Calling something a “guilty pleasure” is the “bless your heart” of media consumption, innit?
It’s December, so that means it’s time for year end lists of wins and loses, and that little gray category of “so aight it was okay”. And along with these arbitrary ratings comes push back against the things you hated to love: your guilty pleasures.
The urge to defend an uncool guilty pleasure film, television show, album, book or whatever is strong and hard to ignore. But going into 2019, I’m here to say screw that. Time to enjoy what you want.
What is a guilty pleasure? Something that wasn’t cool so now you have to feel bad for liking it. Not cool according to whom? Goodness, who knows. The immediacy of social media has made Having A Firm Opinion Right Now an anxiety-inducing tap or click and it’s no secret that there are things out there to sway you towards developing the correct opinion. The gag is, these days having the correct opinion may not even necessarily put you in the majority. The correct opinion is just what the arbitrary figurehead of your social group has deemed… correct.
There’s been a lot of bust ups about movies and film this year, especially over the ability to just enjoy something or not. When things get too tough or too tiring to defend, we through them in the locker of guilty pleasures to shield ourselves from social ridicule. What do we gain from all these e-fights on the virtual playground, anyway? Social capital, yes. But more importantly: validation!
Look, movie tickets are high. Ask anyone that has sat through an anti-pirating commercial what they feel about that. Reviews and takes whether cold or hot are vital so that we as consumers aren’t spending our wages on the chance that we may or may not enjoy something. The thought of just “enjoying” something is getting lost in the mix – overcome by the fear of “what if I don’t? What if I just wasted my money?” That’s honestly more terrifying than any Conjuring spin-off. Reviews can validate our decision to avoid something and sometimes even serve as a pat on the back for enjoying something that an internet stranger said was good. That’s one person in your corner. But when did these arbitrary cheers and jeers start controlling our lives? And what happens when your opinion veers outside the correct circle?
Like everything coming back around this year, this isn’t a particularly new phenomenon. I remember feeling hot shame across my face when I actually liked the new episode of My Show even though the almighty TVGuide told me it was bad. No one was going to hold a microphone to my face and make me explain my decision to the world, after all. I’m just an individual in a grocery store. But I held TVGuide in such high regard that internally I would struggle, I would rationalize. Why? Social conditioning and the desire to fit in would be the most cliché answers. That type of knee-jerk reaction and the need to defend my favorite Frasier episode to myself in the mirror is why we may never completely get rid of the “guilty pleasures” dungeon. But it’s good to make it smaller. Maybe a guilty pleasures chest. A sock drawer?
The usual way to slice through criticism of a guilty pleasure is presentation of context. The time and place that you weren’t there in, the actors that were popular of the day, maybe an insatiable crush you have on a celeb (Viola Davis, by the way) usually squash all logic tenfold. But lately, mountains of context and positioning aren’t enough. Really, maybe we’ve done a little too much caving in already and giving credence to the very idea of a guilty pleasure by trying to explain it away. Suddenly your faves are becoming trash before they even hit the screen. Your nostalgic favorite movies are dissected to dust for an audience they weren’t really meant for. Rather than saving friends from spending hard-earned cash on those high-bleep theater tickets, it feels like we are clamping down on everything. You know what actually stunts diversity and inclusion? Not giving anything a chance. That’s what’s getting lost here: letting people enjoy things without hitting them with the, “oh you like that? Bless your heart.”
Instead of these time-sucking encounters, we need a new counter: a loud and clear I LIKED IT! Leave the internet scuffles for the birds pecking for clout. Because the truth is: guilty pleasures don’t exist, friends. Like Yoda said, it’s do or do not. Enjoy what you enjoy and don’t what you don’t. It’s laughable coming from someone that has written way too many words about Halloween or obscure Italian cinema this year (me, it’s me), but maybe in the new year we need to chill a bit. Keep demanding better and keep bringing attention to the folks who are doing better. The strides made towards more diverse content that doesn’t involve varying shades of straight white women and men have been laudable, but somewhere in the midst we forgot to let people… enjoy things. View through the lens, but it’s also time to sit back and let the people who need to digest this media digest it. After all, it’s just media… right?
Photo: Robert Couse-Baker