This shaker set is not necessarily ambiguously gay–more like ambiguously gendered. Its two baseball players (who each look a little like stereotyped angry codgers wearing too much eyeliner), might be either both male or both female or a combination of one male and one female. The shaker on the left wears a pink hat, whichContinue reading “Ambiguously Gendered: Batting for Which Team?”
Category Archives: Ugly
Oppositional Curating
Looking for some ways of thinking about collections of objects of which one takes a less than purely sympathetic view–the one being me and the objects being my salt and pepper shakers–I came across “Racial Kitsch and Black Performance,” an insightful article by Tavia Nyong’o (Yale Journal of Criticism 15.2 [Fall 2002]: 371-3910. The “racialContinue reading “Oppositional Curating”
The Ironic Collector Confronts Himself
Let us consider now this set: I’ve chosen it to discuss here because, all things considered, I think it is absolutely the ugliest set in my collection. It’s the flamboyantly lurid orange colour of the shakers that does it, and also the touches of glittery gold paint here and there. Why would a western-type wagonContinue reading “The Ironic Collector Confronts Himself”
Perry Nodelman 