Title: Star-spangled kitsch : an astounding and tastelessly illustrated exploration of the bawdy, gaudy, shoddy mass-art culture in this grand land of ours /
Authors: Brown, Curtis F.
Publisher: Universe Books,
Year: 1975
Subjects: Kitsch United States.; Popular culture United States
Abstract: Star-Spangled Kitsch is a lively round-up, in picture and text, of crass, ill-conceived, incongruous, trivial, muddle-headed, synthetic, meaningless, and embarrassing examples of taste in America. With verve and good humour, Curtis F. Brown discusses and displays mass-produced utilitarian and decorative items, as well as people, ideas, and lifestyles, in which the sublime collides with the banal to produce the ludicrous incongruity of elements that typify American kitsch: Kitsch in politics - from the hoked-up log-cabin image of William Henry Harrison in 1840 to the "just plain folks" style of Nelson Rockefeller in Coney Island. Religious kitsch - from Holy Medal diaper pins and Hail Mary face-powder boxes to Hollywood's Biblical blockbusters and a topless-bottomless celebrant at Pasadena's Hi-Life Social Club Church.^
Contents: Kitsch as only kitsch can: An intrepid introduction to schlock, camp, and kitsch -- American-style -- Rally 'round the flag, boys!: A misguided tour through politics and patriotism -- The gaudy and the Godawful: The spirit is willing but the kitsch is weak -- Everything but the kitschen sink: Household hints from Home Description -- The old sell game: This just has to be the most fabulous (foolish), fantastic (flagrant), far-out (fatuous)... -- A set of building blots: Unshapely mansions and other sites too humorous not to mention -- "...But I know what I like": Furthering the course of art -- The showy must go on: An excursion into excesses of films, fairs, and other show-biz happenings -- Rich Kitsch and other lifestyles: If you've got it, flaunt it. If you haven't, fake it -- From the cradle to the grave: A tacky world of birth, sex, marriage, and death -- Typing exercises: A key to racist, ethnic, and sexist kitsch -- Superkitsch: The worst of everything.