The surreal and the kitsch

 Thank you for messages wishing me recovery from this bug I have. I'm improving but I'm not 100% yet. The weather is still quite hot and I am getting ready for long overdue visits by friends over the next few weeks. These Covid years have been weird beyond description.

This time I was going to add to my previous posts about transgender themed films at the Venice Film Festival but Stana at Femulate got there first so I will simply link to her page about Casa Susanna, a documentary by Sébastien Lifshitz about the guest house for TGirls in the USA of the 1950s and '60s: Susanna's Casa is Our Casa. There are links there to a trailer, clips and reviews. 

 

When looking at images from Casa Susanna and other places of the era, I always can't help feeling that style has lost something in recent years.

I have been paying closer attention to the news this week. This war in Ukraine that has disturbed me a lot has entered a new phase; and in Britain the change of monarch continues with a mix of surrealism and kitsch that I can't help but comment on.

Kitsch denote objects or art that may be deemed lowbrow because of their excessive sentimentality or garishness, though often appreciated in a knowing, considered or ironic way. I'd say a frilly sissy dress was kitsch, and so's a banana onesie. I'm not knocking them; there's room for everything that can be loved. For an exquisite example of well-considered kitsch you can do no better than watch the dream pantomime that ends Act 2 of Engelbert Humperdinck's beloved Christmas opera Hansel and Gretel in the Met Opera's 1982 production, which follows the original stage directions and has angels in classic Victorian angel garb - long blonde flower-wreathed hair, long green robes, glory-rayed haloes - descending from the rafters to stand in heaven-gazing guard over the sleeping children. This is nineteenth-century sentimentality writ large, in the days when the Germans were a sentimental people, and this beautiful yet knowingly kitsch throwback to the feel of the era in which the work was written should make you cry. 

It is the same with Queen Elizabeth's crowned coffin surrounded by sad guards in full panoply as one sees so often on Victorian memorials in English cathedrals. Gone are the glory days (!) when kings like William the Conqueror and Henry VIII would burst in their coffins, or die after falling off the toilet (George III) or tripping over molehills (William III); or coronations like George IV's where the queen got locked out, or other royal events where turnips were chucked or rude remarks were shouted (NB it's never been a good idea to do this). It's all really very stage-managed and very kitsch. I'm not saying it's lousy or wrong or not emotionally moving, any more than the delicious stage production above is, just very sterile in its overmanaged presentation and garish in its visual taste. On the basis that all this is good enough for the high and mighty, please don't mock a TGirl in an out-of-date outfit or a sissy in her frilly dress again. For the matter of that, don't abuse trans people just going about their daily business.

As for The Queue to view the coffin, I can only say that we seem to be entering the realms of Kafka, of Terry Gilliam's Brazil, of the Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy. When The Queue itself is now a tourist attraction, and there is periodically a queue to join The Queue, and there are tourists and journalists gawping at the queue to join The Queue, then we have left the realms of reality. If you wish to pay respects in this gruelling way, I am the last person to stop you. The fact is, I have no liking for the entire business of government, from heads of state to the lowliest jobsworths at the local council, and this is because I have to beg them for 'rights' to be treated as a woman or go about my day unmolested. By all means respect your queen, but respect everyone else too. I find many enthusiasts for government and nationality the world over often overlook that courtesy.

Sue x