Thread by @Darren_Mooney

"Bad taste is real taste, of course, and good taste is the residue of someone else’s privilege."

An interesting argument from Chuck Klosterman on criticism. I'm not *entirely* convinced by it, but there is some truth to it.

theatlantic.com/entertainment/…

Most notably, there is value - and passion - in dissenting opinions, and that there's no meaningful distinction in worth between high and low culture; just aesthetics.

I absolutely think my love of, say, "Demolition Man" has precisely as much value as my love of "The Godfather."

I mean, I *hope* this Twitter feed stands as testament to that ideal.

It's as likely to devote as much attention to the work of Shaggy as it is of Krzysztof Kieślowski. To devote as much energy to something like "Annabelle Comes Home" as to "The Favourite."

I also have a lot of time for the idea of critical dissent. I don't read criticism to validate my opinion of a thing.

There are critics with whom I frequently profoundly disagree - Armond White and Richard Brody - who can get me to look at something in a new, interesting way.

More earnestly, I very rarely think that a person is *wrong* for liking what they like. (You know, there are obvious exceptions.)

Indeed, one of the most exciting things in the world is somebody telling me why (or how much) they like a thing, even (especially) if *I* don't.

That said, paradoxically, I think that there is also value in a consensus existing - albeit with an understanding that it is not an absolute.

There are obviously huge caveats to be placed around *who* gets to forge that consensus. Which is the issue with a lot of "high" culture.

Historically, the works we deem of cultural value have been for middle- and upper-class straight white guys by middle- and upper-class straight white guys.

And that's led to a very exclusionary idea of what "worthy" culture works like. And that's not sustainable or laudable.

There are signs that it is getting better.

It's notable how many recent "great movies of the nineties" lists include "Clueless", which was as formative to many young women as "Fight Club" was to young men.

Or even the outpouring of support and acknowledgement of Agnes Varda.

This is a reason why criticism needs to get more diverse and more inclusive.

It's not being results oriented - "we need more critics who trash 'La La Land' and praise 'Ocean's Eight'" is a terrible justification.

It's welcoming a range of perspectives for their own sakes.

((I say this as somebody who thinks "La La Land" is a *lot* better than "Ocean's Eight", and the way in which criticism of "La La Land" ballooned into a weird litmus test was... overblown.

But that doesn't mean those perspectives on "La La Land" weren't worth listening to.))

But I do seriously think consensus has a place in pop culture; even if the composition of that consensus, who makes that consensus, and the attitude towards dissent all need to change.

Cinema is and always has been a mass art form, built on universality and accessibility.

Universality is baked into the concept of cinema.

The idea that you go into a dark room with a bunch of strangers and stare at a screen and see the exact same images; and that you see the exact same images as somebody in a different room on the other side of the world.

I guess this is just pointless optimism in a world where we can't even seem to agree on something as self-evident as the President of the United States being a massive racist.

But in a fractured world, there's something to be said for universality and shared experiences.

Which is why low-level craziness on the internet bothers me so much.

Stuff like describing "The Last Jedi" or "Star Trek: Discovery" as failures, when they are successes by any verifiable measure.

Or saying they *aren't* "Star Wars" or "Star Trek", when they self-evidently are.

Having shared markers of conversation is useful for communication. Particularly in a nominally low-stakes area like art.

It's useful to agree that "Ladybird" is a good movie, or that "The Last Jedi" was a crowd-pleasing success.

It fosters the sense of a shared reality.

You don't have to agree with the consensus. In fact, you can align yourself in opposition to it. I'm not arguing against dissent or any such thing.

But it's useful in conversation to have an agreed geography for the purposes of engagement.

One of the recurring anxieties of the modern age is the degree to which individuals feel increasingly unmoored and disenfranchised.

There's a sense in which there are no longer any accepted norms. In fact, there's not even shared agreement on what constitutes reality.

So, in a long-winded fashion, I guess that's my take on the whole divide between individual/consensus in artistic criticism.

Consensus is useful as a framing device for shared experiences, but the best journey with culture must be one's own.

That is to say that there's value in my arguments that "Cloud Atlas" is a goddamn masterpiece, but there's also value in my awareness that that position puts me in a minority.

And that neither of those two observations invalidates or cancels out the other.

Incidentally, back to the original piece, I think Chuck Klosterman neatly summarised a not-insignificant chunk of my own critical philosophy:

"The value always comes down to how interesting the reading experience is."