Kitsch as Surface Culture.

Upon further reflection, Greenberg’s (partially) class-based analysis of Kitsch and its originary relationship to mechanical means of production may be a bit premature.

While it is certainly evident that Kitsch is a product of mid/mass-cult, the causal relationship is more likely to be a replacement of all education with a sort of “surface” culture that is concerned only with effect – displacing the cultural formations across all class structures. Mass-production, rise-of-literacy, and class breakdown certainly created the opportunity for mass-culture, but none of them explain in themselves the replacement-culture offered by Kitsch and the consumable effective object which forms its body.

Totalitarian Kitsch and satirical takeoffs of Kitsch are both well-served by this more succinct definition as well. For the dictator, the surface culture of Kitsch is a mask for underlying violence and for suppressing opposition – a simplified culture replaces the real one with its historical roots. For the immunity of satire to Kitsch-ification, satire, as that which disengages with and self-reflectingly dissembles its parodic culture, pushes one away from the surface by its very nature, thus rendering the genre natively immune.

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