poshlost'

"Corny trash, vulgar clichés, Philistinism in all its phases, imitations of imitations, bogus profundities, crude, moronic, and dishonest pseudo–these are obvious examples. Now, if we want to pin down poshlost' in contemporary writing, we must look for it in Freudian symbolism, mothmythologies, social comment, humanistic messages, political allegories, overconcern with class or race, and the journalistic generalities we all know..."

Or:

"A well-rounded, untranslatable whole made up of banality, vulgarity, and sham. It applies not only to obvious trash (verbal and animate), but also to spurious beauty, spurious importance, spurious cleverness"

–Vladimir Nabokov

King Kong.  Baudrillard.  Shopping Malls.  Disney Land.  MTV.  Dave Eggers. 

On some level one cannot help but recognize the sheer dominance of these forces.   Speaking generally, they are the air we breath.  This does not mean that they are natural.  Liberals (the politicians, not the ideals of any philosophy - which for many reasons, such as Capitalism, do not exist) would have more nuanced cooking shows, a slightly better quality of life for slightly more people for a slightly longer time.  A stronger, more gentle war on various emotional states.  Their prospects, of course, hinge on a fundamental delusion of sorts – namely a world where conservatives (at their current stage on the several-decades-developing road to fascism) simply do not exist.  Indeed, much of the liberal delusion consists of an elaborate maintainence of this snobbery.*  (And, to be fair, much of the conservative machine depends on exploiting the resentment springing from this impression.)  Those are all familiar enough complaints, to be sure.  And like everywhere, such generalizations are perhaps only useful up to a certain point.

If it is even worth mentioning (and I'm not convinced it is), this realm is nevertheless where a stupid film like Team America hits hardest.   
It "hits" in the sense that it literally performs a kind of violence on its audience (a violence for which we have very few words, yet – apart from the usual phrases, "beating over the head," "insulting the intelligence," "forced to consume," etc.)  Lenny Bruce's form of satire comes to mind (and yet, is it funny?  Really?).  That it panders equally to liberals and conservatives is perhaps worthy of a chuckle.  It's also of somewhat Zizekian topicality, in fact.  I wonder if he's seen it.  But to mistake this film for a "critique" of anything would surely be going too far (again recalling a certain Zizek). 

Having so warned against generalizations, I will now proceed to generalize.  I do think there is some wisdom in making an effort not to speak of the banal, or at least to do so carefully, and not in a manner that treats it with any more dignity than that with which it may handle us.

But faced with such wanton excess (itself a symptom, or a kind of virus, yes of course, if one that also seems now like a sort of pre-requisite for writers of all stripes to catch, and especially if one is to be such a thing as the voice of one's generation – and what alternatives for "success" are there, really?) - faced with such wanton excess (and now it's merely reactionary cousin, cuteness or "the new sincerity"),.....actually, you know what?  I'm not at all sure we even understand the original context of this "new sincerity" enough to comment, and certainly not enough to...what's the word for such lazy dismissive gestures, albeit founded on a bedrock of initial intelligence, anyway?  Maybe before denying it of any and all potential for future good, we should take another look.  (Then again, maybe   not.) 

Ah, but if only these problems were simple. 

*  Unwilling as they are to confront their own embeddedness in the class and warfare about which they may not ever philosophically speak, knowing full-well that communism and Jack Kennedy are long dead (and buried).

Comments

[Jodi]

Interesting post, Matt.

It raises for me a number of concerns I've had about cultural studies wherein criticizing racism in a Disney film, say, becomes the rhetorical equivalent of storming the winter palace. I just don't buy it. Yet, I don't think that all cultural critique/engagement with popular culture is like this. And, so in some ways, the good comes with the bad. The catch then: does the good (valuable insightful analysis) end up in a justificatory or celebratory relationship with the dreck it supposedly exposes?

If yes: then what? Are we left in an elite, rarified position critical even of jazz? Are we completely out of touch, sterile, bereft of contact with everydayness and cultural wonder?

