Reading Criterion.com’s Trash and Treasure at the Razies, I came across the following quote, which I liked:
People “distinguish themselves by the distinctions they make,” writes sociologist Pierre Bourdieu in Distinction: “between the beautiful and the ugly, the distinguished and the vulgar”—between art and trash. “Art and cultural consumption are predisposed, consciously and deliberately or not, to fulfill a social function of legitimating social differences.” We reveal ourselves through our preferences; like a space telescope photographing faraway light from the beginning of the universe, our esteem for a particular film is a lens that sees backward in time, to the economic class, educational history, and subcultural sensibility in which such preferences are forged. You are what you like—and, crucially, you aren’t what you don’t. To prefer this to that is to align yourself with these people instead of those, an assertion of in-group belonging through a common agreement about what tastes are unpalatable. Per Bourdieu, “all determination is negation; and tastes are perhaps first and foremost distastes, disgust provoked by horror or visceral intolerance.”
As a reaction to the quote, I want to explore some of the following questions in this thread:
- What is taste (art, etc.)?
- What is good taste?
- Is having good taste important?