# "A Display Of Kitsch That Is Perhaps Without Rival"



## Xavier (Jun 7, 2012)

Jerry Fodor reviews Bernard William's book _On Opera_ in _The Times Literary Supplement_ (2002)

An excerpt:

"Williams doesn't get it right every time. On the contrary, this is the kind of book you'd like to argue with; preferably over wine and cheese after a good performance. Sometimes Williams's tastes seem to me excessively refined. He has, for example, a sort of horror of kitsch, which makes him very severe indeed about "Der Rosenkavalier" in particular and, in general, about Strauss after "Electra". It is fashionable at the moment not to like Strauss, but these things come and go. There is, it seems to me, very little in opera that is as charming as the first act of "Ariadne auf Naxos"; but charm is a virtue to which Williams seems not very responsive. ("Parsifal", by the way, retains Williams's affection despite *a display of kitsch in the second act that is perhaps without rival*. Likewise passages in the second act of "Siegfried", where the hero goes on at length about how much he misses his mother. Wagner's operas evoke mixed reactions in Williams, as they do in most other Wagner fans.)"

************

What do you think of Fodor's remark on Act II of Parsifal?


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)




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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Xavier said:


> Jerry Fodor reviews Bernard William's book _On Opera_ in _The Times Literary Supplement_ (2002)
> 
> An excerpt:
> 
> ...


What is Fodor's, or Williams's, definition of "kitsch"? "Without rival" - compared to what? Everything in opera? Everything in the world? Various definitions of kitsch include such words as "tasteless," "vulgar," "tacky," "overdone," "gaudy," "tawdry," "mass-produced," and "calculated to appeal to popular or undiscriminating taste." Some people might feel that by such definitions most opera qualifies as kitsch. I don't. And I would definitely not apply these terms to _Parsifal_, or single out Strauss's operas after _Elektra_. If _Rosenkavalier_ is supposedly kitschy, why not _Salome_ and _Elektra_? Is anything in opera more tasteless and vulgar, tawdry and overdone, than a half-naked teenage girl doing a striptease for her father and having an orgasm with a bloody severed head? Do dancing flower maidens and Kundry's kiss, even taken out of context (and why should they be?) compare even remotely with this?

Anyone for the head of an opera critic?


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## Guest (May 11, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> What is Williams's definition of "kitsch"?


It's not Williams that complains of 'kitsch' but Fodor; make sure you go after the right critic's head!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Good point. I've revised my post. Two heads may be better than one.


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## Blancrocher (Jul 6, 2013)

I haven't read it yet myself, and it may take awhile to get around to it, but I thought I'd post the following longish article by Raymond Williams about "Wagner and Politics" from the NYRB:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2000/nov/02/wagner-politics/

I'm also interested to read his book about opera--thanks for the mention of it.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

I'm not surprised by what is said in the article, since from my point of view, 
_"A Display Of Kitsch That Is Perhaps Without Rival,"_ is pretty much _all_ of Wagner.


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## Couac Addict (Oct 16, 2013)

PetrB said:


> I'm not surprised by what is said in the article, since from my point of view,
> _"A Display Of Kitsch That Is Perhaps Without Rival,"_ is pretty much _all_ of Wagner.


...depends on the production


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## SilenceIsGolden (May 5, 2013)

Having read Bernard William's _On Opera_, overall I think it's a fine book, full of interesting reflections and good insights as well as observations that are thought-provoking but that I ultimately disagree with. That being said, I honestly can't really comment on Fodor's statement, which seems like nothing more than an attempt to counteract William's dislike of kitsch by claiming that kitsch is displayed in a work William's admires, because it is so vague. I _assume_ like Woodduck he is referring to either the Flower Maidens (which I've never found particuarly kitschy) or Kundry's kiss (which, on the contrary, I find to be an incredibly powerful dramatic moment). But given the lack of any more information, there's really not much to say.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Kitschiness is not a tangible quality inherent to anything, but an imposed perception rooted from one's bias. You can frame anybody's art as kitschy and not much can be said to to contrary aside from "I disagree" or "you are an uncultured clout", or some variation thereof. Certainly nothing quantitative can be offered to refute such a comment objectively.

Now and then a critic may raise controversy by "going against the grain", picking a well-known piece or figure and _trashing_ it or him, because similar to shooting up a school, it is an easier to get noticed by simple acts of notoriety, than say, writing an extensive well-crafted treatise on why _Mass in B Minor_ is so great by offering original insights into to that work, that would be very difficult indeed and more work than most critics are willing to commit to creating anything (considering critics are in the business of leeching off of other's work).


