"a bit like watching someone lecture you about the virtues of organic produce while you're calculating whether you can afford groceries this week." WOW... great line!
The Square sounds really interesting (loved Force Majeure, but Triangle of Sadness was just okay). I didn't know that's what that movie was about. Thanks for the rec!
I also have zero trust in The Atlantic lecturing anyone about taste. If I had to choose between a world of inane IG reels or The Atlantic's cultural autocracy, I'd lean towards inane IG reels haha.
Great article. I've been noticing this trend lately where people want a return to gatekeeping and curation... but they never ask themselves, "who gets to do the curating?"
Why can't each individual decide for themselves what they want to watch, listen to, or read?
It reminds me of when I was a kid in the 1990s, listening to heavy metal and punk. People told me that it was - white trash music, garbage. That it wasn't real music... Then once bands like Metallica, Nirvana, and Rancid had hit songs, those same people wanted to borrow my CDs.
Once the music critics and "tastemakers" gave it their approval, and the music became popular, it was now ok for a large portion of the population to listen to it.
I'm sure the same thing has happened countless times, and will continue.
Love this article! So much to unpack but I would just like to share two thoughts:
1) From trial-and-error + learning from wiser people + my own research, we need to instantly be wary when something claims to "democratize" access to something or make it easier for those who couldn't before to get past gatekeepers (Substack falls into this category, even though I use it). In the beginning, getting famous on YouTube required simple equipment; today, getting famous on YouTube requires a similar investment as a production company creating a program. I'm sure there will come a time, if not already, where succeeding on Substack will require a team of editors, writers, designers and marketers to get noticed. The creator economy is as asymmetrical as financial markets or, you know, every other creative industry. That's why when Sam Altman or every other AI company promises that AI will make it easy for anyone to become a filmmaker or writer at the press of a button, I laugh. Because the law of creative industries- which is that creative industries are asymmetrical where only 20% or 1% will take all the earnings and leave the rest fighting for scraps- will always triumph. It happens in the book industry (the collective earnings of a handful of authors will be more than the combined earnings of the rest on a bestseller list), it happens in the film industry (a handful of studios will make more money than the other studios combined).
Okay, that was a whole tangent, apologies!
2) The other one is about cultivating taste and following rabbit holes. From past experience, one of the best ways I've discovered films I wouldn't have found on my own is to watch what my favourite filmmakers love. It was Martin Scorsese's love of Powell and Pressburger that led me to THE RED SHOES and their other films; it was Bong-Joon Ho's love of THE HOUSEMAID that led to that 1960 Korean film; and it was Quentin Tarantino's inspiration for KILL BILL that led me to LADY SNOWBLOOD. If anyone wants to refine their tastes, a good formula is to read and watch what inspires your heroes.
Oh man, I could go in so many directions here, but I want to expand on an exchange that Inigo and I had in the comments section of his piece (https://www.yoursinigo.com/p/aguesia), regarding the idea that we have a lot to gain from substituting "taste" with “digestion." That is, if we — newly sober to the truth of “taste” by way of your essay and others like it — begin quantifying our culture with the question of what we can absorb from a piece of art and subsequently share and create from that experience (hence "digestion"), as opposed to whether or not the art itself is “good,” we can take power away from elite tastemaking institutions.
“Taste,” as it functions right now, lives and dies by prescriptive opinion, which isn’t disprovable, and so is subject to be exploited by those who can seize dominion over it, which will of course be those with the money and time needed to foster that proximity to the art. The key then, I think, is to move away from the question of “what is good” (which is institutionally influenced, and irrevocably so), and move towards something like “What falsifiable functions can I identify within this art, and what conversations can I start with them?” That way, a film’s value isn’t predicated on what the guy with the monocle likes, but on the amount of culture that results from it by way of the people.
For instance, I will, at some point, be writing about the Borderlands movie, and how it does something genuinely fascinating with respect to the fact that it's a video game adaptation. No subjecting the film to gradation, but instead using something in the film to democratize cultural engagement with something much more tangible than an opinion about whether Borderlands is good or not (ftr I think the film is dogwater, but my prescriptive opinion shouldn't be relevant to anyone outside of myself).
