Is Taste Really Just Status Seeking?

A while ago Scott Alexander published a follow up piece to his review of Tom Wolfe’s From Bauhaus to Our House in which Scott further discussed taste and what it is. (He has written about this subject before, too.) I haven’t been able to put either of these two posts out of my mind.

In the most recent post, he proposes a number of different analogies for what taste could be, centred on the idea of status seeking (which is a key component of Tom Wolfe’s book). He concludes, basically, that he thinks that the best analogy for taste is “Taste Is Like A Priesthood, But With A Fig Leaf Of Semi-Fake Justifications.” That requires a lot of explanation and I suggest reading the whole piece to see what he’s talking about. But as I understand it, Scott analogizes taste as a way for people to show that they are different from others and among the elect, and they justify their in-group-ness through justifications, which do not hold up to scrutiny.

When I read something like this I feel like I’m reading the thought process of a completely different being, someone who thinks totally differently from me. (This is why I read someone like Scott Alexander. He is also an extremely valuable resource on information about mental health and medication.) Scott is a Baseyian and what I might call “Rationalist-adjacent,” meaning he is adjacent to the online Rationalist community (if he isn’t actually a member.)

Anyway, reading something like this piece on taste, I can’t help but think “This person is a quant.” (I feel this way a lot of the time when I read Rationalist and Rationalist-adjacent writing, particularly about run-of-the-mill human desires and wants that are not explicitly “rational.” It feels like there is a group of people out there who just think more logically than the average person and these people can be flat out mystified by things that are totally normal to the rest of us. Beyond labelling them “Bayesians,” “Rationalists” or “quants” I’m not sure what to call them.)

To me, it is just flat out obvious - not even worth defending - that there are better things and worse things in the world, especially when it comes to stuff created by and for human consumption. And it is just as obvious that human beings will prefer better things to worse things.

Now whether or not something is “better” or “worse” is very subjective and, in part-context dependent, but this also just seems obvious to me. (If you grow up in a society that teaches you, from birth, that something is good, most people will think it is good whether or not anyone can objectively prove it is good.) I understand, though, that the context-dependent nature of better and worse, its relativeness, is not obvious to many people.

But the main reason I wanted to write about taste, though, and why I couldn’t stop thinking about Scott’s recent writings on the subject, is that I am a massive snob. Though I am less of a snob than I was in my 20s and 30s, I am still, mostly, a massive snob. If my snobbishness is just status seeking and that’s all, that’s pretty devastating for me. It makes a huge portion of my life, the part I’ve devoted to cultivation of taste, kind of worthless. And I really don’t feel that way, no matter what people write on the internet.

(If you want to know the full story of why I am a massive snob, I’ve included it at the bottom. I talk about myself too much in this already.)

The Avoidance of Cliche

I have been watching movies since before I can remember and listening to music for just as long. I cannot tell you the exact dates that I became a proper movie snob or music snob (though I will try to give some explanation at the bottom) but, at some point, I recognized that I was a snob.

One main reason I think I became a snob in terms of my appreciation of movies and music was my attempt to avoid artistic cliches. And I believe this happened, for me, with movies first, then with music later.

At some point in my teens I had watched an awful lot of adult films for someone my age, mostly Westerns by the way, and I had become kind of tired of film cliches. Whether or not I had seen enough films in all genres, I began to detect cliches in so many of the movies I watched, and this got worse the older I got. So by the time I got to my early 20s, if not my late teens, I was actively pursuing, watching and then celebrating films that avoided or played with or commented on film conventions. I would rave about these films to anyone who would listen but I would also overlook a lot of other problems. (For example, if a film messed with a convention in a way I loved but featured weak acting, I would ignore the weak acting and pretend it wasn’t a problem.) I was so bored of films following the same plots, or being shot the same way, or featuring dialogue that sounded stale to me, I really only saw value in novelty. Of course this novelty was for me personally, and not necessarily for others. (So if I saw a film from another culture that would have been extremely cliched within that culture, I wouldn’t have noticed.) But it was my singular obsession.