[Matt]

Thanks Jodi. I wonder if we can we take the Situationist criticism of the avant-garde seriously, and/or refuse being placed on either side of that (cryptomoral?) equation?

As in, I'm not sure that poshlost' (though Nabokov does have his own meaning) couldn't also be translated as something more (or less) than "dreck" – as "pop," say (he'd be a writer of little consequence without it, in any case). Also, there is a sense in which "we" are already talking about these things ad naseum (on MSM, conservative blogs--the air we breath, almost), so maybe the risk of naturalizing or indirectly celebrating is somewhat overblown?

[Matt]

(By the by, at the beginning of each of my new classes, in the great Shklovsky tradition, I deliberatly use the word "9/11" with as many possible different intonations, and evoking as many different contexts as possible.

The experiment, unfortunately, does not usually go over so well.)

Also: Surely we have degenerated to the point now where Jazz is more on par with classical music, popularly speaking.

[Jodi]

Could you expand a bit on your last point, that is, on why these are not the risks and what the danger is that you see?

If I rightly recall your comments in the Kong discussion, they seemed to focus not simply on the presence of banalities but on how they are treated by intellectuals, left critics, theorists, whatever. Is that right?

[Matt]

In terms of sheer quantity and audience, is all I meant. The dangers are still there.

Yes, as I believe so did you.

It's possible that one needs a younger audience for the "we are all racists" comment to have any productive effect.

[Jodi]

I introduced jazz as a reference to Adorno.

But the change in its status is important, no? What is popular at one point may be elite at another. This phrasing suggests something else in turn: the importance of working through the production of popularity and of the populace and the possibility of finding alternative ways to do this.

[Matt]

Yes, got the Adorno. My comment was more along the lines of "what would he think, of Team America..."

[Matt]

It was, admittedly, not a very serious question.

[anonymous]

"Nabokov likes to transliterate as poshlust, which not only indicates the way the word is pronounced, but also uses two English words -- posh and lust -- that resonate with the meaning of the Russian).

It's sort of an untranslatable word. It is often rendered as "banality," but it can also indicate something that is in bad taste or is trashy or cheap, but often poshlust disguises itself as something great, true or beautiful. Nabokov says that 'poshlust is not only the obviously trashy but also the falsely important, the falsely beautiful, the falsely attractive.' ...

From a savage REVIEW by James Wood of Leaving Las Vegas
New Republic. "Issue date: 12.25.95 Post date: 05.11.00"

"... Leaving Las Vegas is not simply a bad film; it is a bad film subtly impersonating a good one. It perpetrates a fraud. As Nabokov suggested in his biography of Gogol, this is the most dangerous category of contemporary artwork (he called it poshlust, the Russian for kitsch that thinks it is not). Real trash, said Nabokov, is often wholesome and transparent. Poshlust, on the other hand, 'is especially vigorous and vicious when the sham is not obvious and when the values it mimics are considered, rightly or wrongly, to belong to the very highest level of art, thought or emotion.'

What we have, in the reception to Leaving Las Vegas, is a category mistake. Since art is about life, this mistake poisons the way we apprehend both other artworks and life."

(from a discussion archived here)

[Chris]

You bring up Baudrillard (ambiguously). One wonders what if anything the liberal anti-Theorist makes of his contribution in this sphere? Or maybe others have more textually-worked-through opinions?

[josef k.]

Is this question well posed? Indeed, is there even a question here at all? Or rather, is this post not simply identifying instead a certain trope at work in the contemporary culture industry.

If the latter, I would say that we remain within the problematic of deciding on exactly what we should make of the cultural industry in general. Although, to be sure, I wonder: is even that question well posed?

Does the culture industry actually exist? It seems to be that Adorno and Horkheimer invented the concept for rhetorical purpose of explaining why the revolution hasn't happened yet. And personally, I am becoming increasingly inclined to believe that this concept has no objective validity outside of the context of this explanation, and the particular Frankfurt school commitments to which it was attached.

