Don’t Ruin the Story

Years ago, some of my fellow art students and I went to Lowe’s Hardware to purchase some painting supplies. We were browsing the paint aisle when I noticed a massive banner advertisement above the paint swatches. It depicted five or six Labrador puppies playing around their mother on beautiful green lawn. I stopped and examined it for some time as my friends wandered off to find their supplies. “Something is wrong with this,” I thought. The puppies’ mother… What’s wrong with her?” And that’s when I discovered that she had been photoshopped. Her eyes were far too big for her head. “Oh for crying out loud,” I thought. “That is so manipulative! They enlarged the eyes so she will look like a puppy as well.” I continued my examination of the advertisement. The puppies were bounding and playing in the bright green grass. Was the color enhanced too? In the middle of the picture there was one puppy bounding away from the camera, his tail wagging high in the air. That’s when the worst of the advertisement hit me. I was floored. The artist had photoshopped out the puppy’s anus. It was just puppy fur from the tip of his tail to the pads of his hind paws. I became furious, and yet I didn’t know why. Was my anger justified? The answer lies in a study of the concept of kitsch.

Before providing a definition, I want to provide one more example to consider. We will then return to the puppies. On the next page is a painting entitled, Along the Lighted Path, by Thomas Kinkade. This is an example of what is commonly understood to be kitsch. Let’s exercise our inner art critic. Feel free to take into account Frank Brown’s twelve principles of taste from my previous post. Take two or three minutes to just look at it. Identify what Kinkade is doing. After a few minutes, decide if you like it.

Can you explain why?

Along the Lighted Path, by Thomas Kinkade

It is currently en vogue to express dissatisfaction with the works of Thomas Kinkade. That’s our cultural climate at the moment, and so when we begin evaluating this work of art, we ought to do so by also considering other participants in the conversation. Several weeks ago I was discussing this exact painting with some friends.

“Thomas Kinkade is absolutely horrible,” my friend espoused.

“It’s not real,” another added. “It’s… it’s just bullshit.”

“Right on,” I added. “It’s so sanguine. It feels plastic.”

“I actually like it,” one friend bravely offered. We all turned to face him. This oughta’ be good, I thought to myself.

“I just don’t see what the guy has done wrong,” he explained. “Kinkade depicts the beauty of a peaceful town. There’s no violence, no poverty, there is absolutely no discord whatsoever. It’s quite beautiful, actually. What’s so wrong with that?”

Once again, I found myself confounded. I had been leaning on a common critique within my community to explain why I didn’t like Kinkade. Did I actually have anything helpful to offer?

Having taken the summer to study aesthetics, I can now articulate a little more about what Kinkade might be doing wrong here.

But first: a definition of the word “kitsch.” There are myriad definitions of the word kitsch these days. The word originally described “cheap artistic stuff.” Merriam Webster now defines it as “things (such as movies or works of art) that are of low quality and that many people find amusing and enjoyable.” Stephen Guthrie explains that kitsch is usually well crafted and generally heart-warming, filled with memories and dreams, typically sweet and sentimental.

So is kitsch, or more specifically this painting, doing anything wrong? Calvin Seerveld thinks so. In his book Rainbows for the Fallen World, Seerveld states that kitsch “… is so hurtful, if not evil.”1 That sounds mighty dramatic, but Calvin Seerveld is not alone. Guthrie elaborates, explaining that “The artwork that masks difficulty… that covers scars and struggles, is not beautiful, but kitsch. We are deeply dissatisfied, for example, with a film or novel that brushes away all tensions and crises of the plot and concludes with an abrupt ‘and they all lived happily ever after.’ Such an ending does not complete but undermines the beauty of the work.” Frank Brown explains “Kitsch is a beautiful lie; it prettifies and falsifies the world, often by embracing, implicitly, a cause or an ideology that requires cheap emotion and an unqualified (but blinkered) acceptance of reality…”2 Milan Kundera provides the most vivid explanation on the harmful effects of kitsch. He explains, “Kitsch is the absolute denial of shit… [it] excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence.”3

So is Along the Lighted Path guilty of “denying the shit of our world?” Well, we certainly know the creator of the anusless puppies is guilty of denying the shit of our world – indeed, quite literally! But what’s the problem with that?

