Let People Dislike Things

on media discourse, personal taste, and defensiveness.

A Question of Taste

For all its meanings, the word “taste” is, perhaps rightly, connotative of classist, elitist, and more accurately anti-populist sentiment.

It is often used to distinguish between high art and low art, which is most often a separation of class, money, and access that most of us do not have. The upholding of this binary has long been the domain of bloviating intellectuals who want to distinguish themselves from the provincial masses and/or genuinely enlightening artists and thinkers who can appreciate the beauty in high art but are rightfully skeptical of the money, hegemony, and the emulation of wealth in high art worlds.

But personal taste is another matter. Lately, the ~ DiScOuRsE ~ around personal taste has become more contentious than any conversation about high art, low art, the literary canon, or any other academic skirmishes I’ve only read about in cursory Wikipedia articles. (I refuse to read any Harold Bloom. You can’t make me.)

Movies and television were in a precarious period long before the pandemic began. We’re shifting down from the Second Golden Age of Television now and entering a bust period. The problem used to be that there was too much “good content.” Now there’s just too much content. The shutting down of movie theaters, while necessary for public safety, already put a struggling business deeper in the hole. Most of these businesses, particularly the multiplexes, put themselves in this hole with exorbitant prices, but it’s the independent movie theaters I worry about. I could give a shit if the multiplexes survive. I mean, I’d rather they did survive because more culture is good for the culture, but it’s hard to argue that they made much of a case for their survival — their unwillingness to compete with the streaming services that were quickly outmoding them is a curious strategy. But the indie movie theaters, whose programming is often more challenging, more diverse, and available for cheaper prices, were already dying before the age of the tentpole movie. How big is this fucking tent that it needs so many poles?

I love a blockbuster. I love Spielberg. Titanic still knocks me out. I enjoyed the Star Wars movies…