Kitsch

Kitsch (pronounced kich)

(1) Something though tawdry in design or appearance; an object created to appeal to popular sentiment or undiscriminating tastes, especially if cheap (and thus thought a vulgarity).

(2) Art, decorative objects and other forms of representation of dubious artistic or aesthetic value (many consider this definition too wide).

1926: From the German kitsch (literally “gaudy, trash”), from the dialectal kitschen (to coat; to smear) which in the nineteenth century was used (as a German word) in English in art criticism describe a work as “something thrown together”.  Among “progressive” critics, there was a revival in the 1930s to contrast anything thought conservative or derivative with the avant garde.  The adjective kitchy was first noted in 1965 though it may earlier have been in oral use; the noun kitchiness soon followed. Camp is sometimes used as a synonym and the two can be interchangeable but the core point of camp is that it attributes seriousness to the trivial and trivializes the serious.  Technically, the comparative is kitscher and the superlative kitschest but the more general kitschy is much more common.  The alternative spelling kitch is simply a mistake and was originally 1920s slang for “kitchen” the colloquial shortening dating from 1919.  Kitsch & kitchiness are nouns, kitschify, kitschifying & kitschified are verbs and kitschy & kitchlike are adjectives; the noun plural is kitsch (especially collectively) or kitsches.  Kitschesque is non-standard.

Kitsch can become ironic: a lava lamp in "hot dog stand" red & mustard.  Lava lamps were in the 1970s briefly fashionable as symbols of the modern but were soon re-classified kitsch.  In the twenty-first century, such was the demand that re-creations of the originals became available, bought because they were so kitsch; iconic can thus be ironic.

For something that lacks an exact definition, the concept of kitsch seems well-understood  although not all would agree on what objects are kitsch and what are not.  Nor is there always a sense about it of a self-imposed exclusionary rule; there are many who cherish objects they happily acknowledge are kitsch.  As a general principle, kitsch is used to describe art, objects or designs thought to be in poor taste or overly sentimental.  Objects condemned as kitsch are often mass-produced, clichéd, gaudy (the term “bling” might have been invented for the kitsch) or cheap imitations of something.  It can take some skill to adopt the approach but other items which can be part of the motif include rotary dial phones ("retro" can be a thing which transcends kitsch) and three ceramic ducks "flying" up the wall (although when lava lamps were in vogue, lava lamp buyers probably already thought them kitsch).  An application of physics of thermodynamics and fluid mechanics, the lava lamps once so admired by stoned hippies work by exploiting differences in density, thermal expansion, and buoyancy within two immiscible fluids (ie they do not mix), the dynamics driven by a localized heat source and the construction is simple; in a variously shaped glass vessel, there is a wax-based compound (the “lava”, which typically is paraffin wax mixed with additives to adjust density and melting point), floating in a liquid (usually water or a water-based solution with salts or alcohols to achieve the desired density).  At the base of the vessel there is a source of light and heat which traditionally was an incandescent bulb, the heat a product of the inefficiency with which the energy was converted into light; when the bulb is switched on, the liquid becomes heated and as the wax absorbs some of this heat, it melts and thermally expands, density thereby decreasing to the point it’s slightly less dense than the surrounding liquid.  Buoyant force then causes the wax to rise through the liquid in blobs, randomness meaning tiny variations in surface tension and viscosity create infinitely different shapes of the rounded forms which cool as they move away from the heat source, meaning the wax contracts, increasing its density beyond that of the liquid, causing it to sink back toward the bottom.  Because it’s a closed system working on a continuous cycle, the heating & cooling repeats continuously and, component failure and material decay aside, in theory a lava lamp could run forever.

Lindsay Lohan: Prom Queen scene in Mean Girls (2004).  If rendered in precious metal and studded with diamonds a tiara is not kitsch but something which is the same design but made with anodized plastic and acrylic rhinestones certainly is.

Führerkitsch: A painting attributed to Adolf Hitler.

The Nazi regime devoted much attention to spectacle and representational architecture & art was a particular interest of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945).  Hitler in his early adulthood had been a working artist, earning a modest living from his brush while living in Vienna in the years before World War I (1914-1918) and his landscapes and buildings were, if lifeless and uninspired, executed competently enough to attract buyers.  He was rejected by the academy because he could never master a depiction of the human form, his faces especially lacking, something which has always intrigued psychoanalysts, professional and amateur.  Still, while his mind was completely closed to any art of which he didn’t approve, he was genuinely knowledgeable about many schools of art and better than many he knew what was kitsch.  However, the nature of the “Führer state” meant he had to see much of it because the personality cult built around him encouraged a deluge of Hitler themed pictures, statuettes, lampshades, bedspreads, cigarette lighters and dozens of other items.  A misocapnic non-smoker, he ordered a crackdown on things like ashtrays but generally the flow of kitsch continued unabated until the demands of the wartime economy prevailed.

