Most people who know me are aware of my passion for nature. I even collect little knickknacks that remind me of the critters that inhabit the green spaces I love. The thing about collections, however, is the dust they attract and the space they occupy. They subvert the feng shui that we're told provides the necessary balance between yin and yang. So why do we collect this gimcrack gold, the curse of a love-hate relationship with things?
Surely that is a question.
Gimcrack (jim crack) objects appear attractive, but in fact they are usually of little value. While two of my pottery birds I inherited from my mother, most of my animal figures are made of natural materials--straw, twigs, feathers, and were not built to last. My three-year-old grandson is proof of that. He enjoys playing with them, gradually decreasing their already short longevity, but when we rearrange them once more in their proper place, they seem no worse for wear. Yet.
But the question remains. What's all this gimcrack palaver about anyway?
This word gimcrack, of Middle English origins, came into use between AD 1325 and 1375, and evolved from ME gibbecrak on through Old French, gibben--to be erratic, and gibber + crak--a bursting sound. Perhaps back in the 14th century, this word assumed the qualities of a cheap bauble crashing to the floor. Nevertheless, the journey of language acquisition and syntax is indeed an interesting one.
But to return to the question of why we are so enamored with useless trifles--there may be more than meets the eye. That which is flimsy or poorly made, a cheap imitation, maybe even a showy one, continues to be deceptively attractive even now in 2020. Advertising is a good example of this, mesmerizing the buyer with the lure of glitz.
Maybe it's the whole plumage strategy--the showy one gets the sale. It certainly works for birds. Why wouldn't wearing fabulous, if not outrageous, attention-getting plumage work for humans, too?
You see, what glitters may not be gold but it looks like gold and for a moment it feels like gold. Its attraction is irresistible--even when the golden gimcrack is just another empty shell.
Psychologist Carl Jung, however, warns us of living in our Id, that childlike part of our personalities that strips away our patience and good judgment, embracing us in the I want what I want, and I want it now stage.
One of my favorite writers Charles Dickens was adept at holding up the proverbial mirror to his readers, not just the English but also the Americans of the 19th Century Industrial Revolution. His villains as well as loads of English folk trying to avoid debtor's prison craved the stuff of golden gimcrack. Not only was image paramount but survival, too, was sealed in everything money could buy--Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, Uriah Heep in David Copperfield, Ralph Nickleby in Nicholas Nickleby, Bill Sykes in Oliver Twist. Their greed for gold, image and power wrecked lives, ultimately their own.
How easy it is to fall for gimcrack, but is a harmless version of it really so bad?
Collecting little animals on a shelf seems innocent enough. Marie Kondo agrees with me. If they bring me joy, says she, I should keep them, and I probably will. But what about my friend's cubic zirconia diamonds and those Jimmy Choo knockoffs she surreptitiously purchased on a back street in NYC? We want to believe that images of quality and expensive good taste can be ours without the price, that somehow even the fake ones have the power to make us seem better than we are.
Or maybe there's a happy middle ground. You can enjoy your gimcrack and still be a person of character and substance with little or no thought to image.
We'll be fine, as long as we avoid the mouse-trap where that delicious cheese (Jarlsberg?) isn't what we thought it was and there's no one to rescue us once we're snared.
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