Date: 24 Aug 1995 10:31:33 -0500
Subject: RE: Serbian avantgarde


>I don't know much about Laibach (I was never too interested in them, not just
>because I don't like their music but also precisely because of those
fascistic >overtones)--but I can say that plenty of the other "kitsch"
fascists have >turned out to be the real thing.  The obvious examples are Boyd
Rice and Adam >Parfrey, neither of whom I consider kitsch (Boyd Rice tapes are
sold in various >extreme right/white supremacist magazines).  The question is
almost academic as >far as I'm concerned since at this point I consider the
"aesthetic fascists" >almost as bad as the real thing.  I don't know how much
real difference there >is.

That's a good point, and for the most part I agree with you.  I wasn't as much
speaking of "kitsch fascism" (I can't wait to introduce that in casual
conversation) as I was of what former Eastern Bloc country's consider kitsch.

A film I forgot to mention in my last post is a Yugoslavian film called "Tito
and Me".  I think it was made in the late 80's/early 90's.  It is about a
child who is obsessed with Tito and how he goes on a type of "volksmarch" to
Tito's place of birth.  The movies tone is somewhat akin to an episode of "The
Wonder Years", but it takes place in communist Yugoslavia.  There is the same
question of whether the film is straight nostalgia or criticism of the period.
 My guess is that it a tangled mixture of the two.

One one hand you can say that Laibach is using fascist imagery for effect; in
the same way someone like Boyd Rice does.  But I can also see how they would
use it because Slovenia didn't have the post war affluence the United States
did (the source of most kitsch).  From that viewpoint, Laibach uses
fascist/totalitarian imagery the same way a person in the United States would
use images of 50's advertising - we have lava lamps, they have swastikas.  I
don't know which of the two is the case.  Perhaps like "Tito and Me", it is a
combination of the two.





     --- from list avant-garde-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

     ------------------