40
PARTISAN REVIEW
Kitsch, using for raw material the debased and academicized
simulacra of genuine culture, welcomes and cultivates this insen·
sibility. It is the source of its profits. Kitsch is mechanical and
operates by formulas. Kitsch is vicarious experience and faked
sensations. Kitsch changes according to style, but remains always
the same. Kitsch is the epitome of all that is spurious in the life of
our times. Kitsch pretends to demand nothing of its customers
except their money-not even their time.
The pre-condition for kitsch, a condition without which kitsch
would be impossible, is the availability close at hand of a fully
matured cultural tradition, whose discoveries, acquisitions and
perfected self-consciousness kitsch can take advantage of for its
own ends. It borrows from it devices, tricks, strategems, rules of
thJimb, themes, converts them into a system and discards the rest.
It draws its life blood, so to speak, from this reservoir of accumu–
lated experience. This is what is really meant when it is said that
the popular art and literature of today were once the daring,
esoteric art and literature of yesterday. Of course, no such thing is
true. What is meant is that when enough time has elapsed the new
is looted for new "twists," which are then watered down and served
up as kitsch. Self-evidently, all kitsch is academic, and conversely,
all that's academic is kitsch. For what is called the academic as
such no longer has an independent existence, but has become the
stuffed-shirt "front" for kitsch. The methods of industrialism dis·
place the handicrafts.
Because it can be turned out mechanically, kitsch has become
an integral part of our productive system in a way in which true
culture could never be except accidentally.
It
has been capitalized
at a tremendous investment which must show commensurate
returns; it is compelled to extend as well as to keep its markets.
While it is essentially its own salesman, a great sales apparatus has
nevertheless been created for it, which brings pressure to bear on
every member of society. Traps are laid even in those areas, so to
speak, that are the preserves of genuine culture. It is not enough
today, in a country like ours, to have an inclination towards the
latter; one must have a true passion for it that will give him the
power to resist the faked article that surrounds and presses
in
on
him from the moment he is old enough to look at the funny papers.
Kitsch is deceptive. It has many different levels, and some of them