The problem with kitsch like Along the Lighted Path and the puppy advertisement is that it celebrates the airbrushed perfection of a fashion magazine. Its vision of the good life is a vision that covers its eyes and ears and mouth to the reality of the Fall, willfully embracing the comfort of ignorance. It is emotionally cheap, encouraging a shallow understanding of our world, trivializing our attention and sensibility.

Seerveld explains that “Kitsch never enlarges experience; it blandly affects a show to stimulate feelings of exquisiteness or a mood of supernal tenderness, but it flops into bathos simply because it is ersatz… Kitsch canonizes immaturity.”4

Yet, sadly, the shit of this world is real and undeniable if one is to confront reality. The Kinked and the puppy advertisement are both kitsch insofar as they attempt to elicit certain predictable emotions. Brown likens pieces like these to “cheap grace,” explaining that they seeks to succeed by triggering predictable emotional reflexes.5 Kitsch takes short cuts, exploiting easy effects.

Brown likens kitsch to the “spiritual milk” that Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians Paul says,

But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready.

2 Corinthians 3:1-2

Brown’s comparison of kitsch to spiritual milk does make room for kitsch in our world, however. He maintains that it can actually help people to open their hearts. Kitsch can be helpful in a nursery, or a hospital, or for people for whom beauty is a distant memory, offering them an infantile experience of shalom. But one must remember that kitsch tends to be cheap, counterfeit, quick and easy. He explains, “There is a place for kitsch… Yet kitsch is forever immature – and often in a way that cries out to be counteracted and reformed at a more mature level. In and of itself, kitsch ordinarily conveys a distorted impression of the higher goals to which it typically alludes or aspires. And it cannot often carry one very far toward those goals.”6 Served likens this to baby talk, and admits that, as such, it remains necessary. But even though there is a place for both kitsch, baby talk, or spiritual milk, we must always aspire toward the soul enlarging experiences of “solid food,” or “spiritual maturity.”

Kinkade’s perfection is not the perfection of Christ. Kinkade’s town cannot exist in the perfection of the kingdom of God. Thomas inspected the resurrected Jesus, and found that the scars of the Fall remained. Glory did not merely cover them up. In like manner, great art can depict absolute shalom without masking difficulty and fallenness. It does not have to resort to “and they all lived happily ever after.” That rhetorical veneer simply does not satisfy. The movie 50/50 is perhaps one of the most vivid examples of how kitsch fails undermines all of the good work it attempts to complete.

The movie is about a twenty-seven year old man named Adam Lerner (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). He has always tried to take good care of his health, so it comes as a cruel surprise when he learns that he has malignant tumors along his spine. His doctor gives him a 50/50 chance of survival, but Adam tries to remain upbeat, though his mother and his best friend Kyle react badly to the news. Adam starts seeing an absolutely gorgeous, twenty-six year old, single therapist (Anna Kendrick), and (big surprise) their relationship threatens to cross the boundary between doctor and patient. The plot builds fantastically into existential questions of divine justice, mortality, grief, and love in the face of terminal illness. Then Adam has his surgery and the doctors proclaim (within hours of completing the surgery) that they had removed all of the cancerous tissue and that he would make a full recovery.

