Saturday, April 10, 2010

kitsch and camp

kitsch
Pronunciation: \ˈkich\
Function: noun
Etymology: German
Date: 1925

1 : something that appeals to popular or lowbrow taste and is often of poor quality
2 : a tacky or lowbrow quality or condition

kitsch adjective



Camp is an aesthetic sensibility wherein something is appealing because of its bad taste and ironic value. The concept is closely related to kitsch, and campy things are described as being "campy" or "cheesy". When the usage appeared, in 1909, it denoted: ostentatious, exaggerated, affected, theatrical, and effeminate behaviour, and, by the middle of the 1970s, the definition comprised: banality, artifice, mediocrity, and ostentation so extreme as to have perversely sophisticated appeal.[1] American writer Susan Sontag's essay “Notes on 'Camp'” (1964) emphasised its key elements as: artifice, frivolity, naïve middle-class pretentiousness, and ‘shocking’ excess. Camp as an aesthetic has been popular from the 1960s to the present, and arguably peaked in the decades of the 1970s, 1980s, and to some extent the 1990s as well

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