You just posted that to upset me...

Ok, MC. You know I can't let this one go unchallenged.
This an old idea of mine, which I probably have expressed to you before, but for the good of the world I shall textualize here:

We need art like Thomas Kinkade's.

There. I said it.
Don't get me wrong, I find almost all of it as saccharine and eerie as the next guy, but I think it serves a necessary purpose.
Thomas Kinkade holds up a picture of a world without sin or evil or meanness. A world where a weekend away at a cottage doesn't involve awkward lack of conversation with estranged family members. A world where the countryside isn't dull. A world as it would be seen if we could see the glorious beauty hidden in all things (hidden in the things themselves, or hidden from our marred visions, i am not sure. Probably both).
These days we have plenty of art that shows us the ravages of the world ('Guernica'), the horrors of being human (DeKooning), even the beauty amidst the brokenness of the world (PT Anderson), etc. This art all shows the world how it is. And the best of it hints at how it might be. But I think there is a place for Art that shows how it might have been, how it IS (in a 'weight of glory' revealed sense). So I do pity the soul who only admires Kinkade and no-one else, they are impoverished and living in a false world. They are not human. But, after seeing scores of films lately whose theme is, 'Look how fucked up our world is -but look, sometimes there might be something a little good'. I am thankful for pictures like Kinkade's. (This juxtaposition of film/paintings reveals something about Kinkade's medium, too - in a film you can contrast bad/good in two different scenes, but in painting you have to pick one or the other. Unless you want to mix them, as Mark suggested, but I think this is nothing more than raining on the Kinkade parade - since the bad would obviously overshadow the good (pointing to the frailty of the Acadian/Kinkadian vision). )

So stop being such a hater.

p.s. had a horrible flu for the last week - hence the lack of posting and possible incoherance of this one.