To the Berghof, his alpine headquarters on the Bavarian Obersalzberg near Berchtesgaden, Barvaria, there were constant deliveries of things likes cushions embroidered with swastikas in which would now be called designer colors and more than one of his contemporaries in their memoirs recorded that the gifts sometimes would be accompanied by suggestive photographs and offers of marriage.  Truly that was “working towards the Führer”.  At the aesthetic level he of course didn't approve but appreciated the gesture although they seem never to have appeared in photographs of the house’s principle rooms, banished to places like the many surrounding buildings including the conservatory of Hans Wichenfeld (the chalet on which the Berghof was based).

Hitler's study in the Berghof with only matched cushions (left) and the conservatory (centre & right) with some pillowshams (embroidered with swastikas and the initials A.H.).

In the US, Life magazine in October 1939 (a few weeks after the Nazis had invaded Poland) published a lush color feature focused on Hitler’s paintings and the Berghof, the piece a curious mix of what even then were called “human-interest stories”, political commentary and artistic & architectural criticism.  One heading :“Paintings by Adolf Hitler: The Statesman Longs to Be an Artist and Helps Design His Mountain Home” illustrates the flavor but this was a time before the most awful aspects of Nazi rule were understood and Life’s editors were well-aware a significant proportion of its readership were well disposed towards Hitler’s regime.  Still, there was some wry humor in the text, assessing the Berghof as possessing the qualities of a “…combination of modern and Bavarian chalet” styles, something “awkward but interesting” while the interiors, “…designed and decorated with Hitler’s active collaboration, are the comfortable kind of rooms a man likes, furnished in simple, semi-modern, sometimes dramatic style. The furnishings are in very good taste, fashioned of rich materials and fine woods by the best craftsmen in the Reich.”  Life seemed to be most taken with the main stairway leading up from the ground floor which was judged “a striking bit of modern architecture.”  Whether or not the editors were aware Hitler thought “modern architecture” suitable only for factories, warehouses and such isn’t clear.  They also had fun with what hung on the walls, noting: “Like other Nazi leaders, Hitler likes pictures of nudes and ruins” but anyway concluded that “in a more settled Germany, Adolf Hitler might have done quite well as an interior decorator.”  There was no comment on the Führer’s pillows and cushions.

Lindsay Lohan themed pillowshams are available.

Whatever Life’s views on him as interior decorator, decades later, his architect was prepared to note the dictator’s “beginner’s mistakes” as designer.  In Erinnerungen (Memories or Reminiscences), published in English as Inside the Third Reich (1969)), Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) recalled:

“A huge picture window in the living room, famous for its size and the fact that it could be lowered, was Hitler s pride.  It offered a view of the Untersberg, Berchtesgaden, and Salzburg. However, Hitler had been inspired to situate his garage underneath this window; when the wind was unfavorable, a strong smell of gasoline penetrated into the living room.  All in all, this was a ground plan that would have been graded D by any professor at an institute of technology. On the other hand, these very clumsinesses gave the Berghof a strongly personal note. The place was still geared to the simple activities of a former weekend cottage, merely expanded to vast proportions.”

He commented also on the pillowshams: “The furniture was bogus old- German peasant style and gave the house a comfortable petit-bourgeois look.  A brass canary cage, a cactus, and a rubber plant intensified this impression.  There were swastikas on knickknacks and pillows embroidered by admiring women, combined with, say, a rising sun or a vow of "eternal loyalty."  Hitler commented to me with some embarrassment: "I know these are not beautiful things, but many of them are presents.  I shouldn't like to part with them."

The gush was also trans-Atlantic.  William George Fitz-Gerald (circa 1870-1942) was a prolific Irish journalist who wrote under the pseudonym Ignatius Phayre and the English periodical Country Life published his account of a visit to the Berchtesgaden retreat on the invitation of his “personal friend” Adolf Hitler.  The idea of Hitler having a "friend" (as the word conventionally is understood) is not plausible but that an invitation was extended might in the circumstances have been though is unexceptional.  Although when younger, Fitz-Gerald’s writings had shown some liberal instincts, by the “difficult decade” of the 1930s, experience seems to have persuaded him the world's problems were caused by democracy and the solution was an authoritarian system, headed by what he called “the long looked for leader.”  Clearly taken by his contributor’s stance, in introducing the story, Country Life’s editor called Hitler “one of the most extraordinary geniuses of the century” and noted “the Führer is fond of painting in water-colours and is a devotee of Mozart.”

