Archives for May 2009

Hey!  Do you dislike some Thing?  Has someone else expressed an appreciation for that Thing?  Well, by all means – the most appropriate thing is to crap all over that Thing!  Otherwise, how else would anyone know you’re too cool for that Thing!  Now go – be scathing!  Extra points for using a really limited data set to express how little you know about that Thing!

What did I mean by that?  Well, I have been thinking lately about how much harder it can be to enthuse than to sneer.  Sneering somehow has a patina of respectability, whereas enthusiasm is often considered a bit twee.  If you scoff, the implication is your tastes are higher and purer than those who love (or even appreciate) the thing you scoff at.  Conversely, if you enthuse, you are shallow.

It takes a certain amount of bravery, I think, to simply say that you like something.  And the word “simply” is there for a reason.  It takes far less bravery to attempt to defuse the potential scorn of your audience by saying, “Well it’s not highbrow, but…” or “I know you may not like it, but…” or any other apologetic phrases that preemptively excuse your egregious cultural lapse.  

This is not to say that I believe that everyone must appreciate everything.  But how hard is it to say, “Oh – yeah.  I tried that and it wasn’t my thing,” or even, “Well, I heard about it and it didn’t sound interesting to me.”  Instead, all too often I hear people expending huge amounts of energy on vast verbal rampages of withering scorn that not only label the thing they are discussing as utter and complete trash, but state or imply that anyone who does like that thing has the taste and discrimination of a toddler.  It is not enough to dislike it — you must make sure that everyone else either dislikes it too, or is shamed for their preference.

Worse yet, if you intimately know the thing that the speaker is ripping to shreds, you may detect that they are only familiar with a tiny piece of the entire work.  The first chapter of the novel is taken as a stand-in for the whole or the one movie is emblematic of the director’s entire body of work.  It makes sense that the person who didn’t appreciate the work didn’t go on to find out whether or not it grows on them or if their single experience was an anomaly — who hasn’t given up on something they’re not enjoying?  But the assumption that everything that flows from that source must be identical to the part the speaker didn’t like is absurd.

When you agree with someone that the thing they decry is pretty shoddy and the speaker has a certain amount of verbal facility and a cutting sense of humor, these rants can admittedly be entertaining.  But it strikes me as an adolescent kind of entertainment: ripping down rather than building up.  And if those in agreement start piling on, doing their own share of the ripping, then the results can be downright adolescent in their ugliness.

Let me be clear and say also that I am not saying that criticism itself is bad.  I don’t believe that at all.  But the particular type of criticism that doesn’t just say, “I don’t like this,” or “I think this was badly done and here is why,” or “This story has been told before and done much better,” but must go on to ravage the entire landscape and salt the earth by saying something akin to, “This is utter crap and anyone who likes it must be intellectually and culturally deficient,” well, that for me is a bridge too far.  What does the speaker mean to achieve by such a statement?  Will the people who are the objects of his scorn suddenly say, “Oh – you are so right.  I do have terrible taste.  Please take me under your wing and show me the right way to think and feel.”  I’m thinking the answer to that one is no.  So what is left for the speaker?  The satisfaction that no stone was left unturned in the pursuit of expressing their loathing?  

I know I’ve done my share of ripping.  You have to be pretty saintly to be immune to the lure of looking clever and sharp, especially before a certain audience.  But henceforth I’m going to put my energies towards either appreciation or constructive criticism, and I will try to make sure that my expressions steer clear of the sort that either say or imply that I believe that the appreciation of something I dislike represents some sort of moral failing.  The scornful may keep their scorn with my compliments.  I like what I like.