Blame it on the flamingos?

After 30 years of assaults on the cultural barricades, kitsch had become high art, and bad taste had become thoroughly acceptable.

An object that marks the crossing of borders works effectively only when the object transgresses boundaries a majority of people believe should exist. And in 2006, art is pretty much whatever you call art. The boundary of bad taste can be hard to find: decades ago, Variety called “Pink Flamingos” “one of the most vile, stupid and repulsive films ever made,” but film critics now hail the Farrelly brothers as auteurs and find “Jackass” merely annoying. And anyway, who actually knows what’s fake anymore?