“I think that Benjamin’s focus on dream kitsch is still valuable. If you rub them against the grain, kitsch objects betray a yearning for a better world. So it’s important to keep one’s mind open about the way in which the seemingly manipulative dimensions of popular culture produced entirely for commercial or cynical ends may also harbor at least the potential for an alternative understanding. The dreams contained in kitsch are always a check to an overly condescending attitude toward mass consumption and popular culture.”
Martin Jay
Kitsch in a way is a sign of mourning for the loss that is entailed by adulthood. The child is not scared by kitsch objects, it revels in colours, textures, patterns. The sensibility of the ego denigrates pretty things as kitsch, so we are not allowed to like them.
Childen also like unsavoury things. As I child I dreamt about the many-coloured balls of McDonald’s playgrounds.
The “utopian power of the vulgar desire to consume”is arguably equivalent to the utopian power of the vulgar desire to pray for one’s salvation; the hope for a better world to come.
“In consuming, you are already engaged in a pre-reflexive experience.”
And yet reflection is the basis of experience.
Thoughts fallen by the wayside 