Country Life, March 1936 (both Hermann Göring (1893–1946) and Werner von Blomberg (1878–1946) were then generals and not field marshals).  General Göring wearing the traditional southern German Lederhosen (leather breeches) must have been a sight worth seeing.

Substantially, the piece in Country Life also appeared in the journal Current History with the title: Holiday with Hitler: A Personal Friend Tells of a Personal Visit with Der Führer — with a Minimum of Personal Bias”.  In hindsight it may seem a challenge for a journalist, two years on from the regime’s well-publicized murders of probably hundreds of political opponents (and some unfortunate bystanders who would now be classed as “collateral damage”) in the pre-emptive strike against the so-called “Röhm putsch”, to keep bias about the Nazis to a minimum although many in his profession did exactly that, some notoriously.  It’s doubtful Fitz-Gerald visited the Obersalzberg when he claimed or that he ever met Hitler because his story is littered with minor technical errors and absurdities such as Der Führer personally welcoming him upon touching down at Berchtesgaden’s (non-existent) aerodrome or the loveliness of the cherry orchid (not a species to survive in alpine regions).  Historians have concluded the piece was assembled with a mix of plagiarism and imagination, a combination increasingly familiar since the internet encouraged its proliferation.  Still, with the author assuring his readers Hitler was really more like the English country gentlemen with which they were familiar than the frightening and ranting “messianic” figure he was so often portrayed, it’s doubtful the Germans ever considered complaining about the odd deviation from the facts and just welcomed the favourable publicity.

As a "cut & paste" working journalist used to editing details so he could sell essentially the same piece to several different publications, he inserted and deleted as required, Current History’s subscribers spared the lengthy descriptions of the Berghof’s carpets, curtains and furniture enjoyed by Country Life’s readers who were also able to learn of the food severed at der Tabellenführer, (the leader's table) the Truite saumonée à la Monseigneur Selle (salmon trout Monseigneur style) and caneton à la presse (pressed duck) both praised although in all the many accounts of life of the court circle’s life on the Obersalzberg, there no mention of the vegetarian Hitler ever having such things on the menu.

Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) in polka-dots.

Briefly, Putzi Hanfstaengl was engaged to the US author Djuna Barnes who, although she denied being predominantly lesbionic, was regarded by some contemporary critics as having written the most definitive expressions of lesbian culture since Sappho.  It was one of Hanfstaengl's wives who spoke the most succinct thumbnail sketch of Hitler's sexuality: “I am telling you Putzi, he is a neuter.”

Fitz-Gerald was though skilled at his craft and interpolated enough that was known to be true or at least plausible to paint a veneer of authenticity over the whole.  Of the guests he reported: (1) Hitler’s long-time German-American acquaintance & benefactor (when speaking of Hitler, both better words than "friend") Ernst "Putzi" Hanfstaengl (1887–1975 and a one-time friend of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR, 1882–1945, US president 1933-1945) was a fine piano player (which nobody ever denied), (2) that Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946; Nazi foreign minister 1938-1945) was a wine connoisseur (he entered the wine business after marrying into the Henkell family’s Wiesbaden business although his mother-in-law remained mystified, remarking of his career in government it was: “curious my most stupid son-in-law should have turned out to be the most successful” and (3) that Dr Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945; Nazi propaganda minister 1933-1945) was an engaging dinner companion and a “droll raconteur” (it is true Goebbels’ cynicism and cruel wit could be amusing even to those appalled by his views, something like the way one didn’t have to agree with the press baron Lord Beaverbrook (Maxwell Aitken, 1879-1964) to enjoy his tart cleverness).  Much of the credibility was however sustained by it being so difficult for most to “check the facts” and few would have been able to find out that in the spring of 1936 when Fitz-Gerald claimed to be enjoying the Führer’s hospitality, the quaint old Haus Wachenfeld was part of a vast building site, the place being transformed into the sprawling Berghof, the whole area unliveable and far from the idyllic scene portrayed.

Führerkitsch: A painting attributed to Adolf Hitler.