I have seen 5000+ movies and TV shows in my life, in numerous genres, from the birth of cinema to the present, and from every continent. (Off-hand, I couldn’t tell you how many different languages I’ve watched films in, but it’s over 20.) I know film cliches about as well as anyone I know. I hate many of them much less than I used to, and I acknowledge the importance of conventions in telling effective stories much of the time, if not most of the time. But I still prize a film that surprises (in a believable way). And I still seek out films (and TV shows) that will give me a fresh take on something I’m familiar with, that will force me out of my comfort zone, that will surprise and delight me. (I do also seek films and shows of a particular type, that fit my particular aesthetic preferences that I have developed over the decades. But I believe this has driven less of my film consumption than the avoidance of cliche.)

And that same thing happened to me, slightly later, with music. I got very tired of what I was subjected to on the radio and from some of my friends, and I began deep dives into more esoteric “popular” music (most of it isn’t very popular), into “classical” music (i.e. Western high art music) and into jazz. I have heard at least 3,500 albums or works, and that doesn’t include individual “classical” pieces packaged into an album. (Some “classical” albums are one work - i.e. an opera - but some will contain many more pieces, such as an album that is three sonatas, or an album that is a symphony plus some other selections. So it’s possible 3,500 is low.) I have listened to music from the Medieval period (not usually on period instruments) all the way up the present day, though I know the period of 1955-1995 best.

As with film, I recognize music cliches when I hear them. For genres I know well - mostly rock genres - I know when the convention emerged because I’ve listened to the artist or band that birthed the convention. Because I’ve listened to so much music, I have a hard time listening to a new band or artist that is recycling something I am very familiar with. Though, as with film, I’m much more accepting of the use of these conventions now than when I was younger. I do recognize that some forms work for more people more of the time than others, and I have more of a appreciation for that skill than I used to.

I must say that is extremely annoying to read a review, or listen to one, in which the reviewer is completely oblivious to the origin of what they are celebrating. I used to read the music reviews in Canada’s Exclaim! for years and they would often drive me insane because the writer would be talking about this band or artist as being fresh, when really they were reviving a genre from 15-20 years ago.

I’ve spent so much of my life consuming culture trying to avoid cliches that I have necessarily cultivated certain tastes. I have moderated on some of these tastes as I have aged, but I still prefer “weirder” things to more conventional things when it comes to film and music, simply because I have pursued (possibly perceived) originality more than convention.

History is Important to Me

I have always been interested in history. As a child I mostly read books about war, as many young boys do. This lead to a love of history throughout my life, not just military and political history, but history. I will read a book or watch a documentary about the history of basically anything.

This love of history combined with the avoidance of cliche to feed my interest in the histories of the arts I love. I know where many movie and music cliches come from because I have watched films from the 19th century through to the present and I have listened to music written as far back as 900 years ago and as recent as 2024, and plenty of stuff in between. And I’ve read books about film and music throughout their histories.

So it’s not just the avoidance of cliche that has driven my knowledge of artistic convention but also just a keen interest in the history of these media.

Aesthetic Bliss Exists

Another reason I consume art and want to avoid cliches within art is because of the experience of aesthetic bliss, a feeling I believe exists, at least for me.

Most of the transcendent experiences I have had in my life have come consuming some kind of art (or food, which can be art), or traveling. I can think of two experiences of losing myself in a moment off the top of my head where I was not actively consuming art or in a new place. I was a teenager at the time and I can’t rule out hormones. (Both involved looking out windows so nature was involved.)

Every other transcendental experience I’ve had has been watching, a movie, listening to music, drinking a beer, eating a meal, or visiting a foreign country.

I firmly believe that aesthetic bliss exists. I don’t know why it exists, I don’t know what is happening in my brain when it happens, but I have experienced it many, many times.

I have been carried away by a shot or scene in a movie, where I lost track of where I was and lost all care for the world outside the film.

I have been listening to music where I lost track of what I was doing, what time it was, where I was.

I have had beers so good that I forgot every other care in the world. The only thing I cared about was savouring the beer and not drinking it too fast.

I have had dishes so good that I forgot every other care in the world where I wanted I wanted to savour every bite and I dreaded the moment when the dish would be empty.

I cannot sit in front of a painting for hours and lose myself in it but I can absolutely understand why someone can. Moreover, I think that’s a valid use of their time. I understand the feeling even if I couldn’t personally consume a painting in that way.

