california dreaming

This is as kitsch as it gets.

It is estimated that one in twenty Americans have one of these in their homes. Go figure!

The Guardian, on the painter of light (Hey! Wasn't that JMWT?)

'For while Kinkade's work is at best humdrum and technically adequate, its popularity tells us something about his public, about a desperate yearning for nostalgia that pervades parts of American life, a return to the safe glow of some imagined past.

"It's not the world we live in," Kinkade said of his painting, "it's the world we wished we live in. People wish they could find that stream, that cabin in the woods."'

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I was drawn to this by something anon said...what's all this about the Jewishness? I suppose we all live with our illusions-both at the individual and at the collective level- and maybe even though some may be necessary or harmless others are, no doubt, a real source of trouble and strife. 

The notion that there was some sort of "golden past" in Muslim history, a time when "we" were progressive, scientific, and pluralistic, spellbinds a lot of fairly educated muslims-particularly when they look around and see just how backward and rigid their societies have become.

The American west, the frontier, the rugged individualism and sheer gritty determination of the outlaw, the holy rebel, the gunslinging Puritan, and the defender of the 'city on the hill' (the new Jerusalem) fosters another kind of delusional outlook. 

Equally: how the settlers found a "wilderness" in Palestine (how very convenient!).  

And Little England with its sickly-sweet nostalgia for rolling hills, village churches, cultural homogeneity (read: hierarchy), and its idealization of a kind of bumbling fool or amateur with his non-intellectual, non-abstract, common good sense and decency. Alternatively: the pragmatic reformer, the world-builder, the no-nonsense Utilitarian. Extend this a bit further and trashy sentimentalism over the Empire isn't far behind.  

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The seduction of the American dream, social mobility-where anyone can make it if they put their hang-ups to one side. Roll up your sleeves and stop larking around, make something of your life. Success is only around the corner...the Promised Land, over the rainbow. California is also the home of the porn industry, isn't it?

Of course, to talk about the degree to which the ideal corresponds to reality is to miss the point. The ideal serves some other purpose here. What is sad, amusing and tragic at the same time is how those with such high ideals and good intentions suddenly find their lives coming off the wheels as irreality takes a grip on them. 

I suppose there's a special glee associated with seeing preachers and mullahs falling flat on their faces and in our cynical age it is easy to dismiss any type idealism by associating it with a fundamentalist mindset. 

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Anyway, let's see if 12 years a slave can break free from the Hollywood makeovers. Still waiting for the truly great film on the destruction of the 'Red Man'. The Guardian runs a piece: 'Top 10 westerns. Haven't got the heart to actually look at it.

~~~

"We believe that the walls of the home are the new frontier for branding. Thom always says that there are forty walls in the average home. Our job is to fill them."

"He speaks for about thirty minutes, and afterwards they come up to him and talk. It's very emotional, some of them are crying and saying, 'Here's how you've affected me.'"

I think I'm going to puke.