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Part 6, Chapter 8
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Time, Happiness, and Eternal Return
Lightness, Weight, and Dichotomies
Sex, Love, and Duality of Body and Soul
Words and Language
Power, Politics, and Inequality
Summary
Analysis
No one knows kitsch better than politicians, the narrator says, as kitsch is present in all political parties and movements. Politicians kissing babies in front of large crowds is the absolute height of kitsch. Whenever one political movement takes complete control, this is “totalitarian kitsch,” and everything that threatens said kitsch is outlawed for life, such as individuality, doubt, and irony.
Kitsch is what makes ideologies such as communism possible. The politician kissing the baby doesn’t really care about the baby—they care about appearing to care about the baby. The idea of “totalitarian kitsch” outlawing anything that threatens it mirrors Sabina’s claim that communism masks beauty.
Themes
