The Gods of Kitsch and Consumerism
I watch an LJ group called pimp_my_altar because I was looking at some Ansel Adams photographs once and within the collection was a picture of a south western Roman Catholic altar that was just stunning. It was small and had all kinds of hand made worship objects, but you could tell it was used frequently and created with the greatest devotion to their Lord. I was in search of this kind of imagery; pictures of people’s altar that showed how they prayed and connected to the divine. This is not what I found.
Something happens to people when they know they are being watched; they become performers and try to please the audience assuming what the audience likes. I think this tendency is often a regrettable feature of humanity. It is what pushes people to conform to the herd. This is also what I see happening in this LJ community. The members, usually some kind of neo-pagan/eclectic Wicca, design altar for the camera and the group approval. The altars are always neatly organized, clean, and contain the largest assortment of kitsch. You can tell the altar was arranged for the pictures because it looks so new or is impractical for actual worship. The altar turns from an area of practice and connecting with the divine to some sort of fetishistic display designed for show and external approval. They are shallow, substanceless facades built to make others think they are practitioners but in reality it is just meaningless beyond the plastic and glass of which the objects are made.
The kinds of altars I want to see are messy, stained from spills, and worn from use. The altar will either have only the essentials needed for practice because everything else gets in the way, or it will have lots of debris from the various workings that have just accumulated. I also like spontaneous ones; the ones frequently made in Voudon and Hinduism. I guess what I am saying is I want to see the working environments of people who actually believe in their god and not people who believe in believing in their god and thus have a distance from actual practice.
The aesthetics of altars is personal and as such it should represent the individual and their tradition. I hope sometime soon I will find pictures of real practicing altars and not ones made for show; the ones created for mass consumption are nothing any god would visit except the gods of kitsch and consumerism; they actually seem to be doing well and have a myriad of devotees. How unfortunate.
Something happens to people when they know they are being watched; they become performers and try to please the audience assuming what the audience likes. I think this tendency is often a regrettable feature of humanity. It is what pushes people to conform to the herd. This is also what I see happening in this LJ community. The members, usually some kind of neo-pagan/eclectic Wicca, design altar for the camera and the group approval. The altars are always neatly organized, clean, and contain the largest assortment of kitsch. You can tell the altar was arranged for the pictures because it looks so new or is impractical for actual worship. The altar turns from an area of practice and connecting with the divine to some sort of fetishistic display designed for show and external approval. They are shallow, substanceless facades built to make others think they are practitioners but in reality it is just meaningless beyond the plastic and glass of which the objects are made.
The kinds of altars I want to see are messy, stained from spills, and worn from use. The altar will either have only the essentials needed for practice because everything else gets in the way, or it will have lots of debris from the various workings that have just accumulated. I also like spontaneous ones; the ones frequently made in Voudon and Hinduism. I guess what I am saying is I want to see the working environments of people who actually believe in their god and not people who believe in believing in their god and thus have a distance from actual practice.
The aesthetics of altars is personal and as such it should represent the individual and their tradition. I hope sometime soon I will find pictures of real practicing altars and not ones made for show; the ones created for mass consumption are nothing any god would visit except the gods of kitsch and consumerism; they actually seem to be doing well and have a myriad of devotees. How unfortunate.