In other words, the contact between two cultures may lead not only to direct contamination but also to contamination by means of an "intermediary", such as the (kitsch) dislocation of mentalities, aesthetic taste and dress style that has taken place in the rural area over the last decades due to the intervention of the "suburban culture" of the slum. It is the latter that will concern us in the following. The agents of this intermediary culture generally come from the "copy" culture within which they are as looked up to, if not more so, as the actual carriers of the "higher" culture. But the kitsch inter-face, i.e. the deconstructing agent, gradually becomes autonomous. The Gypsy houses bear no more resemblance to the House of the People, but are closer to the Chinese pagodas or, represent, at its best, local adaptations of French neoclassic architecture, inspired from the catalogues of the time, built with quality materials and ? what do you know! - designed in almost humble fidelity, for the sake of a successful pastiche. In his surrealist Hermes Land, at Slobozia, Mr. Ilie Alexandru copies Southfork Ranch, a medieval castle and the Eiffel Tour. The music of the slum is no longer a degraded form of autochthonous folklore, but a variant of Oriental song - Yemenite or Bengali, for instance.

Actually, we should make it clear that the whole architecture of the ?civic center? of Bucharest is a ?ruse? by means of which the kitsch slum managed to make its way into the heart of the center. It is not a new process. Already in his book of 1947 (On An Aesthetics of Reconstruction) G.M.Cantacuzino was already mentioning this characteristic of Bucharest?s urban texture. By destroying both the historical centers (the urban culture) and the villages (the folk culture), the slum forwarded a unique, alternative reality which drew upon neither of the cultural forms it had undermined. The way the House of the People appears as a huge, unreal scale model relative to the surrounding urban network is perfectly comparable ? proportions preserved - with the discrepancy between the ?blocks for commuters? built in the center of the villages or the one inherent in the ?agro-industrial? towns of the ?80. The signs of what was to come were already visible in the first ?houses of the agronomist? or the first attempts at rural systematization that were undertaken (as few still know today) in the ?70s. In fact, the very ?concept? of a civic center was first tested in the ?county residence cities? after 1968.

The peri-urban vernacular is parasite upon prestigious models and overtaxes what it takes as ?essential? in that type of architecture, be it lay or sacred. For instance, what is left of eclecticism is what seems, at a first and superficial sight, mere random play. The gothic inspires the neo-gothic of the last century only in terms of ?mystery?, giving birth to somber, pointed-angled houses or cottages which would make a truly ridiculous sight without the ivy or pelargonia at the windows; moreover, the neo-gothic, like any parvenu, is ?more Catholic than the Pope?, i.e. excessive. Many medieval cathedrals had their spire attached only in the nineteenth century, since, as Viollet Le Duc, author of an ?ideal? gothic cathedral, maintained, the spire had to be there. The houses of the Bucharest slum of the last century, where tenants changed ? as we learn from Caragiale ? on St. Dumitru?s Day, are more ?eclectic? than the ?originals?. Built with stucco and bad plaster, the slum of Bucharest at the end of the previous century offered a carnivalesque reflection of the French style fashionable in the center.