Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/08/29/guy-turns-precious-moments-int.html
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I’m so happy this person exists in this shitty shitty world. 
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Back in ancient times I worked at a photo lab that had a contract with Enesco, the company that make these little crimes against humanity. We would literally print thousands of photos of these statues from various angles. Yes, I hated seeing their saccharine christian puppy dog eyes stare at me day in and day out. It’s like staring at a Thomas Kincade painting all day.
This guy gets all my thumbs up for the day.
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On the way back from the Potawatomie family reunion, the kiddo and I stopped by Carthage, MO to see the Precious Moments Chapel. It was cute. There is some sadness there, as evidently the creator lost a son at a young age.
IIRC there is a Japanese artist took the 2D art to make 3D sculpts, which I think would count as an early Kawaii influence in US pop culture.
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This is a truly Wonderful Thing. I might have to pick one of these up for my new place.
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“Sea Cow Salchow” and “Dirty Deeds” made me laugh!
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Massive, massive improvements.
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I wonder if the company that makes these tiny turds can stand not to sue him for messing with their copywronged material.
Yet these are way less horrific than actual Precious Moments figurines.
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I had the idea years ago to do a line of spoof figurines in the style of Precious Moments, I think I called them something like Traumatic Moments. For instance, getting walked in on by your Mom while jerking off — which thankfully never happened to me, but frankly I have to imagine is horribly traumatizing. I think they’d be pretty popular, actually.
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This truly warms the cockles of my cold black heart.
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If you like these check out some of my work at https://84rms.onfabrik.com/portfolio/merzkitsch
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“Forgive me Cthullu for I have sinned” needs to go on a t-shirt.
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I wonder if the prominent and overt eyes of the Precious Moments figurines are because consumers of kitsch are substantially less likely than average to realize that when you stare into the Thomas Kincade painting; the Thomas Kincade painting also stares into you; and so need it made explicit?
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I’d actually be interested to know the backstory for that one. The basic ‘smarmy depiction of savage tribals who’ve come to Jesus as they ought’ message is likely uncontroversial among people who would buy such things; but doing a Native America nativity scene seems like it could be (unwittingly or deliberately) stepping into the crossfire between LDS and mainline Christian outfits about the whole ‘Jesus visited his people in the Americas’ issue.
On cultural grounds Mormons and more conservative denominations usually get along just fine; but if there’s anything doctrinal that will make even the types who aren’t Jack Chick level of sectarian-suspicious a bit nervous it’s the parts where Mormonism explicitly places various prophetic and similar happenings in North America, while (shockingly enough, given the time of writing) the gospels more widely accepted as canon are wholly silent on those continents the people who wrote them didn’t know about.
The conservative mainline elements are often sympathetic to the idea that America is some kind of New Jerusalem-thing and that, even if it’s headcanon, 'Murica ought to be a site significant to Christianity; but they generally can’t shake the fact that it’s definitely not canon-canon; while the Mormons explicitly say that it is.
I could well be wringing out subtext where none was intended; but I would be curious if this…work…is actually pretty controversial by the standards of kitsch.
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I first spotted one of these “Native American Nativity Scenes” in a flea market and the image of it stayed with me. Personally, I am neither Christian nor even a little bit Native American so perhaps the mixture of dismay and blackened humor that I felt was misplaced. I greatly appreciate the extra thought that you have given to this unholy bit of kitsch. Yes, some context would be very interesting.
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…making it a bit shittier.
As an ex-catholic raised in the German tradition: that nativity scene is absolutely harmless and in line with current mainstream Christianity over here, the idea being that the message of Jesus Christ and his story is an universal one. Depicting him and his parents as another ethnicity then that of Aramaic is no problem at all, as people are quite aware that showing him as a blonde European baby was also just an artistic representation chosen by white Europeans with limited frames of reference.
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Yeah — something tells me if you took a poll of American Christians, an awful lot of them would say Jesus was white.
