In taking my leave from dear friend K’s house yesterday, at the end of my overnight visit to Springfield, I found myself having to turn around and knock on the just-closed door, to go back and pick up something I’d forgotten. The act of knocking reminded me of the habit of a character in a TV show I like: knock-knock-knock [Name of Person], knock-knock-knock [Name of Person], knock-knock-knock [Name of Person].
When I mentioned that this show was a guilty pleasure, K seemed surprised…she was nonjudgmental, to be sure, but surprised.
Made me think.
The fact that I’d described this show as a guilty pleasure says something powerful about our ideas about ourselves; the difference between so-called high culture and low. The high places of arts—whether in reading, art, or visual arts–are aspirational. We want them to define us. The low places, not so much.
I have friends who read Fritjof Capra and comic books with equal intellectual comfort. I am wading through the infinite (and sometimes difficult) The Hidden Reality by Brian Greene…yet it is old episodes of, say, Sex and the City that I turn to when I am too tired to think any more.
Now ask which of those pursuits falls under the “guilty pleasures” category.
So here’s the question of the day: Why should any pleasure should be guilty for a writer with aspirations to advanced intelligence? Preference aside (I will not, for example, be making my way to a show in Branson anytime soon), isn’t there food, of sorts, in all those pursuits?
Okay, granted…one may be food for thought. Nourishment for the soul. Granola for the intellect. The other may be the little piece of chocolate we allow ourselves after dinner. We may not be as comfortable with folks whose lives are spent with the “low” versus the “high”…and the fact is that we judge them—probably as much as they judge us in return.
A long-ago roommate once rejected my (then) consuming passion for classical music, saying that it was “elitist and bourgeois”. I stopped playing it around the house because avoidance was easier than fighting. For myself, even today, I know that there are a country full of folks less likely to see my value as a thinking person’s writer because I live in Arkansas, rather than the would when I still lived in NYC.
What I know now is something that probably seems no-brainer obvious: that there is, must be, room in our heads for all sorts of influences. That doesn’t mean that we have to live on a steady diet of sitcoms to force-feed our appetite for laughter. Even when we try to live in a world of higher ideas, the “lower” ones can add colors, notes…even inspiration from most unexpected and unlikely sources.
Just because we love haute cuisine doesn’t mean we can’t also love White Castle. Does it?
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December 10, 2011 at 8:18 am
Cliff Burns
From old “Bugs Bunny” cartoons to the works of Soren Kierkegaard, my tastes pretty much run the gamut. Musically, I’ve got everything from classical to industrial metal. And it all informs and responds to my moods, tastes, cultural milieu, etc.
These days it’s hard not to feel overwhelmed by all of the modes of information out there, the gadgets that keep us plugged in, immersed in music even in the midst of a smelly, crowded bus or subway. Our own private ecosystem. Something as mundane and old-fashioned as books might get lost in all that fancy gear…and that fills me with foreboding. This year I took the “100 Book Challenge” because I thought my reading time had dropped off precipitously, thanks to the internet, research on my writing projects. Finished book #100 this week. A wonderful little Stefan Zweig volume.
Time to slow things down. Unplug, unwind…play some of that Sibelius disk I love, page through the latest ATLANTIC MONTHLY. Maybe go for a walk later. Is that highbrow? Lowbrow? Or just plain healthy?
Thanks for the post, got me thinking this morning…
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December 10, 2011 at 8:26 am
lynnbiederstadt
Cliff…Damn… When the reply is better than the post, I ought to think of hanging it up! Thanks you for that great reply…I’d better check in at your space and discover what I’m missing!
-lynn
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December 10, 2011 at 9:17 am
Lynne Dellone
No pursuit should fail to teach you something a writer needs to know about human nature. Watching the worst possible tripe on television gives insight into the minds of the writers and producers, allowing you a glimpse of their disdain for those for whom they write. Take that and make a character from it….watching a John Waters film allows you to stare through the eyes of a deranged but brilliant satirist.
Reading my replies is an invitation to the crazy cat lady’s world…
Go have fun!
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December 10, 2011 at 10:07 am
Alexander M Zoltai
I just tell people who question some of my low-prow pursuits that I’m a writer and my Research never ends 🙂
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December 11, 2011 at 1:21 am
wolfshades
I like to think that performances we refer to as “guilty pleasures” are not lowbrow at all. I know the show of which you speak, and I approve it highly. (Mostly because it’s one of my favourites too).
In fact, any well-written work like that (and let’s face it – it *is* wonderfully written isn’t it?) becomes high-brow because creative types like ourselves deem it so.
I’m pretty sure I’m not narcissistic with this observation – despite the fact that every day I get down on my hands and knees and, with tears streaming down my face, thank God for whoever created mirrors.
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December 12, 2011 at 9:46 am
lynnbiederstadt
Wolfie!! There you are! I was starting to despair of ever seeing your comments pop up here again. What is YOUR “guiltiest” pleasure (and keep is clean, lad!) 😉
-Lynn
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December 12, 2011 at 9:59 am
wolfshades
I have a lot of pleasures, but seem to have misplaced my “guilt” gene.
Big Bang Theory of course, as discussed. And “How I Met Your Mother” too – both of which are well-written (plus I can’t get over the irony of Neil Patrick Harris playing the ultimate hetero uh, man about town). I think that sometimes writing comedy must be a lot harder than writing drama – precisely because folks’ tastes are so different.
On the non-entertainment front, Wolfblass Chardonnay is a vice I accommodate on weekends. That, plus a healthy dose of music (lately Gomez or the Black keys), seems to invoke the fickle muse.
But I suppose if it was necessary to nail down one – it would have to be the novel _Jitterbug Perfume_. It’s a joyous and completely irreverent romp through the fields of Pan, immortality, sex and beets. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve read this thing, as well as the number of copies I’ve purchased and “loaned” out to friends and colleagues, never to see them ever return. A faulty literary boomerang if ever one existed.
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December 11, 2011 at 6:51 pm
WildBill
Eclectic is good. Staying with just one level of anything is neither good for the soul or you imagination. Whatever pleases you or me, as long as it harms no one or anything else, should be just fine. As they say different strokes for different folks but whose to say that we can’t find something in trying different than normal experiences?
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December 12, 2011 at 9:45 am
lynnbiederstadt
Bill, I think you’re right. I’d hate to eat the same thing every day…or think it, or be it!
I love when you come to visit.
-Lynn
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