But, maybe that tangible thing I say about Borderlands is the only piece of culture that well and truly results from it, and so the film will sputter out of the zeitgeist in accordance with that lack of texture that people can identify and interact with (which is precisely what it did). Compare that to something like Sinners, which is being further analyzed and unpacked months after its theatrical release because, love it or hate it, it's a demonstrably rich text.
So, not only would this pivot from taste to digestion ensure that culture continually gets created out of art that literally, observably deserves to have culture made out of it as opposed to the art that simply benefits the “correct” validation erogenies (including those who simply convince themselves they like said art so as to carve a path to the performative status offered by those erogenies), but also equip us all with more tools to read and understand art in a way that communally expands our cognitive faculties and social/cultural engagement.
And I’m gonna cut myself off here before the size of this comment cannibalizes the remaining bandwidth of this tab, haha. Thank you as always, Sophie, for this voice of yours that you so robustly utilize time and time again.
This is IT!!! You've articulated the tension between what defines taste and what *allows* for the definition of taste (money) so beautifully. Your thesis here feels adjacent to C.S. Lewis's quote about craftspeople vs. the inner ring --
"This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know. It will not shape that professional policy or work up that professional influence which fights for the profession as a whole against the public: nor will it lead to those periodic scandals and crises which the Inner Ring produces. But it will do those things which that profession exists to do, and will, in the long run, be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain."
I'm bookmarking this essay to save for future ref. so good. ty!!
Oh damn, yes! That Lewis quote is great - I hadn't made that connection but you're absolutely right. The craftspeople actually making the work versus the Inner Ring deciding what counts as valuable. It's like how the most interesting film criticism often comes from people working with zero institutional backing while the "Important People" are busy networking at Cannes parties they can afford to attend. The real taste-makers versus the official taste-makers, basically.
This is why I get so fired up about this whole "good taste will save us" discourse - it's usually the Inner Ring talking, not the craftspeople. Thanks for that connection, genuinely. Lewis knew what was up.
Can't believe I'm dropping a quote from Hanns Johst, a Nazi sympathizer, but it's one we've all heard and useful here in this context: "When I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun". I promise you, had I overheard that very conversation in a bookstore, that is exactly what I'd have been thinking. Mubi & Netflix, apples and oranges. MUBI is excellent, and Netflix still has a place, for the time being. On Netflix right now I'd rec "The Eternaut" From Argentina. A science fiction series with deep political overtones and definitely worth one's time.
I loved your final beats about curiosity-- I think, in a world of endless information and cheap "answers", actual curiosity is an emerging divide, amplified by the willingness to follow that curiosity when it is not neatly served up.
Great stuff as always - your writing is never less than eye-opening, enriching or inspiring.
I was particularly caught by the section on Bourdieu and cultural capital, having kind of had experience of both sides of that divide. My brother had a great creative non fiction piece published about this - we grew up in a small town with not a lot of money and no access to things of 'taste', but we were the first generation of our family to go to university. Once we got there - into the institution you could say - we began to acquire some cultural capital through various means. Proximity to those who grew up with it, the education you need, and most crucially as you mention, time.
Even so, once you come out of that bubble the barriers reassert themselves and you have to work hard to do the things you mention at the end to not just cultivate taste but nurture it and keep it alive.
Anyway enough of my waffle. Thanks for a great read.
James, this is exactly why I write about this stuff! Your experience captures that whole Bourdieu thing so perfectly - how cultural capital isn't just about having it or not having it, but about those moments of transition and the ongoing work it takes to maintain it once you've "crossed over."
I'd love to read your brother's piece if it's published somewhere! And honestly, your "waffle" isn't waffle at all - these lived experiences are what make this conversation real rather than just theoretical.
Thank you so much for sharing that, and for reading. It means a lot to me when these pieces actually land with people who've navigated these spaces themselves.
It’s not available online unfortunately, just in hard copy! If you’re interested it’s in this anthology: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Working-Class-Anthology-Language/dp/1916377149 (Amazon seems to be the only place it’s available to order, was a small print run from an independent press) - I also have a CNF piece in there around similar themes
"a bit like watching someone lecture you about the virtues of organic produce while you're calculating whether you can afford groceries this week." WOW... great line!
Appreciate you!
The Square sounds really interesting (loved Force Majeure, but Triangle of Sadness was just okay). I didn't know that's what that movie was about. Thanks for the rec!