Again, I can’t tell you why these things happen but I have experienced this many times. And these experiences are very similar to each other.

I know it’s just chemicals in my brain but it exists for me. And I have to think that, anyone who is arguing that taste is status-seeking only, has either never experienced aesthetic bliss or has mistook the experience I am describing as something else.

I don’t meditate. (I actually don’t like meditation. I have tried multiple times and found it a struggle. I feel I am personally pretty on top of my own mental health and I don’t need meditation despite how much the internet wants me to rely on it.) I am only aware of jhanas because people write about them. But I find it interesting that a certain subset of people are really interested in jhanas, which seem rare and…well, colour me skeptical but I’m not sure how “real” they actually are. But these same people don’t seem to be particularly interested in the very brief but, to me, fare more common and far more real feeling of aesthetic bliss. (Music in church gets far and away the most attention as a transcendental experience, as far as I’m aware.) I suspect one reason for lack of interest is because, as far as I know, I cannot will myself into experiencing aesthetic bliss. There needs to be something external. Whereas people can will themselves in jhana, or so I’ve read.

I strongly believe that just because something can’t be quantified doesn’t mean it’s not real. (At least as real as anything, for the subject.) I suspect that whatever jhana is, if it exists, is biochemically similar to the much briefer experiences I have which I’ve labelled “aesthetic bliss.”

Anyway, I don’t really know if I can’t will myself to experience aesthetic bliss because I’ve never tried. And maybe I should, because…

Chasing the Dragon

A huge part of my consumption of art is because I’ve wanted to avoid cliche in movies and music for a good chunk of my taste-cultivating life. I haven’t really had this same experience with beer (I have tried thousands, though I don’t have an exact number) and food.

The reason I’m so cliche avoidant with beer is that, if you like the style, a perfectly made beer, which could be a cliche to someone who doesn’t like the style, can be superb to a lover of the style. Even though I still seek out (some) novelty in beer, there are certain styles I want to have “on style.” (Another reason is that novelty in beer can be really, really bad. Much worse than novelty in film and music, in my opinion.)

And for food, there’s the simple economic reason that, until relatively recently, I didn’t have the money to spend on incredible meals and so I’ve only had so many in my life. I don’t really know what constitutes cliche in high-end cuisine. (Also, I love a great burger no matter how cliche it might be.)

The flip side of avoiding cliche, in my mind, is pursuing aesthetic bliss. And this, I figure, is a tiny bit like an addict chasing their first high. The longer I live, the more movies, music and beer I consume, the fewer moments of aesthetic bliss I experience. (Maybe I need new hobbies?)

I think this is backed up by my reviews of movies and music. If you were to do an analysis of the distribution of my ratings over time, I think you would find far more 10/10s from the my 20s than from any other decade of my life, because that’s when I spent the most time encountering new movies and music. (Not every movie I’ve rated 10 out of 10 or every album or symphony or opera I’ve rated 10 out of 10 has sent me and I give a lot of ratings 10/10 for historical influence reasons. But I have trouble imagining I’ve ever rated anything that has given me a transcendent experience lower than, say, 9/10. (My music reviews. My movie reviews. My most recent beer ratings, though this is the third site, at least, that I’ve used to rate beers, hence why there are only 2000 ish. Also, I don’t normally review beers, just rate them, because I’m lazy.)

I still encounter music that gives me a feeling of aesthetic bliss periodically and I think that’s in part because the volume of truly great music - or music that appears truly great to me - is so vast. I have only encountered a small portion of it. I will continue to find music that will transport me, even if it’s harder and harder to find than it used to be.

The same is true of beer, to a lesser extent. I still occasionally try beers that are transcendental. (One interesting thing I find here is that I sometimes have a beer that I forgot I tried years ago and I now love it rather than like it. Of course, I have the opposite experience too, but the surprising one - the one that is more fun and closer to aesthetic bliss - is to find that I love something I didn’t like in the past.)

With movies, I have a harder time finding that feeling of transportation, of removal from life itself. It does happen still, mostly with older films I hadn’t yet managed to see, but far more often I’m appraising these intellectually and thinking “This is great for its time because of x,y and z.” That might be a volume thing - I have seen more films than listened to albums or drank beers - or might be quality thing, or maybe it’s just age. (I am a mellow guy and my feelings have mellowed even more with age.) But it is a struggle to find films that will give me that feeling. (It doesn’t help that I watch more films than ever at home, where there are way too many distractions. If I am on my computer while I watch a movie, there’s basically zero chance I will experience aesthetic bliss.)

