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October 5, 2007 > Arts & Entertainment > Entertainment is fun but limits artistic taste

Entertainment is fun but limits artistic taste

By Matthew McKee | Thresher Editorial Staff

It is time for my coming out. I’m ready to tell everyone, and it might be surprising. I am a cultural elitist. In fact, I’m a pretty bad one. When you tell me you enjoyed Superbad or listen to Kanye West, I act interested, but inside I am turning up my nose and scoffing, secretly planning on showing you Dr. Strangelove or having you listen to a Mahler symphony as soon as possible.

But I also have another big secret: I often indulge in the stuff I look down on. For example, my music library is an exemplar of diversity. My album of Corigliano sits next to an album of Coldplay, and a collection of Salieri arias isn’t far from the greatest hits of the Smashing Pumpkins.

So after you get over your snickering, I want to ask: How do I justify this?

I’m a weird guy. One minute I’m talking down to popular culture, the next I’m basking in it. The reason is simple: While entertainment is great, there is such thing as taste. Taste differentiates Manet from Madonna, and it filters the myriad existence of easy art, leaving higher pleasure. In the case of my schizophrenic music collection, I often consider what albums will remain on the shelf in a few years. Obviously Brahms and Scarlatti and such will stay, but the rest will hit the trash.

However, it is important to note that popular culture or lower pleasure is not bad. It’s an easy outlet, a quick bypass of the mind and a fire directly under our emotions. We don’t have to think to enjoy it and, quite frankly, we need that kind of entertainment sometimes. It is made to be mass produced and consumed on large scales by the lowest common denominator of society, and I think we all fall into the LCD when we want easy music to listen to, a fun movie to watch or trash fiction to read.

The problem with popular culture is not that people see it as a guilty pleasure. I don’t like to think that we elitists are so bombastic we make Lindsay Lohan fans cower in fear. Popular culture is problematic because consumers never leave it, building their own bubble and never realizing how easily they are being marketed to. When Shrek 3 was released this summer, loyal flocks of audiences flooded to see it, apparently ignorant of the fact that they had seen the same movie two times before.

Despite their obvious gimmicks and formulas, I own movies like A Knight’s Tale and books by Tom Clancy just because they’re fun. They are not treasures. I do not think they’ll last. Popular culture throws hundreds of instantly disappearing flashes into our entertainment cans, and we need taste to capture the worthwhile flashes and savor them.

Taste is very subjective and hard to objectively apply to everything. I mean, we all have our own preferences. However, when we introduce ourselves to all kinds of art and think about it all at great length, we gain the ability to tell the rubies from the rubbish. This is not to say that everyone will agree on what art is better than others, but when widespread consensus from cultivators of taste emerges, high art is formed.

You cannot acquire taste from sticking with one art form or genre. I believe that although I listen to classical music every day and prefer independent movies, I sometimes have to venture out to refine my tastes and discover new things.

The opinions I respect, then, come from critics who really have been around the musical block and have acquired a rare taste from constant and diverse immersion. Allan Kozinn is my favorite example of a tasteful critic who knows his subject. He writes music reviews for the New York Times and has written books and taught courses on all kinds of music, from Bach to Billy Joel. The guy has the expertise, and when he talks the language of music, people listen.

Again, this does not mean that people like Kozinn are right, but they sure do know a lot more than the rest of us. They have taste. It may lead them to different artists, but when it does not, that is the sign of high art — the kind of stuff I leave on my music shelf.

Matthew McKee is a Jones College junior and arts and entertainment editor.

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