There was no talk of “we will find out later if we got it all.” There was no talk of the chances of the cancer coming back. The movie simply ends with Katie and Adam standing alone in his living room. Katie smiles devilishly and asks, “Now what?” Then the credits role. 50/50, like Kinkade and like those puppies, undermines its objective by leaving the mature viewer thinking “but that isn’t true! That isn’t honest!” We would rather have an ending that is coherent, satisfying, and well formed. 50/50 threw that all away in favor of butterflies in our tummies. Instead of expanding our understanding of justice, mortality, grief, and love, 50/50 proclaims a vision of the good life that requires lodging our fingers in our ears and squeezing our eyes shut. The examples in this post all champion emotional immaturity, encouraging people to continue believing that they will find their Anna Kendrick right before they never die.

But our world is not a world that God chose to fix with the snap of his fingers. God chose to bear with the suffering of his people through Christ. The perfect Christ became the very sin and corruption of our fallen world so that we might become the righteousness and the incorruptibility of God. The story is exquisitely beautiful, just as kitsch aspires to be. But the story of God’s redemption of his people is a beauty that is not clean, cheap, or easy. It’s beauty does not ignore cancer. It’s beauty embraces the whole story, and consequently, leaves those who experience it deeper, broader, fuller human beings.

“Easter never forgets Good Friday.”7

1. Seerveld,  63.
2. Brown , 129.
3. Kundera , 168-169.
4. Seerveld, 63 (emphasis mine).
5. Brown , 146.
6. Brown , 147.
7. Brown , 224

You’re a Sponge, Bob!

“Prove to me that Bach is better than Lil’ Wayne,” My friend challenged, grinning at me over his beer. He leaned back in his chair, waiting. I thought for a moment. My mind was blank. Why is this so difficult to respond to, I thought. It was difficult because my friend was asking me to provide empirical evidence proving an objective rubric for determining aesthetic value. And all of this over a beer!

“Classical music is boring, man,” he went on. “I mean, if you like it, whatever. But it’s boring to me.”

“Are you serious?” I asked, not knowing how else to respond.

“Dude, you’re missing out. Most people listen to classical music because of, like, how it affects their image. I mean, if I’m a German king in the 14th Century, then whatever. I’ll listen to Bach. But that’s because there wasn’t anything else to listen to back then, besides wandering minstrels or whatever. But music has come so far. Have you ever actually listened to Lil’ Wayne? Give it a try, man. His music that makes you feel amazing.” He tapped his cigarette in the ash tray. “Or, whatever. Listen to Bach if you want. You’re entitled to your opinion, man.”

Well, there you have it. It’s hard to argue with that. After all, taste in art is subjective, right? And yet, despite my subjective aversion to Lil’ Wayne’s work, I was still burdened that his art was objectively failing in some way. I’m not so much talking about an objective rubric for art (though I will do that later.) Today, I’m talking about an objective function of art. In this post, I will demonstrate the importance of our Lil’ Wayne vs. Bach debate.

We have to evaluate issues like this because art is not only the product of the imaginative human; art forms and trains the human imagination toward particular visions of how life can and should be. It even shapes us toward that end.

It was Christianity (ironically the same Christianity that is currently renowned in many circles for producing the world’s worst art) that taught me appropriate reverence for what art can do. It all clicked when I read a book on educational theory by James Smith, a Christian college professor. Entitled Desiring the Kingdom, Smith argues that all people are liturgical creatures, being formed most dramatically (and most subtly) by their day-to-day routines. This view indicts most popular views on what it means to be human (we all have an anthropological theory, though most of the time it is subconscious).Today’s most popular anthropological theory maintains that we are fundamentally cognitive creatures, or thinking creatures. This idea began with Plato, was rebirthed by Rene Descartes and the enlightenment thinkers, and has been _______________________.

I realize that, by venturing into the history of anthropological theory, I may lose some of you. I am not a philosopher either, and yet I can clearly see how Rene Descartes’s anthropology has shaped the way I understand myself, and my understanding of how I might grow into who I want to be. This applies to you!

Descartes was a French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist who has been dubbed the father of modern philosophy. While trying to prove the eternality of the human soul, Descartes one day realized, “All of my previous hypotheses have been false! Though utterly convinced, I was actually deceived… How can I be sure of anything?” It was in this moment of despair that Descartes discovered a lone island of solid philosophical ground.