In any event, I find I am seeking aesthetic bliss and rarely finding it in the places I used to. I feel like I can find this experience more when I travel now, or when I eat a fantastic meal, than when I watch a great movie or listen to a great pierce of music. (And I now have enough money to do both more than when I was younger.) But I still chase that dragon as much as I am able to. I listen to music all day long. I try to watch at least one film a week. I try new beers nearly weekly (though I am skeptical of most new breweries in Ontario simply because there are so many mediocre breweries since craft beer blew up). I spend money on fancy restaurants where they charge way too much. I spend a hilarious amount of money on fancy beer.

I Can Never Go Back

They say wine snobs go through cycles. As their palettes grow more sophisticated they only want to drink reds. Then they eventually get tired of the complex stuff and go back to the less complicated whites. If they were young enough when they started maybe this process occurs a second or even a third time. (I hope this is changing with natural wine, which isn’t obviously “white” a lot of time, but anyway…)

And there is some truth to this for me with beer: I am less of an ass about lagers and golden ales than I used to be. And there’s a little bit of truth to this for me with movies: I am more charitable, I think, to mediocre blockbusters and rom-coms. And with music: I am far more open to Top 40 and contemporary pop than I used to be. (And I make an effort. I never used to even make an effort.)

But mostly, I’m still massive snob. I want to listen to good music, watch good movies, drink good beer, eat good food. Though I love watching terrible films for laughs, I don’t want to watch mediocre movies, I don’t like listening to music I think is bad, I don’t want to drink shitty beer, and I don’t want to eat a meal that I think is worse than something I could make myself.

Importantly to me, I can never go back. I can’t somehow transport myself to a time at which I hadn’t consumed all this culture. It’s just not possible unless I get amnesia. I know what I like. Moreover, I know what I think is good. And I know what’s trite and cliche. I’ve just seen too many movies, listened to too much music, drank too many beers. I can’t just forget all of that in order to not be a snob. (Whatever that would get me. More respect from people I don’t know? No idea!)

When I see a movie, I’m going to evaluate it based on the 5000 movies and TV shows I’ve seen. How could I not?

When I listen to an album or symphony or opera, I’m going to evaluate it on the 3500+ pieces of music I’ve heard (some many, many, many times). How could I not?

When I drink a beer, I’m going to evaluate it at least in part on the thousands of beers I’ve tried. How could I not? (My memory here isn’t so good, though, so there’s more of a chance of me being open to mediocrity if I’m in the right mood or eating the right food.)

I’m going to place that work or beer into historical context, too, because I’ve got all this experience of historical contexts in movies and music and, believe it or not, to a very small extent with beer. (Though with beer it is always approximate. I’ve consumed beers that are attempts are mimicking historical styles; they are likely all just wild guesses though, so it’s less true with beer than with a film from 1922 or an opera from the 19th century or what have you.)

Is this just status-seeking? And whether or not it is status-seeking first and foremost, is this behaviour bad?

My friends know me as a movie guy but I don’t know that it helps me any.

Friends don’t really know me as a music guy because I have friends who are musicians or who have worked for professional music publications so I’m not as much of a music guy as them.

My friends definitely know me as a beer guy. (And I have a beard and no hair on top so I am a giant cliche.)

My friends know me as a foodie.

Do these reputations actually help me materially?

Until reading about taste as status, I hadn’t much thought about my own personal tastes socially since high school. (See below.) I am not consciously pursuing taste itself, and my personal tastes as a form of status-seeking. And I don’t believe they that my peculiar obsessions have helped me any.

Moreover, isn’t this harmless?

Isn’t my obsession with seeing as many films as possible before I die harmless?

Isn’t listening to as much music as possible before I die harmless?

Isn’t trying as many beers as possible before I can no longer healthily enjoy alcohol harmless? (We’ve gotten into cocktails recently. Wish us luck!)

Isn’t spending money on a really nice meal at a nice restaurant a positive thing for my community?