Dutifully, Hitler acknowledged the many paintings which which were little more than regime propaganda although the only works for which he showed any real enthusiasm were those which truly he found beautiful.  However, he knew there was a place for the kitsch… for others.  In July 1939, while being shown around an exhibition staged in Munich called the “Day of German Art”, he complained to the curator that some German artists were not on display and after being told they were “in the cellar”, demanded to know why.  The only one with sufficient strength of character to answer was Frau Gerhardine "Gerdy" Troost (1904–2003), the widow of the Nazi’s first court architect Paul Troost (1878–1934) and one of a handful of women with whom Hitler was prepared to discuss anything substantive.  “Because it’s kitsch” she answered.  Hitler sacked the curatorial committee and appointed his court photographer (Heinrich Hoffmann (1885–1957)) to supervise the exhibition and the depictions of happy, healthy peasants and heroic nude warriors returned.  Hitler must have been satisfied with Herr Hoffman's selections because in November that year he conferred on him the honorific "professor", a title he would award about as freely as he would later create field marshals.

Kitsch: One knows it when one sees it.

What is kitsch will be obvious to some while others will remain oblivious and the disagreements will happen not only at the margins.  Although there will be sensitive souls appalled at the notion, it really is something wholly subjective and the only useful guide is probably to borrow and adapt the threshold test for obscenity coined by Justice Potter Stewart (1915–1985; associate justice of the US Supreme Court 1958-1981) in Jacobellis v Ohio (1964):

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it…

Matinée de septembre (September Morn (1911)), oil on canvas by Paul Émile Chabas (1869–1937), in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City (not currently on display).

What makes something defined (or re-defined) as kitsch is thus a construct of factors including artistic merit (most obviously when lacking), the price tag and the social or political circumstances of the time.  When Paul Émile showed Matinée de Septembre at the Paris Salon of 1912, it did not attract much comment, female nudes having for decades been a common sight in the nation’s galleries (although there had been a legislative crackdown on low-cost commercial products, presumably on the basis that while the “educated classes” could appreciate nudes in art, working class men ogled naked women merely for titillation).  In other words, Parisian salon-goers had seen it all before and Matinée de Septembre, while judged competently executed, was in no way compelling or exceptional.  The work may thus have been relegated to an occasional footnote in the history of art were it not for the reaction in Chicago when a reproduction appeared in the street-front window of a photography store.  Reflecting the contrasting aspirations of those Europeans who first settled in the continent, in the US there has always been a tension between Puritanism and Libertarianism and one of the distinguishing characteristics of the USSC (US Supreme Court) is that it has, over centuries, sometimes imperfectly, managed usually to interpret the constitution in a way which straddles these competing imperatives with rulings cognizant of what prevailing public opinion will accept and while the judges weren’t required to rule on the matter of Matinée de Septembre’s appearance in a shop window, the brief furore was an example of one of the country’s many moral panics.

Although at first instance a jury found the work not obscene and thus fit for public view, local politicians quickly responded and found a way to ensure such things were restricted to art galleries and museums, places less frequented by those “not of the better classes”.  The notoriety gained from becoming a succès de scandale (from the French and literally “success from scandal”) made it one of the best-known paintings in the US and, not being copyrighted, widely it was reproduced in prints, on accessories and parodied in what would now be called memes.  The popularity however meant a re-assessment of the artistic merit and many critics dismissed it as “mere kitsch” although it was in 1957 donated to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art where it has on occasion been hung as well as being loaned to overseas institutions.  The Met placed it in storage in 2014 and while that’s not unusual, whether the decision was taken because of it’s the depiction of one so obviously youthful isn’t clear.  The artist claimed his model was at the time aged 16 (thus some two years older than the star-cross’d lover in William Shakespeare’s (1564–1616) Romeo and Juliet (1597) and half a decade older than the girl who appeared on the cover of Blind Faith’s one-off eponymous album (1969)) but there is now heightened sensitivity to such depictions.

Kitsch also has a history also of becoming something else.  As recently as the 1970s, tea-towels, placemats, oven mitts, tea-trays and plenty else in the West was available adorned with depictions of indigenous peoples, often as racist tropes or featuring the appropriation of culturally sensitive symbols.  These are now regarded as kitsch only historically and have been re-classified as examples variously (depending on the content) of cultural insensitivity or blatant racism.