Certainly: Zizek's notion of culture as the generic repository for unbelief has nothing concrete in common with the Frankfurt school model of programmatic ideology.

And Matt - I think you might be oscillating between these two models in your post. The effect of this oscillation leaves you in a somewhat strange place where you seem unwilling to commit to a concrete position of your own. For this reason, your post strikes me as nolstagic - for the days when men were men, and critique was ruthless.

[Matt]

Josef, I think that's a fair and interesting reading; so, thanks. And I agree the question is not well posed.

While it may have been my intention to move away from the Frankfurtish and more toward the questions of irony and sincerity, this post--as I may have said elsewhere--is probably trying to say too much in one breath and so ends up saying very little at all. Relying on links to flesh out an argument, even the blogly, certainly has its limits.

[Matt]

To expand on that just a bit: the ongoing process of homogenization in late capitalism is of course very real (though perhaps more complicated), but I also think the language of "producer" and "consumer" isn't entirely adequate in response.

[josef k.]

I am definitely in sympathy with your aims. One question I would like to ask is: where exactly do you locate the homogenizing process at work in late capitalism?

From my perspective, I would say that it seems not to be an integral phenomena, but rather something symptomatic. I am thinking here particularly of the categories of music you find in record stores - "Alternative" "World Music" and so on. In both these cases, the logic is certainly consumerist, but as much to do with niche markets as homogenous categories.

[And speaking of consumerism, Jodi, it is interesting to note your turn of phrase here: "It raises for me a number of concerns I've had about cultural studies wherein criticizing racism in a Disney film, say, becomes the rhetorical equivalent of storming the winter palace. I just don't buy it."]

This is the say: when I buy an Alternative Record, I would venture that I simultaenously buy myself at the same time an alternative identity legitimated by the rubric of the "Alternative" discourse which has grouped together various manifestations of identities like mine into one homogenous category for a smoother shopping experience.

At the same time, I think the real logic here is a little more complex. It is not simply that I buy myself an identity, but further, that I buy for myself at the same time a relation with such an identity that enables for me to wield it in a more sophisticated, hipper way.

Which I why think you are basically correct when you mention sincerity and irony - acquiring an understanding of these kind of affective concepts - what they do, how they work - seem to me to be essential if we are to come to grips with how culture really functions.

I think perhaps we need to supplement the ideological theory of the culture industry with a micropolitical theory of affects.

The category of poshlost is not a bad place to start, from another direction I think the aura of authenticity is an interesting one.

See: http://www.disquietingmuses.com/May00/nettles2.html

[Matt]

Thanks Josef; an interesting poem, even if I'm not sure how it relates to 'aura' and 'authenticity' exactly? (and though there may be some exceptions to the what, compromised plaid, I suppose--only one cannot speak of them openly of course). Or were you saying something different.

At the same time, I think the real logic here is a little more complex. It is not simply that I buy myself an identity, but further, that I buy for myself at the same time a relation with such an identity that enables for me to wield it in a more sophisticated, hipper way.

Hmm...yes, of course. To buy oneself a relation...but this still seems too Frankfurtish to me, this language. (And what's so wrong with being hip? Not all that was hip was hippie, after all. Everyone loves to mock the hipsters, you know, as if this gesture were any less banal! Poshlost' posing as self-conscious may still be poshlost'--cf. "Team America," no? I don't know. Maybe this term isn't useful at all, finally, except as a fancy word for conservative critics, to drop with a thud on occasion.)

More to the point: isn't it also part of the experience of music that we inhabit it; that it has the potential at least, to awaken an awareness of--or rather open onto a certain nonrelation, even? And so to distinguish, in some sense, the aesthetic from the programmatic, or the ethical.

[josef k.]

"[I]sn't it also part of the experience of music that we inhabit it; that it has the potential at least, to awaken an awareness of--or rather open onto a certain nonrelation, even?"

