There's No Such Thing as 'Bad Taste'

How does priveledge play at the forefront to our judgement of media?

Defending your love for harmless fun under the guise of “it’s so bad it’s good” is a sign of the repression surrounding an interest in mass-market media. When something is created with the intention of being easy to digest for a wider audience, people often approach it with less appreciation because it is not viewed as intellectual. Highbrow media carries greater cultural status, often blurring the line between abstraction and quality. The pedestal afforded to complexity has stripped more emotionally direct media of its value, leading people to believe that simplicity equates to shallowness.

Complexity within media often requires interpretation and analysis, which can signal intelligence. Having “good taste” is often shaped by education and class, which is why those from wealthier backgrounds tend to have greater exposure to what is considered ‘sophisticated’ media. Wealthier environments provide access to communities where cultural knowledge is valued, contributing to the perception that international and arthouse cinema are overly intellectual. The average person is often more likely to watch an emotionally charged, fast-paced blockbuster than a slow-burning foreign film set in the 1960s.

We often judge people’s taste through a filtered lens, one shaped by our own social class. Those who have grown up without broad access to music or cinema are less likely to be exposed to the nuances of a wider range of media. Access to streaming services and physical media opens the door to exploring individual interests, as there is now a wide variety of choice. For those who did not have that privilege growing up, exposure to less mainstream media may not come until later in life, leading to assumptions that overlook works layered with intricacy. There is no true definition of ‘bad taste’ because taste is inherently subjective. What one person sees as tacky, another may celebrate as camp; what one considers refined, another may see as pretentious. Ultimately, our perception of taste depends on our environment, experiences, and ability to recognise nuance.

The films I would refer to as ‘guilty pleasures’, are all playful and unapologetic. A lot of camp films, such as ‘Valley of the Dolls’ and ‘Death Becomes Her’, have received poor ratings from critics upon their initial release. After years of being labelled as ‘guilty pleasures’, audiences are finally reassessing them through different cultural contexts. If a film is too ahead of its time, jokes often go unnoticed, and societal themes can appear irrelevant, causing a disconnect between the storyline and the audience. When a film is commercially unsuccessful, it takes a devoted group of fans to revive its reputation. This is when they’re referred to as ‘cult classics’.

One notable example of this would be the 1995 erotic flop ‘Showgirls’. The film centres around Nomi, a young woman who hitchhikes to Vegas in pursuit of becoming a showgirl. The story revealed the seedy nature of the Las Vegas entertainment industry with firm intent. There’s no beating around the bush - we are exposed to the brutalities of Nomi’s lifestyle through numerous graphic scenes revolving around sex and violence (often intersecting). Following the release of ‘Showgirls’, audiences were puzzled by the opacity of its satire, revealing itself through wooden dialogue and an aggressively over-the-top performance by Elizabeth Berkley, who played Nomi. This ultimately led to the derailing of her career, as well as a tarnished reputation for her aggressive performance.

The campiness of the film’s writing and elaborate costume design was viewed as a failure of its own subject matter, rather than a stylistic choice. There was intention behind the over-exaggerated performances, which flew over audiences’ heads. The writing is not clever enough for the film to serve as a zeitgeist for the exploitation of adult performers. The themes are served to you in a literal manner, eliminating the romanticisation of an industry bedazzled in rhinestones and glitter. Beyond the glitz and glamour is a story which sells itself authentically as a parody of the highly exaggerated Las Vegas. The film’s depiction of tackiness and excess is weaponised to mirror the world it’s portraying. Whilst some might argue that ‘Showgirls’ does not use satire in an obvious format, its critiques of fame and ambition are made very clear.

Similarly to ‘Showgirls’, John Waters’ 1972 comedy ‘Pink Flamingos’ uses unfiltered explicitness to exhibit shock value and divide audiences in the process. The story follows a lady named Divine, who is referred to by the press as the ‘filthiest person alive’. The protagonist does everything in her power to keep this title, neglecting traditional social cues by embracing grotesquerie. The film smashes taboos and portrays its subjects through a shockingly truthful lens, capturing the raw essence of nihilism through humour. Whilst some might argue that Waters reduces his characters to extremes, there’s a deeply humanising feel to his work which celebrates displays of vulgarity and transgression. ‘Pink Flamingos’ refuses to sanitise its outcasts by pushing beyond the confines of conventional suburbia. When observing the world that Waters has created, it’s easy to be immersed in its chaos. It’s so gross that you just can’t look away.

These carnivalesque stories are often appreciated amongst queer communities, with audiences describing them as ‘camp’, whether it was a deliberate style choice or not. When Susan Sontag wrote her 1964 essay titled ‘Notes on Camp’, this brought the aesthetic sensibility to the mainstream, and is now referred to in conversations surrounding campiness and queer culture. ‘Camp’ is described as a degree of artifice or stylisation. For something to be classed as ‘camp’, it must embrace kitsch and artificiality. Films such as ‘Showgirls’ and ‘Pink Flamingos’ are listed under this label due to their heightened theatrics and reclamation of vulgarity. What is perceived as ‘bad taste’ often consists of a distinct aesthetic, defiant of conventional standards of realism.

Although excess was once deemed as shallow entertainment, it conveys social critiques in a way which seeps beneath surface level. When irony is used, it’s easy to ignore metaphors and view things too literally, hence why kitschy films such as ‘Hedwig and the Angry Inch’ and ‘Kamikaze Girls’ are only popular amongst smaller, more open-minded audiences. Although these films tend to be rooted in cultural contexts, they’re dismissed for a lack of pretentiousness. When a film is politically relevant without losing its whimsy, it becomes too layered for the majority of people to dissect. Because taste is so subjective, it’s often queer fans who are able to appreciate what is shown in excess because it’s flamboyant and unapologetic. It might now be classed as pretentious to enjoy this kind of media because it isn’t spoon-feeding ideas and concepts to its audience, but rather conveying this through provocativeness.

To the prudish eye, it’s difficult to see past the excessive nudity of ‘Showgirls’, or the grotesquerie of ‘Pink Flamingos’. These cult classics are proof that what might be deemed as poor quality actually provide more viewers with an insight into the absurdities of the world than anything Tarantino. ‘Bad taste’ is nothing but a reflection of class, and a distaste towards storytelling which is often aimed towards queer, or primarily feminine audiences.