Kitsch at work: Lava Lamps and Random Number Generation

Some may have dismissed the Lava Lamp as "kitsch" but the movement of the blobs possesses properties which have proved useful in a way their inventor could never have anticipated.  The US-based Cloudflare is a “nuts & bolts” internet company which provides various services including content delivery, DNS (Domain Name Service), domain registration and cybersecurity; in some aspects of the internet, Cloudflare’s services underpin as many as one in five websites so when Cloudflare has a problem, the world has a problem.  For many reasons, the generation of truly random numbers is essential for encryption and other purposes but to create them continuously and at scale is a challenge.  It’s a challenge even for home decorators who want a random pattern for their tiles, their difficulty being that however a large number of tiles in two or more colors are arranged, more often than not, at least one pattern will be perceived.  That doesn’t mean the tiles are not in a random arrangement, just that people’s expectation of “randomness” is a shape with no discernible pattern whereas in something like a floor laid with tiles, in a random distribution of colors, it would be normal to see patterns; they too are a product of randomness in the same way there’s no reason why if tossing a coin ten times, it cannot all ten times fall as a head.  What interior decorators want is not necessarily randomness but a depiction of randomness as it exists in the popular imagination.

Useful kitsch: Wall of Entropy, Cloudflare, San Francisco.  Had this been in an installation in a New York gallery circa 1972, it would have been called art.  

For most purposes, computers can be good enough at generating random numbers but in the field of cryptography, they’re used to create encryption keys and the concern is that what one computer can construct, another computer might be able to deconstruct because both digital devices are working in ways which are in some ways identical.  For this reason, using a machine alone has come to be regarded as a Pseudo-Random Number Generator (PRNG) simply because they are deterministic.  A True Random Number Generator (TRNG) uses something genuinely random and unpredictable and this can be as simple as the tiny movements of the mouse in a user’s hand or elaborate as a system of lasers interacting with particles.

One of Cloudflare’s devices encapsulating unpredictability (and thus randomness) is an installation of 100 lava lamps, prominently displayed on a wall in their San Francisco office.  Dubbed Cloudflare’s “Wall of Entropy”, it uses an idea proposed as long ago as 1996 which exploited the fluid movements in an array of lava lamps being truly random; as far as is known, it remains impossible to model (and thus predict) the flow.  What Cloudflare does is every few milliseconds take a photograph of the lamps, the shifts in movement converted into numeric values.  As well as the familiar electrical mechanism, the movement of the blobs is influenced by external random events such as temperature, vibration and light, the minute variations in each creating a multiplier effect which is translated into random numbers, 16,384 bits of entropy each time.

Wall of Entropy, Cloudflare, San Francisco.

The arrangement of colors which avoids any two being together, in the horizontal or vertical, was a deliberate choice rather than randomness although, there's no reason why, had the selection truly been random, this wouldn't have been the result.  Were there an infinite number of Walls of Entropy, every combination would exist including ones which avoid color paring and ones in which the colors are clustered to the extent of perfectly matching rows, colums or sides.  What Cloudflare have done in San Francisco is make the lamps conform to the popular perception of randomness and that's fine because the colors have no (thus far observed) effect on the function.  In art and for other purposes, what's truly random is sometimes modified so it conforms to the popular idea of randomness.

Arch

Arch (pronounced ahrch)

(1) In architecture, a curved masonry construction for spanning an opening, consisting of a number of wedge-like stones, bricks, or the like, set with the narrower side toward the opening in such a way that forces on the arch are transmitted as vertical or oblique stresses on either side of the opening.

(2) In architecture, an upwardly curved construction, as of steel or timber functioning in the manner of a masonry arch.

(3) A doorway, gateway etc, having a curved head; an archway or the curved head of an opening, as a doorway.

(4) Any overhead curvature resembling an arch.

(5) Something bowed or curved; any bowlike part.

(6) In anatomy, any of various parts or structures of the body having a curved or arch-like outline, such as the transverse portion of the aorta (arch of the aorta) or the raised bony vault formed by the tarsal and metatarsal bones (arch of the foot),

(7) In cobbling, a device inserted in or built into shoes for supporting the arch of the foot.

(8) A dam construction having the form of a barrel vault running vertically with its convex face toward the impounded water.

(9) In glassmaking, a chamber or opening in a glassmaking furnace.

(10) Cunning, crafty or sly.

(11) Playfully roguish or mischievous.

(12) A preeminent person, a chief (largely obsolete except for technical use in ecclesiastical or other hierarchies, (Archdeacon, Archbishop, Archangel, Archduke, monarch, matriarch etc).