And isn’t sharing these experiences with others harmless?

I think so.

But I do have a few theories as to why some people might look at snobs like me and think we are posers, that this is all just so we can seem cooler than others and it’s all for show. (Relevant side note: I have never in my life been cool.)

Political Art is (Almost Always) Bad Art

But before the theories I do want to address something that comes up in Wolfe’s book, or least the review I read of Wolfe’s book. And that is political art.

The Bauhaus school seem to have been inordinately concerned with politics. I didn’t know that but it’s not surprising. (All I really know about it is there is a great UK post punk band named Bauhaus whose debut album is, in my opinion, one of the great rock albums of the 1980s.)

In my experience, explicitly political art is nearly always bad art.

If the purpose of a fictional film is to have a political message over and above the story, it is almost always going to be a mediocre movie at best. This is less true with documentaries but, in my opinion, still quite true. Michael Moore’s movies, which are advocacy “documentaries” rather than true documentaries, do not work very well for me even though I have broadly similar politics to him. I think he is not a great filmmaker.

This is less obviously true in some other forms of art, such as music and painting. There are truly great political songs and truly great political paintings. But I’d wager that there are way fewer explicitly political works among most people’s lists of all-time great songs or all-time great paintings.

And for music, the piece gets worse the longer the explicitly political piece is. It’s one thing to listen to a political song. But something like Operation: Mindcrime is, to me, way inferior than other “rock operas” because, in part, it is explicit about its politics. There are so many cringe lyrics on that album.

(The political beers I’ve tried were mostly mediocre. Yes, there is political beer.)

We should not judge the very natural, human pursuit of taste based on the actions of people who believe politics trumps everything else. Those people probably don’t actually like art. I never met a Bauhaus school architect or a modernist architect but I bet the most political of them have terrible taste in movies, music, beer and food.

Is This Just a Matter of Personality? Aesthetes vs. Everybody Else

I do think some of this is just personal preference and isn’t anything more than that. I’m not sure it has to be status seeking alone.

Some people are really into (some forms of) art and some just aren’t. Is it nature? Is it nurture?

My biological parents are not into art, nor are my step-parents. To the best of my knowledge, none of my aunts and uncles are/were. My older step-siblings aren’t. (A few older cousins are so maybe it’s their influence, but I never spent enough time around them for this to make sense as an explanation.) So I have no idea where my obsession with two forms of art in particular comes from, nor do I know why I am generally more open to other forms of art, which I don’t know about, than basically anyone else in my immediate family. (Or why I’m into the theory of art, as pertains to basically any art form. I am way more accepting of these ideas than anyone in my family other than, maybe, my brother. He is younger, by the way.)

But I can tell you that I’ve always been interested in weird art, regardless of form. When I encounter a weird movie or weird music that I think is good, according to my cultivated, very specific tastes, I’m excited. But I am also interested when I encounter weird “artsy” art from forms I am not super familiar with. I don’t usually reject it out of hand, I want to know what it means. This attitude was, as far as I can remember, mostly absent from my childhood.

I seem to be just that kind of person. Some people want to just enjoy music, I want to know who played what and how it was recorded. But I also want to know the why of weird art that I encounter outside of my preferred interests. Or, at the very least, I believe there is a why, there is intentionality on behalf of the artist, and that intentionality shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand. (Even with fashion, an art form I just don’t get or care about, I am interested in the artist’s intentionality. I will watch documentaries about major fashion designers even though I couldn’t care less about clothes, and clothes as art.)

I don’t know the biological reasons for this. I don’t know the cultural reasons for this (though I will guess at some below). I just know this is the way I am, and I am this way regardless of whether or not I’m talking to anyone else. I can’t rewrite history so I’m a hermit to see whether or not I would have pursued my tastes without social interactions, but I know that spend most of my time alone with art - with movies, music, books.

And I suspect that, for those who aren’t like this, I can come off annoying, or as if I am putting on airs.

Snobs are Really Annoying

I do understand why people who are not snobs find us annoying. Especially if they feel like we re lording our tastes over them. And I think a lot of non-aesthetes feel as if snobs are lording their senses of taste over others. It makes sense to me

But I don’t think many of us snobs mean it that way. When someone asks me about movies or music, I am just trying to share my passion, I certainly don’t believe I am right about everything. (I am very aware of how subjective my experiences are. I have watched movies I have absolutely loved at one age and despaired at how mediocre they seem later. This is one reason I don’t like re-watching films I regard as transcendent).

