Lonely Planet™ · Thorn Tree Forum · 2020

Post-mortem kitsch

Country forums / Pacific Islands & Papua New Guinea

Any suggestions on how should we explain to our Tongan hosts page 29 of the LP Tonga guidebook the description of the lovingly tended cemeteries as "the ultimate examples of post mortem kitsch?"

You don't
You just accept the fact that the person who wrote this is a pretentious ass.

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Tongan cementaries
People who have no sense for the peculiarities of cultures different than their own one should not write guide books on that cultures (or not at all).What I like on LPs is that you can often find statements with some irony, but this one is tasteless. For me, what I found on the cementaries on Tonga, it was art. When you look at graveyards here in Europe, especially engravings on tomnstones are kitschy as well.

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