I like this formulation very much, for the reason that the first part seems to contradict the second part: how is it that we can inhabit something that opens out onto a certain nonrelation? To me, this is in-concievable...

[Christoph]

Wonderful reading. Of course, calling something posh-lusty reveals as much about the person "recognising" it as such as it does about l'objet or the artist.

Now, there is a good chance I am just showing up my lack of sensitivity for the wonderful English language, but what is the difference between p. and kitsch? Doesn't kitsch always think it is not? At least in my native (German) tongue, that is always implied.

[Matt]

Christoph: as an Amerkun, I cannot help but resemble that remark.

But I'm not sure it's the same as kitsch, insofar as kitsch seems to imply--in a manner risking moral ponderousness, maybe--something more like a bland or sapless sentimentality. But then, not speaking Russian (a morally-ponderous language if ever there was one) Nabokov (and someone like Svetlana Boym) are all I have to go on (sort of like Lacanese and Zizek, you might say). Just as I wouldn't actually cross off Eggers entirely (though his
stapler thing may have been a disheartening sign of things to come (significantly abridged version, there)), I might NEITHER cross off sentimentality.

In case this wasn't clear, I'm not convinced that a seemingly "ready-made" emotion or aesthetic is (by definition) entirely devoid of liberatory potential.

Also, in case Scott Kaufman happened to miss it: the Duchamp bladder man was of course back, this time with a hammer.

[Keechi]

Why is the art presented without attributes? In this blog - all over Long Sunday...

[Matt]

Specifically which art are you referring to, Keechi? And to whom should it be attributed?

[Robin Morrison]

"poshlust, the Russian for kitsch that thinks it is not"

About as accurate a definition as may be. As a definition, it is entirely subjective, as should be. Call someone's work kitsch; they refute the assertion. One man's high-concept self-effacing upside-down smirking Mona Lisa with Laura Bush's face is kitsch to someone out there, including perhaps the creator. Maybe the poshlost is in the eye of the beholder not the creator?

Imaginary critique of imaginary and assumedly poshlost work of (some say) art: "The alleged poshlost of Senichai's (at least inarguably amusing) 'pre-modern reconstruction', as he described it, was lost on me."

"If it sounds good, it IS good." Duke Ellington

Ah, well: so many labels, so little time.

"how is it that we can inhabit something that opens out onto a certain nonrelation? To me, this is in-concievable..."

Life does just this. The "certain nonrelation" is called 'death'.

"Life is a great surprise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater
one." Vladimir Nabokov. Pale Fire (1962)

[Matt]

Maybe the poshlost is in the eye of the beholder not the creator?

This would certainly appear to be the case for Nabokov's (rather formidable) cast of 'false creators,' if anywhere.

But in this more specific sense - if poshlost' is linked, via some combination of Nabokov's own statements and his fiction maybe, to the notion of 'false creators' - then I'm not at all sure poshlost' and kitsch are purely subjective. Rather they may be thematized in more or less convincing ways, though perhaps always on the plane of fiction still (provided, of course, that one takes the very question of (the possibility of) fiction - and death - seriously). That is, the contribution of these serious fictional arguments, if you will, to a certain deep and philosophic skepticism (call it "posmodern" if you must) are hardly trivial.

Along such veins, surely someone has written a treatise, maybe using the examples of Nabokov and Will Self, among others, on what may delimit more and less useful provocations to the universal authority (or non-existence) of the symolic order, or 'big Other.'

These provocations be-long to a literary tradition, I think it's safe to say, one of probing the hidden, terrifying and unspeakable absence at the heart of law - or the foundation-less foundation of law (cf. Kafka, Kant...)

Anyways, a belated thanks for the wonderful reading-between-the-lines comment, Robin.

[Ruby30Giles]

I had got a dream to make my own business, but I didn't have got enough of money to do this. Thank God my close friend told to take the loan. So I took the credit loan and made real my dream.