Sherry Chandler

Kitschification at its most negative —

— is a phrase used by Keith Gesson on the Radio Open Source program After the Fall, the Rise of 9/11 Literature, broadcast on September 7.

I have been wont to use the term pornography to describe our appetite for cheap sentiment, especially patriotism, and the thrill of watching disaster unfold. Kitsch may in fact be more appropriate.

It’s first use is attributed to Philip Roth in an interview in the British Independent in September 2004. That interview has “disappeared from the web” but Christopher Lyden read from it on the program and I found the transcript below at The Citizens

…as a novelist. September 11th is not something I can draw on at an imaginative level. The only story I can take from it is the kitsch in all its horror—not the horror in what happened, but the great distortion of what happened. It’s almost embarrassing, the kitschification of 3,000 people’s deaths. Other cities have experienced far worse catastrophes. America itself has inflicted some in its past, even if it was for the right reasons. I am not a pacifist. One wouldn’t dream of slighting these people, it is awful, but we need to keep a sense of proportion about these things. What we’ve been witnessing since 9/11 is an orgy of national narcissism and a gratuitous sense of victimization that is repellant and it doesn’t stop. Even now it is impossible to watch a baseball game without having to listen to “God Bless America” before hand or without being asked to remember our heroes. I feel like saying,”Stop. Dignity demands that you stop it.”

The Open Source discussion of 9/11 literature included Gesson, an editor of n+1, Dennis Loy Johnson of MobyLives and edtior of the anthology Poetry After 9/11, and Art Spiegelman.

I found it very refreshing to listen to this conversation among artists who are not buying in to any of it the hype, who see in our whole September 11 myth a kind of national pathology. Who see the dirty trick that’s been played on us.

Spiegelman:

What’ve we’ve done to September 11…unprocessed information got fossilized into a club to beat us into cowering marching submission. It’s such a dirty trick.

I’ve been very slow to talk about this broadcast but it has not gone stale in the interim. And it’s still there for download on the Open Source web page. Listen to it. It’ll make you feel better.

Possibly related posts:

Spiegelman on the Reagan funeral

Conservatism at the Cross Roads?

It’s May Day — and the mission still isn’t accomplished

You ain’t so big — you ain’t even Lost

O/K/I Workshop — update

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