This popular Chattanooga area landmark,
known by locals as the “Space House,” was built in the early
1970s for $250,000 (in 1970s dollars)
by Curtis W. King, who joked, “as a bachelor pad for my son.” The
property later sold in 2007 for only $165,000 (in 2007 dollars), and
again in two later auctions, for 135,000 in March 2008, and $119,000
in December 2008. READ MORE
Wednesday, September 14, 2016
Friday, September 9, 2016
Joe’s Crab Shack Admits Its Beach-Kitsch Thing Isn’t Working in NYC
(Grub Street) - Maybe to atone for the city’s soft spot for Bubba Gump Shrimp, New Yorkers have shown themselves to be commendably resistant to Joe’s Crab Shack. One of city’s final two remaining locations, up in the Bronx, will close “in a few months,” the chain says, along with another that’s over in downtown Newark.
It’s fair to say Joe’s used to have high hopes for the New York–metropolitan–area market — 16 of its 128 locations are presently located in it. But according to today’s New York Post, the company admits its carefully crafted, witty image (the go-to spot to “take your top off” and maybe receivea casually racist place mat) isn’t scoring the requisite “urban appeal.” The confession comes just a few months after Joe’s also shuttered its location in Harlem — the city’s first to open, back in 2013. The only remaining location will be out in Elmhurst, Queens.
Robert Merritt, head of parent company Ignite Restaurant Group, says Joe’s will finally just accept its sad fate as a hokey souvenir store that also offers food. “It’s a vacation brand,” he told investors, adding, “Florida is a perfect market for us.” Read more.
Labels:
New York
Season Of The Kitsch: Tacky And Tiki Are Back, Again
(sfist.com) - In 2009, San Francisco's foremost Tiki bar looked about ready for a condo conversion. That was then, and this is now: Currently, the Tonga Room & Hurricane bar at the Fairmont Hotel expects its best year in decades, with Melissa Farrar, the hotel's director of marketing communications, telling the Chronicle that she projects the bar's 2016 revenue to be double what it was in 2011.
Opened in 1945, the Tonga Room surfed on the Polynesian pop wave. As kitsch connoisseurs know, the bar was conceived of by an MGM set designer in what was presumably a post World War II Pacific Theater fever dream. It hasn't changed much — except for an update to its drinks and a plug from Anthony Bourdain — since then. But like the intermittent indoor "rainstorms" over the bar's artificially blue lagoon, arriving like clockwork and then drying up, kitsch culture appears to have returned, right on schedule. Read more.
Labels:
California
The weirdest house in N.J.? Take a tour of a $3.2M wonderland of kitsch
(nj.com) - The estate along Route 9 in Bass River will make you smile, gasp or freak out.
Atop a 800-foot-long ochre-colored wall, elephants march, sea serpents slither, dinosaurs menace, giraffes gawk. Army tanks rumble and WW2-vintage planes prepare to take off. A Roman soldier glowers from his mighty steed and a galleon majestically sails the seas. Two religious statues stand next to a Japanese anime robot. Behind them is the Statue of Liberty.
You ain't seen nothing yet. Read more.
Labels:
New Jersey
1 World Trade Center Gains Popularity in the Pantheon of New York Kitsch
(New York Times) - You glance toward Lower Manhattan and expect to see a single tower where two once stood. You delight in the spectacle of sunlight glinting off its slivered facade.
Suddenly, you realize, the new 1 World Trade Center — the Freedom Tower — has become familiar. And 15 years after the twin towers disappeared abruptly from the skyline, they have begun to fade from popular consciousness.
They once nearly rivaled the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building as simple, graphic representations of the complex idea of New York. In movies and logotypes, on knickknacks and letterheads, two parallel strokes meant only one thing. Now, a shaft of slender, alternating isosceles triangles — so simple a child could draw it — is coming to mean the same thing. Read more.
Suddenly, you realize, the new 1 World Trade Center — the Freedom Tower — has become familiar. And 15 years after the twin towers disappeared abruptly from the skyline, they have begun to fade from popular consciousness.
They once nearly rivaled the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building as simple, graphic representations of the complex idea of New York. In movies and logotypes, on knickknacks and letterheads, two parallel strokes meant only one thing. Now, a shaft of slender, alternating isosceles triangles — so simple a child could draw it — is coming to mean the same thing. Read more.
Labels:
New York
Friday, May 15, 2015
Postmodernism & Kitsch

