Ministry for Taste and Decency
People getting uglier...
As if people weren't already ugly enough these days, it appears that, with a little inspiration from Margaret Thatcher, they could be about to get a whole lot worse. Iain Dale managed to point out on his blog yesterday that the plethora of Thatcher related documentaries and TV shows about to grace our screens demonstrate that the iron-balled old bag still packs a punch amongst the more tasteless of us (unless it's just the BBC's way of helping the Conservatives win the next election?). However, in an even more shocking and hideous monument to illogic, it has also been suggested that Miss Thatcher is to become a paragon of British style and fashion decency - the kids, its seems, have taken a liking to her horrible 80s hair do and leopard print shoes.
It's disturbing news indeed. Though, there is a glimmer of hope that the hysteria is precisely that. Zoe Williams of The Guardian has trenchantly managed to point out that picking on Thatcher's fashion prowess is a way of commenting on her without the having to refer to her politics, and also that Margaret only looks like the 80s because 'it was the 80s'. Westmonster would like to suggest, though, that the Iron Lady's rebirth in the pantheon of cool has more to do with Kitsch and less to do with the kids.
Kitsch, you see, has always been at the heart of youth culture. It's a way of making a mockery of whatever seems to be apropos to the status quo, imbuing it with a certain irony, or sucking the life out of it. If Thatcher has become a style icon perhaps this can be read as our culture's way of assimilating certain values we associated with her, in order to neutralise them in some way, or make light of them in regards to our current value system.
The times have changed since Thatcher was last in power, and no matter how much David Cameron or anybody else tries to revert to her traditionalist view of society, it probably stands little to no chance of effectively being pulled off. Making use of her style has the effect of making her nothing more than two-dimensional cartoon character - essentially the UK's equivalent of all those Che Guevara t-shirts that people used to wear without knowing what it meant. Her strong image may have rocketed during her time in power but, as the legend took over in the years to follow, she has become as flat as a piece of paper and as empty as the policies that her imitators have attempted to spawn in her name. Another fictional character in an almost unreal world.
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