I also have zero trust in The Atlantic lecturing anyone about taste. If I had to choose between a world of inane IG reels or The Atlantic's cultural autocracy, I'd lean towards inane IG reels haha.
The Square is more subversive than Triangle of Sadness so hoping you'll like it as much as Force Majeure! Haha - and yes I validate that.
Great article. I've been noticing this trend lately where people want a return to gatekeeping and curation... but they never ask themselves, "who gets to do the curating?"
Why can't each individual decide for themselves what they want to watch, listen to, or read?
It reminds me of when I was a kid in the 1990s, listening to heavy metal and punk. People told me that it was - white trash music, garbage. That it wasn't real music... Then once bands like Metallica, Nirvana, and Rancid had hit songs, those same people wanted to borrow my CDs.
Once the music critics and "tastemakers" gave it their approval, and the music became popular, it was now ok for a large portion of the population to listen to it.
I'm sure the same thing has happened countless times, and will continue.
That's a great perspective and thank you for sharing your experience. Exactly!!
Love this article! So much to unpack but I would just like to share two thoughts:
1) From trial-and-error + learning from wiser people + my own research, we need to instantly be wary when something claims to "democratize" access to something or make it easier for those who couldn't before to get past gatekeepers (Substack falls into this category, even though I use it). In the beginning, getting famous on YouTube required simple equipment; today, getting famous on YouTube requires a similar investment as a production company creating a program. I'm sure there will come a time, if not already, where succeeding on Substack will require a team of editors, writers, designers and marketers to get noticed. The creator economy is as asymmetrical as financial markets or, you know, every other creative industry. That's why when Sam Altman or every other AI company promises that AI will make it easy for anyone to become a filmmaker or writer at the press of a button, I laugh. Because the law of creative industries- which is that creative industries are asymmetrical where only 20% or 1% will take all the earnings and leave the rest fighting for scraps- will always triumph. It happens in the book industry (the collective earnings of a handful of authors will be more than the combined earnings of the rest on a bestseller list), it happens in the film industry (a handful of studios will make more money than the other studios combined).
Okay, that was a whole tangent, apologies!
2) The other one is about cultivating taste and following rabbit holes. From past experience, one of the best ways I've discovered films I wouldn't have found on my own is to watch what my favourite filmmakers love. It was Martin Scorsese's love of Powell and Pressburger that led me to THE RED SHOES and their other films; it was Bong-Joon Ho's love of THE HOUSEMAID that led to that 1960 Korean film; and it was Quentin Tarantino's inspiration for KILL BILL that led me to LADY SNOWBLOOD. If anyone wants to refine their tastes, a good formula is to read and watch what inspires your heroes.
Yes yes yes yes, love this! Don't ever stop writing "tangents" please. Love these layered additions to the piece.
Clearly, I was destined to be the Footnotes Guy. But also, really loving these articles. I learn something new all the time.
Oh man, I could go in so many directions here, but I want to expand on an exchange that Inigo and I had in the comments section of his piece (https://www.yoursinigo.com/p/aguesia), regarding the idea that we have a lot to gain from substituting "taste" with “digestion." That is, if we — newly sober to the truth of “taste” by way of your essay and others like it — begin quantifying our culture with the question of what we can absorb from a piece of art and subsequently share and create from that experience (hence "digestion"), as opposed to whether or not the art itself is “good,” we can take power away from elite tastemaking institutions.
“Taste,” as it functions right now, lives and dies by prescriptive opinion, which isn’t disprovable, and so is subject to be exploited by those who can seize dominion over it, which will of course be those with the money and time needed to foster that proximity to the art. The key then, I think, is to move away from the question of “what is good” (which is institutionally influenced, and irrevocably so), and move towards something like “What falsifiable functions can I identify within this art, and what conversations can I start with them?” That way, a film’s value isn’t predicated on what the guy with the monocle likes, but on the amount of culture that results from it by way of the people.
For instance, I will, at some point, be writing about the Borderlands movie, and how it does something genuinely fascinating with respect to the fact that it's a video game adaptation. No subjecting the film to gradation, but instead using something in the film to democratize cultural engagement with something much more tangible than an opinion about whether Borderlands is good or not (ftr I think the film is dogwater, but my prescriptive opinion shouldn't be relevant to anyone outside of myself).
