousness, a seriousness that fails. Of course, not all seriousness that fails can be redeemed as Camp. Only that which has the proper mixture of the exaggerated, the fantastic, the passionate, and the naïve.

Sontag wrote:Camp is art that can propose itself seriously, but cannot be taken altogether seriously because it is "too much."... visual reward - the glamour, the theatricality - that marks off certain extravagances as Camp... And third among the great creative sensibilities is Camp: the sensibility of failed seriousness, of the theatricalization of experience.

Sontag wrote: Camp involves a new, more complex relation to "the serious." One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious... The traditional means for going beyond straight seriousness - irony, satire - seem feeble today, inadequate to the culturally oversaturated medium in which contemporary sensibility is schooled. Camp introduces a new standard: artifice as an ideal, theatricality

Sontag wrote:Camp is the glorification of "character." The statement is of no importance - except, of course, to the person (Loie Fuller, Gaudí, Cecil B. De Mille, Crivelli, de Gaulle, etc.) who makes it. What the Camp eye appreciates is the unity, the force of the person

Does that help?

M_a_x wrote:

tocharian wrote:

M_a_x wrote:following from Jong's "Notes On Camp"

Sontag, sweetie. Sontag.

Sontag. My (very) bad. Mixed up on Chesterians. But all this 'precious' and 'sweetie' affectations.......are pissing me off.

Just bein' campy

sontag's a hack.

Curious.

If one creates in earnest while understanding/believing that the best results, though important on some level that may effect the lives (or portions thereof) of many people, are attained by way of experimentalism, fun (for lack of a better term), and other types of 'non-serious' endeavor, is that kitsch or camp or art?

Where does seriousness begin and fucking off end?

Who decides what seriousness is? Is the same act kitsch one day and then the next day not based on audience participation? Is kitsch an event that happens between each individual or the collective audience?

Ranxerox wrote:Where does seriousness begin and fucking off end?

Who decides what seriousness is? Is the same act kitsch one day and then the next day not based on audience participation? Is kitsch an event that happens between each individual or the collective audience?

Yes!

I would answer these questions by deciding whether you think the rock aesthetic is, to use Sontag's expression, "too much". What do you think of, say, Fugazi? How do you feel about Ian MacKaye as a performer? Do you find the delivery a tad theatrical? Do you find the sentiment conveyed in the music a bit extreme? Do you think that the performers' personas are almost as important to the experience of the music as the music itself?

I do, and I think this is rock at its best--when all the campy elements are in place. Rock gets BOR-RING when you try to suppress them.

that damned fly wrote:sontag's a hack.

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