Much ink has been spilt over William P. Young’s The Shack but little has been said about his use of kitsch. While it might be easy for cultured despisers to bash kitsch, object-relations theory derived from Melanie Klein suggests that the propensity of kitsch to split good from bad has its roots in (undeveloped) infancy. Further commentary on both kitsch in Kinkade’s work and the grotesque in the Chapman Brothers’ then reveals similar (undeveloped) common ground. Therefore, given the locus of object-relations theory within counseling, a more constructive response to kitsch is sought than its bashing. (It is taken as self-evident that bashing traces of infancy is not conducive to this locus.) But what is also required is an approach to the arts that integrates both good and bad, kitsch and grotesque. This, Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find serves to illustrate. Whereas O’Connor attempts to “repeat” the incarnation, Young is in danger of supplanting the incarnation with a shack. Young’s (good) God of the transfigured shack is split off from the (bad) “un-real” wilderness outside, whereas O’Connor employs indirect communication to pressure the reader towards encountering God in that wilderness. In contrast, The Shack lends itself more readily to direct communication, which might explain why so much debate has concerned its message rather than its style. So perhaps The Shack should be filed under “Christian Living”, and subsequently read as part of a wider literary diet. How might this form part of a more constructive approach to kitsch?
The Institute for Cultural Engagement, an official program of Multnomah University and Biblical Seminary