And this desire to share is even more true when it comes to beer or food. I want others to feel what I have felt. I want more people to love saisons and the “American” versions of barley wines, imperial stouts and brown ales. (In this case “American” denotes the addition of a non-traditional amount of hops to the styles.) When I eat at a good or great restaurant, I want my family and friends to go to share in my experience.

But I know my passion does not come across as merely passion, especially with beer. (I am a balding, bearded white man who drinks good beer. I am a giant cliche.) I have absolutely sounded like a massive snob about so many things I like in my life. (And, occasionally, I have absolutely posed as knowing more about something than I did to, yes, try to look good in front of others. This mostly happened in my teens and twenties. And I am hardly the only one who is guilty of this.)

I do feel like I am better at not being judgy now, whereas I was really judgy about so much when I was in my 20s. But I think that’s a function of age, not merely taste. Young people like to think in extremes, in binaries. Many of us age out of it but some people absolutely do not. I feel like I mostly have. That being said, I could be completely oblivious to how much of an annoying snob I come across as when I am talking about something I like and know too well. (I certainly was oblivious when I was younger.) I personally try very hard to be aware that my tastes are mine alone, and no one else’s. I (now) try to recognize that my tastes are mine alone and are valid for me but may not make sense to others. (At the same time, I have standards and I think those standards might be valid for more than just me. If I see a boom mic in the shot, I think that’s an objective piece of criticism of a film.)

I spend my time around smart people who are into art. (Though my partner is not particularly into art.) Though I have no position of authority or power in society, my income, education and choice of where I live make me a “downtown elite” in Ontario terms. It is easy for me to imagine what I think of as agreeable passion for a particular cultural artifact being seen by someone else as snobbery. Especially if that person is less educated, less well-to-do, less surrounded by other snobs. Or especially if that person is highly logical, or thinks that everything is explicable or must be explicable, or thinks that most art is of little interest. (If you’ve rarely or never been captivated by art, art probably seems kind of pointless, right? If art doesn’t move you and doesn’t have any obvious social utility, art is kind of pointless, right?)

I think there is likely some kind of genetic cause of snobbery, and there is likely an environmental cause of snobbery and each snob has some of each in them. Non-snobs, those who think taste is merely status seeking, don’t have either, or don’t have enough of either. That’s my guess.

And us snobs come across as obnoxious to those who don’t have similar passions. And so it’s seems like this is some kind of con, or some kind of show for others. (And, sometimes, it likely is.)

What Has Taste Gotten Me?

But I still want to push back on the idea that taste is mostly just status-seeking. If it is indeed status-seeking above anything else, I must be very bad at it.

I don’t think I’ve gotten any material advantages from writing thousands of brief reviews on the internet. Nobody reads my blog. A few people read and like my RYM reviews but not enough to make my life better. Now that I’m on Lettterboxd and Trakt, some people read and like those reviews as well but they don’t make a material difference in my life. (I have gotten some really strange comments on Letterboxd, as well.) The same goes for Goodreads. Though I am not a fan of my own book reviews, the people who like them haven’t helped me any. (I rate beers, I don’t review them. So nobody comments on them.) Nobody reads my my blog where I publish my reviews before I publish them on RYM or Letterboxd or Trakt or Goodreads.

Before I wrote reviews on the internet, did my snobbery help me socially? I mean, maybe here and there. (More on that below).

Does it help me now? I have no idea. Eventually my coworkers find out about my passions but I don’t really see how it helps me much.

It’s possible I’m just too close to my own life to see how much my snobbery has helped me, but I really have a hard time seeing how my obsessions as having a material improvement on my social status or my life overall.

I think my obsessions have had a massive effect on my overall quality of life because I strongly believe that consuming art makes people better humans. The novels I’ve read, the movies I’ve watched, the music I’ve listened to have all made me more human and more humane, they have made me less of an asshole, less likely to judge others for their differences, less likely to judge first and ask questions later. And they have given me so much pleasure.