(13) One of the basic patterns of the human fingerprint, formed by several curved ridges one above the other.

1250-1300: From the Middle English arch, from the Old English arce, ærce & erce, from the Old French arche, from the Vulgar Latin arca, feminine variant of Latin arcus (arc, a bow), from the Classical Latin atchi, from the Ancient Greek arkhi (to rule).  From the Latin, other European languages similarly borrowed including the Old Norse erki, the Dutch aarts, the Middle Low German erse, the Middle High German & German erz and the Gothic ark.  Archangel was universally borrowed unchanged from the Greek.  Arch was added to many words borrowed from Latin and Greek in the Old English period; it subsequently became a productive form added to nouns of any origin, which thus denote individuals or institutions directing or having authority over others of their class (archbishop; archdiocese; archpriest, archdeacon). More recently, arch, has developed the senses “principal” (archenemy; archrival) or “prototypical” and thus exemplary or extreme (archconservative); nouns so formed are almost always pejorative (archvillain).

Some variations of the arch.

The original meaning, used in architecture of building, bridges and other structures, was by the early fifteenth century applied to eyebrows and anything having this form.  The sense of "chief, principal" used first in the twelfth century as archangel became extended to so many derogatory uses that by mid-seventeenth century, it acquired a meaning of "roguish, mischievous" although over time that softened, by the nineteenth century generally understood to mean something like "saucy".  The verb arch emerged in the early fourteenth century in the sense of "to form an arch" (which had be implied in the earlier arched) and within a hundred years there was the transitive sense "furnish with an arch".  Arch is a noun, verb & adjective, arched is an adjective, arching is a verb, noun & adjective and archly is an adverb; the noun plural is arches.

The Court of Arches

Church of St Mary-le-Bow (bow the archaic name for arch), London, a Church of England parish church in the City of London.

Churches have existed on the site since 1080, the present building designed by Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723) and built over a decade, finally completed in 1680.  The tower has for centuries been noted for its bells which are the source of the legend of Dick Whittington calling him in 1392 back to London where he would sit as lord mayor.  In London tradition, to be thought a true Cockney, one had to be born within earshot of the bells so the demographics of that race were interrupted for two decades, the damage inflicted in 1941 by the Luftwaffe so severe it would not be until 1961 the bells again rang.

A record from the Court of Arches Act books, first session of Trinity Term, 22 May 1665 (Arches A 4, f.115v).

The Court of Arches is the provincial court for Canterbury.  Having both appellate and original jurisdiction, it is presided over by the Dean of the Arches, who is styled "The Right Honourable and Right Worshipful the Official Principal and Dean of the Arches".  The dean must be a barrister of ten years' High Court standing or the holder or former holder of high judicial office, the appointment made jointly by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York.  Although it has sat in other places, the court’s permanent seat is the Church of St Mary-le-Bow, the arches of which lend the court its name.  Technically, the proper jurisdiction of the court is limited to the thirteen parishes belonging to the archbishop in London but, as the office of Dean is united with that of Principal Official, the dean receives and determines appeals from the sentences of all lesser ecclesiastical courts within the province.  Many original suits are also heard, where lesser courts waive jurisdiction by letters of request.  The original jurisdiction formerly exercised by a separate provincial court, known as the Court of Audience, was long ago abolished.

Lindsay Lohan under a colonnaded arch, Miami, Florida, 2013.

The official principal of the Arches court is now the only ecclesiastical judge empowered to pass a sentence of deprivation against a clerk in holy orders.  The appeals from the decisions of the Arches court were once made directly to the sovereign but are now heard by the judicial committee of the Privy Council except on matters of doctrine, ritual or ceremony, which go to the Court for Ecclesiastical Causes Reserved.  Charmingly, the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction Act 1532, dating from the reign of Henry VIII (1491–1547; King of England 1509-1547) remains one of the statutes empowering the court’s original jurisdiction though since the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857, it no longer hears appeals from the consistory courts of the bishops in all testamentary and matrimonial causes.

The Arc de Triomphe, Paris (left), Donald Trump with model of his proposed arch, the White House, October, 2025 (centre) and a model of the arch, photographed on the president's Oval Office desk (right).  Details about the arch remain sketchy but it's assumed (1) it will be "big" and (2) there will be some gold, somewhere.

