The ultra-militant, '70s-era GI Joe®, giving new meaning to the term "standing at attention," poses in little more than leather chaps and a dog collar. The borderline-femme Ken Doll® with his waxed-to-perfection, Beach Boy's hairdo, looks dazzling in tight, silky Dolphin® shorts. He stares unwaveringly at GI Joe®, whose raised hand holds a short leather riding crop.
Ken is smiling.
Watching from a short distance, Lesbian Barbie-formerly Malibu Blondie®-keeps company with a black-clad, Leather-lesbian Barbie whose crotchless getup shows off her latest "enhancement."
This showcase of debauchery, the work of local artists, is on shelf-display-and on sale-at San Francisco's kitschiest purveyors of pop culture, Uncle Mame's in the Castro.
The best of only a handful of shops catering to the City's collector's of zany, often excruciatingly over-commercialized iconography of Americana, Uncle Mame's shelves, corners, ceiling and floor are packed with decade's worth of memorabilia reflecting America's cultural banality at its worst/best.
Plastic statues of Bob's Big Boy, the Pillsbury Doughboy and Captain Kangaroo vie for shelf space along with tin Spam banks and Oscar Meyer wiener-mobiles. For many who are caught up in the wacky world of "kitsch" (a 19th century term meaning bad taste and excess), these seemingly trite collectibles represent the lighter side of life, where schlock is King and high art be damned.
But amidst the porn-kitsch and the ultra-tacky items like the Donnie and Marie Osmond Barbie sets, Elvis perfume, Wonder Woman piñatas and Liberace light-switch covers, the old-time classics like Howdy Doody, Bert and Ernie, and Gumby reach out to the inner-albeit commercial-child, offering a nostalgic comfort, like long-lost friends.
"I hope when people visit here it brings back the best parts of their childhood," says owner David Sinkler, AKA Uncle Mame. "Lord help us if it brought back anything but the best parts! The key darling, is to have capital FUN."
Sinkler, the ebullient, larger-than-life Kitsch Queen of Castro, moved here from Cleveland more than a year ago to realize his "tasteless" dream. His timing, location, and keen sense of the outrageous and sellable, has put his 9-month-old shop on San Francisco's map of not-to-miss places to visit.
"People relate to commercial icons much as they do toys because they saw characters like the Jolly Green Giant and Sprout who not only sold mom a product, but entertained the kiddies as well," says Sinkler. Apparently, Sinkler is on target; Jolly Green Giant is on back-order.
The television connection is clear upon reaching Uncle Mame's. Huge store-front windows display '50s TV sets running vintage clips of variety shows and commercials. From 9 a.m. to 1 a.m. daily, 4-hour-long clips run endlessly, attracting passersby like moths to a porch light. Inside the store, juxtaposed haphazardly among the merchandise, more sets run clips of Jackie O's tour of the White House, Elvis' tour of Graceland, highlights from the ultra-kitsch Pee Wee's Playhouse and old cereal commercials. Over the sound system, a sappy Olivia Newton John ballad is followed by the lively sounds of the Village People.
But why this penchant for collecting items with such little artistic value? Although Sinkler believes such memorabilia fills a therapeutic need by taking people back to the safe, favorite places of youth, handfuls of scholars, academics and art critics have for decades themselves been trying to figure out the kitsch-collecting phenomenon.
"Kitsch is related to nostalgia," says Alan Dundes, UC Berkeley anthropology professor and author of 26 books on pop culture and urban folklore. "People are interested in building memories and these material representations of memories are reminders to show that they've been there." But Dundes takes the analysis a step further.
"There is a deep-seated reason for collecting things normally thrown away, or without clear value," he says. "those with, as Freud called it, anal-erotic characters, have a particular propensity for collecting." Such personality types, Dundes explains, are driven to give value to items simply because they lack value. Developed at a young age, this behavior is the result of placing value on feces because, Dundes says, "although we throw it away for its inherent lack of value, since our parents make a big fuss about it, we attribute some sort of unquantifiable value to it."
Her, then, is the heart of kitsch-it's not worth shit and that makes it worthwhile. It has no artistic, monetary or cultural value outside of what collectors have projected upon it, but as the early 20th century Italian scholar Gill Dorfles wrote with such prescience, "it has long ago taken over the world."
Dorfles, who wrote an analytic treatise on kitsch, was of the opinion that kitsch is the product of a civilization based on excess consumption. He wrote that "excess" is an important word to remember in connection to kitsch, that it's the very life-blood that drives the phenomenon. "It is connected to exaggeration and not just bad taste," wrote Dorfles. "Kitsch has an extra dimension of trashiness and stupidity than do the simple products of bad taste that are daily profitably sold."
Sinkler agrees. The tackier, the louder, the least tasteful, the better. "For me, the thing that's the most fun is also the kitschiest. If you react by saying 'Oh! I can't believe somebody actually made that!', then all the better."
But, according to some who make studying kitsch a central part of their lives, it is also about poking fun at the uncultivated masses.
"Collectors are laughing at it consciously," says Arthur Asa Berger, SF State communication arts professor and pop culture expert with more than 20 books on the subject.
"The people who actually like the stuff are uncultivated The people who collect it are ironic," he says. "They are collecting it as a revelation of how horrible the cultural tastes are of the common populace."
Susan Taylor, member of the Far West Pop Culture Association and English literature professor at the University of North Las Vegas-the ultimate kitsch city-agrees. "The overriding criteria for something to be kitschy is that it be a willful exercise in bad taste. Being a collector myself, the last thing I'd want to do is invite Martha Stewart over for dinner."
Theories aside, most scholars and collectors together agree that since the 1940s, when television first found a solid position of authority in our homes, it has been this medium fostering the kitsch craze.
"Kitsch is an exercise in fetishism. If TV isn't that, I don't know what is," says Taylor. "Advertising has become the common language, not English. It reaches the lowest common denominator while maintaining the attention of the masses. Just walk into a classroom, the one thing we can all talk about coherently are commercials."
"As kids, we are overwhelmed visually, mesmerized by what we see, especially on TV," says Sinkler, his exuberant persona and effusive mannerisms like camouflage against the backdrop of his over-the-top merchandise. "That's the same experience I want people to have when they walk through my doors. They don't have to buy anything, just dance in the aisles with us. Have fun and laugh."
As Uncle Mame's alter ego Auntie Mame once said, "Let me take you along darling and show you things you've never seen before."
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