Cheap jewelry is always a popular breeding ground for Kitsch. Kitsch glitz shines especially bright when designs are made to capitalize on popular trends such as the streaking craze that began in the 1960’s and attained astronomical heights when a peace signing streaker crashed the 1974 Academy Awards blazing behind actor David Niven. From that point on, streaking was as glorified in all forms of design, from T-shirts to decals to plaster figurines to the kind of tacky finery you see here.
If the people who practiced the sport had incredible bodies it would make for fine spectator fare but usually it’s just some attention starved paunchy dude with a severe “shortcoming”.
Also, most streakers were/are male so curious they chose a female to be immortalized here. So very 1970’s Woman’s Lib.
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Last night was the closing of The First National Tour of my musical, The Color Purple. I had never written a musical before, hardly ever went to see them. I’m an all-the-way Pop Culture gal and for me this was a medium from ancient times with way too histrionic sounding songs and singers frozen in time. I was the least likely person in the world to write a musical but write one I did, with Brenda Russell, Stephen Bray and Marsha Norman. We were nominated for 11 Tony’s. How we even won one, the brilliant LaChanze for Best Actress, was a miracle in the climate on Broadway. (Don’t get me started on that one…). Beyond being eternally proud of the work, especially the uplifting and joyous effect it had on audiences night after night, the most stunning part of the journey was the family of friends I made through the Broadway run and the ensuing national tour. Right from the beginning when we started writing Purple in 2001 I always heard that there’s constant bickering among everyone but we were all really friends. And I mean everyone, from Alice Walker, the Pulitzer prize winning author of the novel, down through us authors, the cast, director, producers, hair, makeup, wigs, production managers, everyone. I was always being told by other friends who had written for Broadway that by the end no one would ever talk to each other and that so many writers of so many shows, because the experience takes years and is so intense, never end up speaking unless they write another show and then it’s just about work. Our case always was and remains different. This is a family that will be together forever, bound by an experience where the piece itself was bigger than any one part. Everyone felt chosen and blessed to be a part of The Color Purple. Fantasia WAS Celie. Watching that journey of her finding herself through this character was a joy and a privilege. Every cast member, starting with the staggering Felicia P. Fields, Tony nominated for Sofia and the first actor we ever cast in 2003, was not only a triple threat – brilliant singers, actors AND dancers, a rare enough find in one person let alone an entire cast – they were a gift for any artist to have interpret their work.
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I’ll be waving one of these all day and night today as these are the final two performances of the First National Tour of my musical, The Color Purple. The whole 4-1/2 years I was writing this with Brenda Russell and Stephen Bray we waved these church fans and others from my collection of 60 from the 1950’s and ’60’s daily. I’ve been stuck on songs before but being stuck on a song for a musical when one has to consider way more then the singer or the content of the song like the plot, which we were writing at the same time as the songs, the dialogue, whether something should be musicalized or spoken, is there dancing to it or not, does the wig guy have enough time to make the wig changes, on and ever-increasingly on…, let me tell you the sweat pours down and these church fans, totally organic to what we were writing other than a couple decades too late, came in mighty handy.
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Fantasia as Celie. Fantastic cast, many from the original Broadway production. Five years of my life into the making of this baby. I’m very proud of it. If you’re in LA come to the Pantages.
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A day late but Happy belated Martin Luther King Day! This bulging butterscotch keychain goes with me everywhere I go.
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A black power statuette raising his fist in pride but when you pull him outta the box he’s a white man…! This is one of the greatest examples of Soul Kitsch in my collection. So perfect a product in the late 60’s for a market that had long been under-served in terms of ubiquitous pop culture memorabilia. But like The Supremes White Bread and Touch O’ Soul “Off-Black” pantyhose featured earlier in this blog, and boasting on the box that it’s a “Equality- Justice statuette”, couldn’t the product manager have spent a few more minutes thinking about his target audience and poured a little tan tint into the resin before locking down the molds?
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Popular causes have always been prime breeding ground for Kitsch but none so powerful as the first wave of products that spin out of these Pop Culture phenomenon. Both Libby The Lovely Liberated Lady and the Do-It-Yourself Coloring Kit Black Power Statuette are two such statements from burgeoning Civil Rights movements in the 1960s and ’70s when these folks were expressing themselves freely among the masses for the first time.
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I have tons of MLK memorabilia – busts, rugs, pens, cufflinks, ashtrays – but this book of matches is one of my favorites. Comes in a matching set with Jackie Robinson, Mahalia Jackson, Dr. Ralph J. Bunche, Lorraine Hansberry, Zora Neale Hurston, Paul Laurence Dunbar and Bill Pickett.
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A couple of weeks ago I featured the world’s happiest gal dancing to my song “Neutron Dance”. Now, the Krown Princess of Kitsch Khoreography turns her attention to the sweeping horns and strings and theatrical chorus melody of another one of my most danced-to songs. Black leather against backlit drapes encourages an even more dramatic performance, made exceptionally special by how the dancer’s mouth moves aggressively though rarely quite mouthing the words. Other favorite aspects of the performance are the freeze poses and excellent recovery from a stumble in the first chorus. The moves in the instrumental are especially impressive. Kudos from the author to this Neutron Dancer in Boogie Wonderland!
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Debuting in 1969, Black Pride Beer was was concept first – “A Beer As Proud As Its People” – and beer second. Black Pride was the brain child of Edward J. McClellan, then Urban Program director of the NAACP in Chicago where the hope was that brewing the beer would pump the pride and stimulate the economy of black communities nationwide starting with Chicago’s south side where a large segment of the Black population lived.
Black Pride may have stopped brewing in 1972 but Black pride has thankfully lived on.
From the December 1969 edition of Brewers Digest:
For A Brighter Future… Black Pride, Inc., in the best tradition of the free enterprise system, seeks to provide a means of … achievement for its stockholders as well as for its employees and for those with whom it does business. At the same time, as an economic institution within the black community, Black Pride, Inc., hopes by the example of its success to reveal to blacks the ability of the free enterprise system to measure to their needs if they are willing to measure to its demands. Further, as an economic institution within the black community, and with its stockholders and employees being members of that community, more revenue in the form of profits, dividends, salaries and wages will be available for the assumption of greater local responsibility for community services and improvement. Finally, and here the marketing implications are obvious as well, the promotion of a Black Pride product intrinsically involves the promotion of the idea of blacks having pride in themselves and the necessity of personal effort and involvement if that pride is to be justified.”
Debuting in 1969, Black Pride Beer was was concept first – “A Beer As Proud As Its People” – and beer second. With the hope of pumping pride and stimulating the economies of black communities nationwide, Black Pride was the brainchild of Edward J. McClellan, then Urban Program director of the NAACP in Chicago, whose south side where a large segment of the Black population lived was the first community served.
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