As well as big warships and the big Donald J Trump Ballroom already under construction where the White House’s East Wing once stood, Mr Trump is also promising a “big arch”.  A part of the president’s MDCBA (Make D.C. Beautiful Again) project, the structure (nicknamed the “Triumphal Arch” and in the style of the Arc de Triomphe which stands in the centre of the Place Charles de Gaulle (formerly the Place de l’Étoile), the western terminus of the avenue des Champs-Élysées) is scheduled to be completed in time to celebrate the nation’s 250^th anniversary on 4 July 2026.  Presumably, on that day, it will be revealed the official name is something like the “Donald J Trump Sestercentennial Arch” which will appear on the structure in large gold letters.  The arch is said to be “privately funded”, using money left over from what was donated to build the ballroom, a financing mechanism which has attracted some comment from those concerned about the “buying of influence”.

Adolf Hitler's (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) sketch of an arch (1926, left) and Hitler, Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) and others examining Speer's model of the arch, presented 20 April, 1939 upon the occasion of the Führer’s 50^th birthday (right; note the pattern in carpet).  As usual, the Führer reviewed the display of gifts, surveying the statutes, paintings and porcelain (both good and kitsch) with interest or amusement but the one to which he kept returning was the four-metre model of the arch and that evening, several times he would return “with visible emotion” to examine the details.

Naff

Naff (pronounced naf)

(1) Unstylish; lacking taste; unfashionable, usually as “a bit naff”.

(2) As “naff around” or “naff about”, to goof off or fool around (now rare, perhaps obsolete).

(3) To decline a suggestion or request someone to depart (as naff off), once widely used as a journalistic euphemism.

(4) A kind of tufted sea-fowl.

(5) In slang, a range of uses, figurative and euphemistic.

1800s:  Naff has had quite a history.  It’s documented (1) (circa 1845) in slang as a noun meaning "female pudenda" which is though possibly back-slang from “fan”, a shortening of fanny (in the UK sense), circa 1940, meaning "nothing" in the slang of prostitutes' slang and (3) (circa 1959) as a verb, a euphemism for “fuck” in oaths, imprecations, and expletives (as in naff off) and (4) as a (1960s) adjective to convey "vulgar, common, despicable" or just generally “ugly or unattractive” which is said to have been used in 1960s British gay slang for "unlovely" and thence adopted into the jargons of the theatre and the armed forces.  There is one source which suggests it was gay slang for “heterosexual” but it’s undocumented; perhaps among them “unattractive” and “ugly” were synonymous on technical, if not aesthetic grounds.  In one sign of the times, in the early 1980s, the last days before deference finally died, the tabloid press generously reported Princess Anne (b 1950) had told a photographer covering an equestrian event to “naff off” rather than the “fuck off” she, apparently more than once, thought better conveyed her feelings.  He late father would probably have approved though it’s doubtful the Murdoch press will show the same restraint should ever the Duchess of Sussex be so expressive.

The use in the gay community and in entertainment circles is thought possibly from Polari. Brought to England by sailors, Polari is a distinctive English argot, examples of which appear in the record since at least the early seventeenth century.  Historically, it was associated with groups of theatrical and circus performers and in certain gay and lesbian communities and in those communities, some words still survive in their slang.  Although some of its later adoptions were influenced by other languages, most of the vocabulary was derived from Italian, either directly or through the Lingua Franca of Mediterranean ports.  The word was first recorded by researchers in the 1840s and was ultimately from Italian parlare (to speak, talk), source of the English borrowing “parle”.  Polari was also sometimes spelled parlary and pronounced puh-lahr-ee, par-lahr-ee, par·lya·ree, puhl-yahr-ee or pahrl-yahr-ee.

Lycia Naff (b 1962) as the three breasted prostitute (left) in Total Recall (1990), the idea revived on the catwalk, Milan Fashion Week, 2018 (right).

Naff does appear elsewhere but neither (1) the corruption of the Swiss/German surname Neff (perhaps brought to the Middle East by a Crusader or trader) or (2) the Arabic root from a word meaning “one who separates wheat from chaff” are thought to have any link to the use in English.  Naff is the adjective and (the rare) naffness the noun.  There are early (non-vulgar) twentieth century citations of naff as both noun-singular & plural but the form never caught on.  Still, it’s an adaptable word for those attracted: naff, naffness, naffer, naffism, naffology, naffest, naffhead, naffy, naffiest, naffinistic, naffstick, naffily, naffed, & naffing are all there to be used or constructed.  Naff really is quite useful.  None of the vaguely similar words (kitsch, camp, rubbish, unstylish, clichéd, outmoded, inferior, tasteless) convey exactly the same meaning; there’s overlap with many but naff encapsulates nuances of all in a way no other word can.  It possesses a quality best understood by the distinction Susan Sontag (1933–2004) drew in her essay Notes on Camp (Partisan Review, 1964), between “a sensibility” and “an idea”.  Naffness seems a sensibility rather than an idea which lends itself to any precision in definition, a thing which can be sensed when encountered but not defined except in terms either so verbose or abstract as to not be helpful.

