Kitsch is cool.  But I wonder: what kind of a sense of humor do you have to have to laugh at communism? What kind of perspective do you need? What kind of space and time is necessary for communism to become kitsch in Bulgaria?

My friend Robyn (a former Fulbrighter living in Budapest) wrote <a href="http://misplacedyinzer.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/20-years-later/">this yesterday</a> and she got me thinking about Bulgaria.
<blockquote>As an American in a post-Communist country, I got plenty of cheaper prices and Commie kitsch: you could enjoy Trabi-spotting in my Budapest neighborhood (or sit in one at my favorite bar) or buy candles in the shape of Lenin’s head at<a href="http://www.szoborpark.hu/index.php?Lang=en"> Statue Park</a>. When in Berlin last March, tour guides dressed as East German soldiers sold visas with faux GDR stamps and Sometimes, it all felt a little slimy: are we laughing at what happened? But then, another part of me wondered if the “laugh” wasn’t a good thing: doesn’t the fact that people have turned the oppressor into kitsch become an act of defiance and freedom from the old order?</blockquote>
<p style="text-align:left;">It got me thinking and asking myself lots of questions.  Where is the kitsch in Bulgaria? Why haven't we comodified communism yet? Could it be that communism isn't cool or chic enough to be kitsch yet? What does it take for the transition to happen from fact to frustrating to creepy and then to kitsch? Isn't 20 years enough?</p>
Okay, we don't have the East German Ampel Mensch, Lenin, Aeroflot, Marx, Red Square, or any major popular (but failed) uprisings but this doesn't mean Bulgaria should be left out of the "post-communist county capitalizing on communist chic/communist kitsch" market.

But I don't see it. I can't think of any place in Sofia that is marketing kitsch. <!--more-->What does it mean that Bulgarians seem incapable of  poking some fun at their communist past while making some money off of it? Is it too real? Is it too present? Is it too painful? Or is it somehow just not funny?

But that's the thing.  Communism is kitsch.  It was known for it's cheap mass-produced objects, for appealing to the masses (what ever that means), for being superficial--for hardly scratching the surface.  Aesthetically, it's unoriginal and void of self-expression.  At its heart it's kitsch. So why do we deny it? Why deny communism it's rightful place? Do we somehow feel that we are pandering to the past? What's at stake here and now if we comodify Bulgaria's communist past?

Well it seems like there's plenty to work with.  While we don't have a park of statues, the Berlin Wall, Lenin's mausoleum on Red Square or a failed uprising, Bulgaria still has a serious communist past. We've got the Communist Party, the Pioneers and their scarves, Georgi Dimitrov, the Central Universal Store, plenty of little red pins with gold stars, Cyrillic street signs, Todor Zhivkov, socialist architecture and statutes, and we even have cookies that are still being produced and sold in boxes not unlike their communist counter-parts.

So what's keeping us from making and selling communist kitsch t-shirts, coffee mugs, postcards, and gift baskets? Or replica Pioneer scarves and Communist Party buttons? Why not plaster the faces of Zhivkov and Dimitrov on posters, buttons, bookmarks, corkscrews and/or any other available surface? Isn't there something cathartic in the act of reclaiming, subverting and repurposing these images and artifacts of communist propaganda?

Maybe the problem is that to be able to do this and to be succesful in the act, you have to be able to look back at the past with a critical eye.  But having simply a critical eye is not enough you also have to identify sites for the expression of dark humor--places that ooze sarcasm, irony and witt.  Ultimately, I guess it's the double-ness that is required to make the communist kitsch both funny and absurd that makes the task a difficult one.