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## Revenant (Aug 27, 2013)

Couac Addict said:


> ...depends on the production


Let me guess: In this production Nibelheim is set in South Florida, specifically the Everglades' 'Sea of Grass' (non-environmentalists, read 'swamp'). Alberich first turns into an alligator to impress Wotan and Loge, then into what - a swamp rat? - and is captured.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

Revenant said:


> Let me guess: In this production Nibelheim is set in South Florida, specifically the Everglades' 'Sea of Grass' (non-environmentalists, read 'swamp'). Alberich first turns into an alligator to impress Wotan and Loge, then into what - a swamp rat? - and is captured.


Wrong, it's famous production of Parsifal, not of the Ring, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN>?


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## Couac Addict (Oct 16, 2013)

Revenant said:


> Let me guess: In this production Nibelheim is set in South Florida, specifically the Everglades' 'Sea of Grass' (non-environmentalists, read 'swamp'). Alberich first turns into an alligator to impress Wotan and Loge, then into what - a swamp rat? - and is captured.


That's Kundry...obviously. Can't you tell? Who else would it be? :lol:


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

The flower maidens were intended to be kitschy. They are Klingsor's easy girls: pretty, tawdry, tasteless, mindless, existing for only one purpose - to provide sexual services to the knights that Kundry seduces and Klingsor captures. At the end of Act II as Klingsor's castle falls, they turn to faded flowers, so they may not even be real humans.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

SiegendesLicht said:


> The flower maidens were intended to be kitschy. They are Klingsor's easy girls: pretty, tawdry, tasteless, mindless, existing for only one purpose - to provide sexual services to the knights that Kundry seduces and Klingsor captures. At the end of Act II as Klingsor's castle falls, they turn to faded flowers, so they may not even be real humans.


You have a point - but listen to the music! It is sweet, delicate, playful, innocent - not tawdry or tasteless at all. When I want to know what Wagner is getting at, I always listen to the music first. I agree that this scene can be kitschy in presentation, if the visual effect fails to match the delicacy of the musical conception (a real peril); but Wagner's conception of flower-maiden "foreplay" is not vulgar. And when the big guns appear - Kundry in all her voluptuous majesty - the music again tells us that this is no cheap trick in a brothel but something grave and terrible. Kundry comes to Parsifal as the reincarnation of his mother, and this tells us plainly that sex in _Parsifal_ is a symbol of something deeper, and that the seduction of the boy by means of guilt is a temptation, not to sensual indulgence as such, but to psychic regression and perpetual immaturity - a temptation Parsifal must resist if he is to grow to manhood and redeem the Knights of the Grail from the incurable wound of their own self-imposed immaturity. This was a pretty powerful thing to conceive and to dramatize in 1882, and if we understand it for what it is, it is pretty startling even now. Certainly it cuts much deeper than Salome tossing her panties around and fondling corpses.

One defining trait of kitsch is shallowness. The psychological penetration of _Parsifal_'s story - and above all its music - is anything but shallow, even in the lightness of these blossoms in Klingsor's magic garden.


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## Notung (Jun 12, 2013)

Kitsch? KITSCH?!?!

Act II contains the most intense, touching, and profound struggle between purity and lust, chastity and sensuality, nihilism and redemption in all of music! 

KITSCH! The nerve...


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## Notung (Jun 12, 2013)

Couac Addict said:


> ...depends on the production


O_O I would be very amused to find out the reasoning behind this ingenious pinnacle of stage direction.


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

Notung said:


> O_O I would be very amused to find out the reasoning behind this ingenious pinnacle of stage direction.


Whoever is responsible for this should be flogged.... or shamed at least.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Lope de Aguirre said:


> Whoever is responsible for this should be flogged.... or shamed at least.


Oh good! There's my ex-wife's cat of 14 tails she left behind in the attic, if you want to borrow it.


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

Whoever is responsible for this should be flogged.... or shamed at least.

Oh no. Do not go gentle upon such blasphemy! Flogging it must be... if only for starters.


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## peterb (Mar 7, 2014)

There are quite a few commentators who describe Parsifal (and/or specific productions of it) as containing elements of kitsch; a google search will bring up quite a few.


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## Guest (Jan 22, 2015)

Does this piece by _*Orlando di Lasso*_ get us any nearer to defining what exactly _*kitsch*_ means?


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## Guest (Jan 22, 2015)

Or is it more subtle, such as *Wagner's* editorial tampering with *Palestrina's* _Stabat mater_ for double chorus?


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## ahammel (Oct 10, 2012)

I guess that he means that Christian iconography gets the same treatment in _Parsifal_ that ancient paganism gets in _The Ring_.

Still a pretty hard change of gears considering he was talking about the kitschiness of _Rosenkavalier_, which has a marriage swap plot and is designed to have rococo sets and show-stopping soprano arias. Clearly a rather different fettle of kitsch.


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