Being a sensibility, it’s a thing which can slur across time, some things once fashionable becoming naff and later (allegedly) ironic.

Backdrop

Backdrop (pronounced bak-drop)

(1) In theatre, the rear curtain of a stage setting (in the UK, often known as the back-cloth.

(2) The background of an event; the setting; the background to any scene or situation.

(3) In photography etc, to provide a setting or background for shots.

(4) Figuratively, any background situation.

(5) In gymnastics, a manoeuvre in which a trampolinist jumps in the air, lands on the back with the arms and legs pointed upward, and then springs up to a standing position.

(6) In professional (choreographed entertainment) wrestling, a self explanatory set piece move.

(7) To serve as a backdrop for.

1883: From the London theatrical argot meaning “the painted cloth hung at the back of a stage as part of the scenery”, the construct being the adjective back + the noun drop.  The word was adopted in the US theatre circa 1915.  Back was from the Middle English bak, from the Old English bæc (rear part of the body), from the Proto-West Germanic bak, from the Proto-Germanic baką & bakam, possibly from the primitive Indo-European bhago- (to bend; to curve) and may be compared with the Middle Low German bak (back), from the Old Saxon bak, the West Frisian bekling (chair back), the Old High German bah, and the Swedish and Norwegian bak.  It was cognate with the German Bache (sow (adult female hog)).  Drop was from the Middle English droppe & drope (small quantity of liquid; small or least amount of something; pendant jewel; dripping of a liquid; a shower; nasal flow, catarrh; speck, spot; blemish; disease causing spots on the skin), from the Old English dropa (a drop), from the Proto-West Germanic dropō (drop (of liquid)), from the Proto-Germanic drupô (drop (of liquid)), from the primitive Indo-European drewb- (to crumble, grind).  Figuratively, backdrop is used as a reference to something happening concurrently with whatever is being discussed.  It provides a background context which can be used to explain events or situations and in many cases can be thought of as a parallel narrative such as : “The 1968 US presidential election was conducted with the war in Vietnam as the backdrop.”  The word backdroppery is an irregular formation used in criticism of “political spin”.  Backdrop is a noun & verb, backdropped, backdropt & backdropping are verbs; the noun plural is backdrops.

Stage backdrop for Mean Girls the Musical by Scott Pask Studios, August Wilson Theatre, Broadway, New York, December 2018.

The theatre began as background used live theatre, creating a three-dimensional effect which meant the audience had the impression of the stage having greater depth.  Originally, they were large pieces of material or assembled cardboard, the designs of which interacted with the stage lighting and in larger theatres, for each performance, there may have been several backdrops, each raised or lowered as demanded by scene changes.  In recent years, the development of high definition lighting projection has meant backdrops are often virtualized and the deployment of LEDs (light emitting diodes) has meant extraordinary degrees of realism are now possible.

Lindsay Lohan on the red carpet in front of media walls.

Media walls are a particular type of backdrop which are constructed usually as flat surfaces, their sole purpose almost always being the display of corporate logos.  The dimensions of media walls are dictated by the positioning of the cameras which will record images of those who appear in front of them.  In some circumstances, they can be only a few feet wide and little taller than human height but usually they’re much larger.  Like theatre or photographic backdrops, media wall designers in recent years have embraced electronics as advances have meant striking effects have become possible at a lower price point, an important consideration give that while theatre backdrops might serve for weeks, months or even years, media walls are one-off creations which tend to have a life-span of hours.  Thus, digital screens, LED panels, or projections to showcase dynamic content are now sometimes included in media walls but such designers do have to be cognizant of the purpose; media walls still usually there as a backdrop for filming or photography.

Weddings, parties etc: Static backdrops for hire.

Static backdrops are provided (and often hired) for specific events, typically domestic celebrations such as weddings and birthday parties.  They are thus optimized for photography and tend to be on the small scale which accommodates the camera lens.  They can be as simple as a curtain or a fake window (sometime even with a built-in panorama of rolling hills, oceans etc) or can be as kitsch as one’s imagination can descend to.