Book Plug

Well, it's more like a chapter plug since that's all I read for school, but I plan on reading the rest of it at some point in my life. The book is called Rainbows for a Fallen World by Calvin Seerveld, and the chapter I read was called "Obedient Aesthetic Life." In this chapter Seerveld is arguing that Christians need to be interested in cultivating a rich aesthetic life, one that delights in the world God has given us (i.e. digging up dirt in the garden, going on bike rides just for the fun of it, reading fairy-tales, drinking fine wine, etc.). He warns against falling prey to a worldly aesthetic, which he calls kitsch. I particularly enjoyed his definition of kitsch:

"Kitsch accepts the technocratic denaturing of ordinary life, but pretends to lift you above it, nostalgically. Kitsch is willing to be slick, it always glitters somehow, bewitching the simple with illusions of grandeur. Kitsch is emotionally cheap, whether it be expensive tinsel and Christmas tree baubels or a technically flawless, effulgent painting by Bouguereau, whether it be an ornate beer stein from the corner variety store, a dirty joke graffito lacquered to it sides, or a sunset with palm trees painted by a native on a piece of black velvet brought back from the Barbados. Kitsch never enlarges experience; it blandly affects a show to stimulate feelings of exquisiteness or a mood of supernal tenderness, but it flops into bathos because it is ersatz, like a seven-inch-high, silver-plated Statue of Liberty trying to be the real thing. Kitsch is like a deodorant next to good perfume (63)."