Entry tags:
Scattered Thoughts on Taste
(Yes, I'm still sick. No, I'm not officially a person again yet. I'll say when.)
We in SF -- the writers, the readers, the fans -- have a funny relationship to the concept of taste. Like other literary establishments, we love the idea of monolithic taste: that some books are Good and others are Bad. Until someone disagrees with us, that is, and then taste is allowed to be relative again.
(D'you ever notice that good reviews are proof that a book is Good! and bad reviews, well that's one person's opinion? We are such funny creatures.)
We also love this idea that Good Taste can be taught: that if I like something and since I am always right because clearly this book or show does so much for me, it is monolithically Good. Anyone who disagrees can be won over by reading just one more book in the series or watching just one more episode. They can be Enlightened. Clearly they didn't give it a fair chance.
This is...I think both extremely self-centered and untrue. And widely, actively perpetuated.
The customer who came into the store tonight and tried to coax me three times to read more Laurell K. Hamilton won't actually be able to make me like vampire sex. Browncoats -- the date rapists of culture, always hearing "yes!" when you say "no thanks" -- have yet to make me care about Firefly. Jeff Vandermeer and the Mundane SF crowd and whatever else movement-of-the-week is out there have likewise yet to convince me that my tastes in reading are subordinate to what they feel tastes should be. You don't change people's minds this way. No, seriously. It never works.
So why the hell do people try so hard? I mean, we work and read and live in a maligned genre. We supposedly know all about other people's Good Taste not being us. Why's there no room for relative taste in our own house?
I suspect it isn't just writers who need to untangle their self-worth from their works. We're all wrapped up in the media we consume in our ways. It hits our buttons, kicks us in the squid, and we overidentify to the point where a rejection of that media is a rejection of us. And then we become obnoxious and intolerable to those around us. Maybe this has to do with the religious urge: people identify equally strongly and violently with their local gods, and you get the obnoxious evangelism there too.
(That last bit actually sounds like the Watts-signal going off. Peter, you in the house?)
Thing is...this isn't true. Not liking your favourite show doesn't mean I spit on your values. It just means I don't share them in exactitude, that's all. If I did, I would be a copy of you, not me. You don't really want to talk to copies of you. You know all about what you have to say.
Yes, I understand that having people agree with you and bolster your judgment in matters of taste is good for the ego. But let me say something:
You don't need it.
No, really, it's okay. You are allowed to like what you like without the rest of us agreeing with you. So'm I. There are books I love that other people mock and y'know? Whatever. I know what I like, and I've got my reasons. So do you.
That's why there are many books for all of us.
So stop manifesto-writing. Stop evangelizing. Don't get huffy and defensive and standoffish if someone disagrees with you. Relative taste is real and it's normal, and we really don't need to constantly try to reshuffle the world into different monoliths of Good and Bad media because that is a binary that doesn't exist. This is a game we play with nothings for the purposes of our own senses of self-worth, and we do not have to.
Stand on your own two feet of personal taste and let your goddamn freak flag fly.
We in SF -- the writers, the readers, the fans -- have a funny relationship to the concept of taste. Like other literary establishments, we love the idea of monolithic taste: that some books are Good and others are Bad. Until someone disagrees with us, that is, and then taste is allowed to be relative again.
(D'you ever notice that good reviews are proof that a book is Good! and bad reviews, well that's one person's opinion? We are such funny creatures.)
We also love this idea that Good Taste can be taught: that if I like something and since I am always right because clearly this book or show does so much for me, it is monolithically Good. Anyone who disagrees can be won over by reading just one more book in the series or watching just one more episode. They can be Enlightened. Clearly they didn't give it a fair chance.
This is...I think both extremely self-centered and untrue. And widely, actively perpetuated.
The customer who came into the store tonight and tried to coax me three times to read more Laurell K. Hamilton won't actually be able to make me like vampire sex. Browncoats -- the date rapists of culture, always hearing "yes!" when you say "no thanks" -- have yet to make me care about Firefly. Jeff Vandermeer and the Mundane SF crowd and whatever else movement-of-the-week is out there have likewise yet to convince me that my tastes in reading are subordinate to what they feel tastes should be. You don't change people's minds this way. No, seriously. It never works.
So why the hell do people try so hard? I mean, we work and read and live in a maligned genre. We supposedly know all about other people's Good Taste not being us. Why's there no room for relative taste in our own house?
I suspect it isn't just writers who need to untangle their self-worth from their works. We're all wrapped up in the media we consume in our ways. It hits our buttons, kicks us in the squid, and we overidentify to the point where a rejection of that media is a rejection of us. And then we become obnoxious and intolerable to those around us. Maybe this has to do with the religious urge: people identify equally strongly and violently with their local gods, and you get the obnoxious evangelism there too.
(That last bit actually sounds like the Watts-signal going off. Peter, you in the house?)
Thing is...this isn't true. Not liking your favourite show doesn't mean I spit on your values. It just means I don't share them in exactitude, that's all. If I did, I would be a copy of you, not me. You don't really want to talk to copies of you. You know all about what you have to say.
Yes, I understand that having people agree with you and bolster your judgment in matters of taste is good for the ego. But let me say something:
You don't need it.
No, really, it's okay. You are allowed to like what you like without the rest of us agreeing with you. So'm I. There are books I love that other people mock and y'know? Whatever. I know what I like, and I've got my reasons. So do you.
That's why there are many books for all of us.
So stop manifesto-writing. Stop evangelizing. Don't get huffy and defensive and standoffish if someone disagrees with you. Relative taste is real and it's normal, and we really don't need to constantly try to reshuffle the world into different monoliths of Good and Bad media because that is a binary that doesn't exist. This is a game we play with nothings for the purposes of our own senses of self-worth, and we do not have to.
Stand on your own two feet of personal taste and let your goddamn freak flag fly.