But, maybe that tangible thing I say about Borderlands is the only piece of culture that well and truly results from it, and so the film will sputter out of the zeitgeist in accordance with that lack of texture that people can identify and interact with (which is precisely what it did). Compare that to something like Sinners, which is being further analyzed and unpacked months after its theatrical release because, love it or hate it, it's a demonstrably rich text.
So, not only would this pivot from taste to digestion ensure that culture continually gets created out of art that literally, observably deserves to have culture made out of it as opposed to the art that simply benefits the “correct” validation erogenies (including those who simply convince themselves they like said art so as to carve a path to the performative status offered by those erogenies), but also equip us all with more tools to read and understand art in a way that communally expands our cognitive faculties and social/cultural engagement.
And I’m gonna cut myself off here before the size of this comment cannibalizes the remaining bandwidth of this tab, haha. Thank you as always, Sophie, for this voice of yours that you so robustly utilize time and time again.
This is IT!!! You've articulated the tension between what defines taste and what *allows* for the definition of taste (money) so beautifully. Your thesis here feels adjacent to C.S. Lewis's quote about craftspeople vs. the inner ring --
"This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know. It will not shape that professional policy or work up that professional influence which fights for the profession as a whole against the public: nor will it lead to those periodic scandals and crises which the Inner Ring produces. But it will do those things which that profession exists to do, and will, in the long run, be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain."
I'm bookmarking this essay to save for future ref. so good. ty!!
Oh damn, yes! That Lewis quote is great - I hadn't made that connection but you're absolutely right. The craftspeople actually making the work versus the Inner Ring deciding what counts as valuable. It's like how the most interesting film criticism often comes from people working with zero institutional backing while the "Important People" are busy networking at Cannes parties they can afford to attend. The real taste-makers versus the official taste-makers, basically.
This is why I get so fired up about this whole "good taste will save us" discourse - it's usually the Inner Ring talking, not the craftspeople. Thanks for that connection, genuinely. Lewis knew what was up.
Yes yes! Yet another version of Carlin's 'it's a big club, and you ain't it!'
Can't believe I'm dropping a quote from Hanns Johst, a Nazi sympathizer, but it's one we've all heard and useful here in this context: "When I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun". I promise you, had I overheard that very conversation in a bookstore, that is exactly what I'd have been thinking. Mubi & Netflix, apples and oranges. MUBI is excellent, and Netflix still has a place, for the time being. On Netflix right now I'd rec "The Eternaut" From Argentina. A science fiction series with deep political overtones and definitely worth one's time.
I loved your final beats about curiosity-- I think, in a world of endless information and cheap "answers", actual curiosity is an emerging divide, amplified by the willingness to follow that curiosity when it is not neatly served up.
Great stuff as always - your writing is never less than eye-opening, enriching or inspiring.
I was particularly caught by the section on Bourdieu and cultural capital, having kind of had experience of both sides of that divide. My brother had a great creative non fiction piece published about this - we grew up in a small town with not a lot of money and no access to things of 'taste', but we were the first generation of our family to go to university. Once we got there - into the institution you could say - we began to acquire some cultural capital through various means. Proximity to those who grew up with it, the education you need, and most crucially as you mention, time.
Even so, once you come out of that bubble the barriers reassert themselves and you have to work hard to do the things you mention at the end to not just cultivate taste but nurture it and keep it alive.
Anyway enough of my waffle. Thanks for a great read.
James, this is exactly why I write about this stuff! Your experience captures that whole Bourdieu thing so perfectly - how cultural capital isn't just about having it or not having it, but about those moments of transition and the ongoing work it takes to maintain it once you've "crossed over."
I'd love to read your brother's piece if it's published somewhere! And honestly, your "waffle" isn't waffle at all - these lived experiences are what make this conversation real rather than just theoretical.
Thank you so much for sharing that, and for reading. It means a lot to me when these pieces actually land with people who've navigated these spaces themselves.
It’s not available online unfortunately, just in hard copy! If you’re interested it’s in this anthology: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Working-Class-Anthology-Language/dp/1916377149 (Amazon seems to be the only place it’s available to order, was a small print run from an independent press) - I also have a CNF piece in there around similar themes