“If I can be deceived,” he reasoned, “then I must exist. That which does not exist cannot be deceived!” It is here that we can see the beginnings of Descartes’s famous maxim, “I think, therefore, I am.” But this epiphany begs the follow-up question, “Therefore you are what, Rene? Just what is the nature of this thinking thing that we now know exists?”

Descartes philosophy, having cast aside the senses and the body, reasons that human nature is primarily cognitive. In other words, you are essentially a mind driving a flesh machine. Human formation is directed and governed by our own rationality. Yet this anthropological theory (ubiquitously accepted today) is dangerous. Overemphasizing the formative nature of our minds under-emphasizes the formative power of so many other modes of human formation. To name a few, we must recognize that we are formed by our faith, experiences, families, imaginations, and our affections. Identifying cognitive anthropology as absurdly top heavy, Smith refers to it as “bobblehead anthropology.” The proliferation of bobblehead anthropology saw the subjugation of art, music, literature, poetry, and religion to the children’s playroom while the grown-up human achievements of science and philosophy dominated the stage.

James Smith offers an interesting alternative to bobblehead people. He claims that we are liturgical people. By that, Smith means that we are trained and formed most dramatically through simple day-to-day ritual. It’s our simple daily routines that most dramatically shape our understanding of ourselves and our world; not our cognitive strategizing.

Before explaining this theory more thoroughly, I’ll issue a warning: failing to recognize the formative power of daily routine allows outside forces to govern and train our hearts. So many people find themselves surprised with their lives, wondering, “how did I get this way? I thought I would be better than this by now.” So many people are formed into people they don’t like because they fail to recognize that there are no neutral practices.

Here’s what I mean: All rituals and routines contain particular visions of “the good life.” Most of the time this vision is precognitive (beginning to form us before we begin to consider its formative effect). Leo Tolstoy provides us with a helpful analogy.

“Art forms your imagination in very much the same way that food forms your body,” he explains. In other words, “You are what you eat” can be paralleled with “You absorb what you are immersed in.”

Food can kill those who treat it primarily as a source of pleasure. To those who treat food as a source of nutrition, however, food is a lifelong blessing that strengthens and enriches lives, offering pleasure along the way. Understanding and training our bodies to cooperate with the proper function of food can save lives, and make them wonderfully rich lives as well. Food is not purposed primarily for pleasure. Neither is art is merely purposed for entertainment. Like food, art is dangerously/wonderfully formative.

I wish I had said to my friend at the bar, “We are not so neat as minds driving bodies around, enjoying what we will without consequence. We are far more messy than that! We are more like sponges, soaking in and absorbing visions of the good life where ever we are. All art surreptitiously entrenches a vision of the good life in our hearts and imaginations. Lil’ Wayne’s work is not innocuous. We absorb it. What kind of vision of the good life is Lil’ Wayne training in you? How is his music training your heart?”

If art trains our imaginations and our desires, then it is imperative that we interrogate the visions of the good life in the art we immerse ourselves in. Consider the vision of the good life expressed in music, films, sitcoms, books, the news, storefront advertisements, etc. They all have one.

Sometimes the vision is easy to discern. Try discerning it in Katy Perry’s music video:

She doesn’t make it too difficult, nor does she make her vision of the good life difficult to condemn. But sometimes discerning a vision is a little more difficult. Try it with Chopin:

This one is much more difficult! Don’t worry, we can successfully identify vision of the good life in this piece. But it takes practice. With practice you can train your ability to identify even the most surreptitious visions of the good life, leaving you more shrewd as you grow into the person you want to be.

So, is Bach’s music better than Lil’ Wayne’s? In all the most important categories of aesthetic worth, yes. But one step at a time. In next week’s post, I will define good taste, why one ought to develop it, and how to develop it.