Postmodernism, as a critical method of inquiry, is about discerning "meaning" (which is subjective and relative), rather than "truth," which is presumed to be objective and universal. The primary postmodern critical method is "deconstruction." Simplified (or "kitschified") this means that for any work, whether a novel, a painting, a political platform, a religious belief, or even a scientific theory, the objective intention of the creator is less (or no more) important than how the receivers of the message understand it. Deconstruction is the technique of trying to identify and examine the biases (or if you prefer postmodern language "cultural or identity context") of a receiver to determine their understanding of the idea, rather than examining the intent of the creator.
The "crisis of modernity" posed by totalitarianism, the two World Wars and genocides of the 20th century increased skepticism among philosophers and intellectuals in the Western World, and led to the development of both existentialism and postmodernism as critical alternatives to modernity's assumptions about certainty and material progress.

Postmodern Art & Kitsch Kultur
Postmodern art is a reaction against the increasingly abstract formalism in Modern Art. There is an especial irony in the way the terms "modern" and "postmodern" are used in art that differs somewhat from their meaning elsewhere, which in terms of "deconstruction" illustrate how meaning depends on the situation.

By the time Abstract Expressionism came to dominate high art in post World War II America, most people (exclusive of the urban art scene, and those plutocrats who saw art and museum benefaction as a way of overcoming their philistine origins) regarded Modern Art generally as little more than a trendy form of interior decoration, a kind of expensive wallpaper. It was in kitsch that a more naturalistic style of art aimed at mass consumption found refuge, and provided meaning for the "uncultured."
Postmodernism's effect on art, ironically, was to rehabilitate more conventional approaches to art (including artistic realism) as it deemphasized the intent of the artist in favor of how art should be viewed, or consumed. Trends in postmodern art include pop art (think Andy Warhol's Campbell Soup cans) and conceptual art, which arguably could include the Social Realism art of the 1930s as a precursor.

Modernity vs. Postmodernity
The classical high modern society in the West was one centered around an industrial economy, mass media (print newspapers, a few large radio and television broadcasting networks) largely unfettered by government censorship and that grew to embrace the notion they practiced a professional and objective view of journalistic truth, and employment based in large micro-economies of scale, i.e large corporations and non-profits, and which ultimately came have a rather high degree of labor protections for industrial workers (unions, minimum wages, etc.), and included some form of government sanctioned social insurance.
Metanarratives that dominated society and thought during modernity included industrial capitalism, Marxism (through social democracy in the West), mainline Christianity (increasingly rationalistic), deism and atheism, and a belief that science promoted human progress. Politics was centered in cohesive, fully functional political parties that were either liberal (not the Fox News meaning of the word, but liberal in the sense of believing in liberty, constitutional government, capitalist economics, whether laissez faire or Progressivist) or Social Democratic that built broad coalitions of voters through rational objective platforms and messages.

Postmodernity has witnessed the atrophy of many "modern" metanarratives. Religion is increasing subjective and individualistic, with the catchphrase "I'm spiritual, but not religious" common.

Another phenomenon of late modernity and postmodernity is the growth of religious fundamentalism as a reaction against secularization, and religious diversity. Additionally, academic critics of postmodernism are concerned that its subjectivity undermines the ability of a tolerant society no longer certain of the value system that originally led to its tolerant nature to resist in meaningful ways systems based on intolerance, including those based in religious fundamentalism.
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"...we create our own reality..." |
Postmodernism AS Kitsch Kultur

Labels:
Kitsch & Kultur
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