In 1964, the late Susan Sontag wrote an influential essay entitled “Notes on Camp.” Subsquently reprinted in her collection Styles of Radical Will, it proved to be one of her enduring aesthetic commentaries. But what is kitsch, and how does it differ from camp?

 Camp has some serious, if ironic purpose, and can be used to satirise and question current social norms. Hence the subversive value of the sixties Batman television series, in which the staid and uptight crime fighter and his youthful ward Dick (…) (aka Robin) gave a stilted performance against colourful and garish villains, thus bringing into question the very social norms allegedly being upheld.

Kitsch has no such redeeming aesthetic or social value. To put it bluntly, it’s crap- mostly mass produced, plastic, ephemeral, ornamental and subject to obsolescence. In the case of New Zealand society, there are two chief sources of kitschness that come to mind- the seventies, and fundamentalist Christianity. All right yes, “Australia” was under consideration too, but their perverted celebration of the seventies means it can be subsumed underneath that font of crudity.

What was wrong with the seventies in New Zealand? After all, it was a time when new social movements like feminism, peace activism and LGBT rights were being born, after the campaigns against apartheid and the Vietnam War in the sixties. Unfortunately, an ageing ignorant elderly generation had to have its hands prised off the levers of power, and they weren’t going without a fight. Hence the Muldoon era, and the appearance of Patricia Bartlett, poorly educated ex-nun and moral guardian, which rendered the decade akin to life in a badly-run Polish shipyard, with stultifying economic mismanagement and cultural and political authoritarianism endemic.

 And in aesthetic terms, it wasn’t terribly good either, apart from the welcome emergence of punk at the very end of the decade. However, before then, we had to put up with nauseating formulaic pop bands and individuals like Abba, the Bee Gees, Osmondery and Barry Manilow. The music was lousy and imported, and so was the ‘fashion.’ Big hair on men, giant lapels, bellbottom flares, platform shoes, disco glitter, lack of colour co-ordination and other crimes against good taste and design were rife at the same time. Now, all right, aspects of the eighties were just as heinous- Michael Jackson and most of his associated merchandise come immediately to mind.

Before the Internet, there was television, and it too was awful. Kitsch therefore includes any sci-fi series by Irwin Allen from the sixties (which also fitted well into the next decade) and much of the dire fare available on the idiot box- the Six Million Dollar Man, the Bionic Woman, Lost in Space, Space: 1999, The Brady Bunch and much else that mercifully escapes my memory from that period. Dr Who is an exception, especially after the introduction of the much-loved Tom Baker, now himself a beloved camp icon. So was Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

What is the relationship of LGBT communities to kitsch? There is an extremely remote one. As cultural conoisseurs and market trend initiators, Liberace is probably the only gay individual associated with the period. Ask yourself, how many of us had objects like ceramic flying duck ornaments, nodding dogs, glassware animals, fluffy and wood fake vikings, poodles, et al in our immediate vicinity during that hideous era? Precisely- they’re all buried in landfill somewhere. And that’s another reason to hate the seventies- its non-biodegradable ecological legacy!

But there’s a darker reason. Kitsch is associated with political authoritarianism. Bear in mind virtually anything associated with fundamentalist Christianity, whose rhetoric, propaganda, political strategies and subculture is almost wholly derived from the United States. How many of us are offended by cliched and cloying kitsch religious slogans on t-shirts, bumper stickers, bad “contemporary Christian muzak”, and self-righteous CGI vegetables? Earlier commentators on kitsch pointed the finger at heinous pop Catholic kitsch plaster and plastic statuary and sacharrine prints of BVM and the Sacred Heart of Jesus, but these pale in volume and ghastliness beside fundamentalist Protestantism. 

Added to which, most fundamentalist political leadership is kitsch, as indeed is any cult of personality of any political persuasion. Witness the grotesque Bishop of Bling, Brian Tamaki, and his Destiny brand. Witness also Kim Jong-Il, kitsch despot of North Korea, and subject of far too many fortunately untranslated ‘people’s operas’ about how the Dear Leader causes spontaneous orgasms for the faithful, or other alleged miracle. 

(However, there is an exception to this- megalomaniacs often preside over death and devastation, religious and political persecution in their wake. Idi Amin was the source of hilarity at the time, until it emerged that behind the clownish facade, he was a psychotic murderous tyrant, as were Cambodia’s Pol Pot, Zaire’s Mobutu, General Pinochet and the late unlamented Saddam Hussein).

That said, toppled conservative political leaders are fair game for revisionist kitsch revisitations, given populist machinations which usually try to paint them as average folk. Thatcher iconography is doing a roaring trade in Britain right now for that very reason, and Christchurch veteran comedian David McPhail had a successful one person show centred on his own chosen object of parody during that decade, Muldoon.

Kitsch is the badly dressed, shrill and ignorant handmaiden of despotism, tyranny and authoritarian political leadership everywhere. It’s not very nice, and whenever possible, decent, tasteful and cultured LGBT and straight but solid folk should give it a wide berth.

(Although come to think of it, there’s little else you can with William Shatner memorabilia…)