But I do not think I have the material life I currently have, and the social status I have, because I have become part of some group of snobs that dominates cultural life in my society. Most people don’t know about me and what I like. And the ones that do don’t stand in awe of it or resent it, as far as I know.

IF Taste is Merely Status-Seeking, Does That Mean There is No Qualitative Difference Among Art?

If all that is happening when I judge a work of art as “good,” “better” or “best” is an attempt by me to fit in with a specific group and to get others to think highly of me, does that mean there is no difference in quality between works of art?

(As part of the overall argument about taste, Scott quizzed his readers, including me, to see if we could identify human-created art work from AI-created art work. I didn’t do so hot. But it took hundreds of thousands of years for human beings to develop the methods and techniques to create the art work that the AIs learned from. I think that’s relevant! Without humans iterating constantly throughout history, to improve - and, often, the eyes of society, worsen - the practice of art, there would be no art for the AI to learn off of and trick us. Human taste, no matter what why it is, was necessary in order for AI’s to create copies that could fool humans.)

Are we to believe there is no different in quality between “Soda Pop” or “E-Mail My Heart” and the Goldberg Variations? (“Soda Pop” and “E-Mail My Heart” were two tracks I highlighted as low-lights in my 2019 review of Britney Spears’ ….Baby One More Time.)

My subjective experiences of these pieces of music are very different: one is incredibly beautiful and sophisticated, the others are cringe, as the kids say.

But surely there is an objective difference too?

For one thing, there is the historical influence of the piece and its performances. Once upon a time, Western composers wrote variations to show off their skill and creativity. Bach’s music and the music of the Baroque period in particular, builds off the slow professionalization of Western music and increasing sophistication. Bach’s music eventually became the gold standard of Western music, though he wasn’t widely appreciated for some time after he died. Glenn Gould’s two infamous recordings of this piece for piano (it is written for harpsichord) influenced vast numbers of piano players and created great controversy over whether or not performers should play music on period instruments. You’ve never heard of “Soda Pop” or “E-Mail My Heart.” (To your credit.)

And then there’s the skill. I am not a musician or musicologist, and I don’t know music theory, but I know Bach is hard to play, and I know Baroque music got so sophisticated that the whole of Western musical culture had to change course to make music that wasn’t so hard and high-brow in response.

I don’t know if Mikey Bassie or Erik Foster White can write polyphonic music well, I suspect they cannot or they haven’t bothered trying. (Watch, someone is going to comment that White has written this incredibly sophisticated piece that just hasn’t received enough attention yet.) I know Britney Spears cannot write polyphonic music and I really doubt she could sing a Bach cantata. (Could she learn? Probably! But it would take a while.)

There are objective musical skills. Not all music made by schooled musicians is better than music that is made by untrained musicians, obviously. But there are ways in which we can look at music as an expression of human skill that the Goldberg Variations pass and “Soda Pop” doesn’t. I don’t have the language to be able to explain it but someone who knows music theory can explain how Bach changed musical expression forever. Or how the Goldberg Variations in particular shows off his technique and creativity within the bounds of Western musical rules. (Or how Gould’s two distinct interpretations opened up possibilities for musicians playing pre-piano keyboard music on the piano.)

Though Britney shows off her voice on “Soda Pop” in a way that she was often not allowed to do on her debut album, she is merely singing in the contemporary idiom - one in which numerous singers have excelled in before her. Is she better at singing pop soul than Mariah or Mary J. Blige or En Vogue? Obviously not. And her performance is grafted onto some ragga, which feels…inauthentic to put it mildly. It’s something that some people like, sure, but it’s also throwaway, disposable. It is not an obvious display of a deep understanding of the rules of Western music in a way that Bach’s music is. This isn’t some weird, relativist take. (Somewhere there is someone on the internet who will try to tell me that Britney is better than Bach, because all opinions already exist on the internet.)

I can’t quantify this for you. I, as someone who cannot play, write or read music, cannot show you how Bach’s best is better than Britney’s album cuts. But it is. And there’s a whole world of music theory which I know exists but I don’t have the skills to translate to those who aren’t in that world. (YouTube has thousands if not millions of videos explaining music theory to us rubes.)

There are both subjective and objective standards we can apply to art. The longer human artistic traditions persist, the more there are genres within those traditions that seek to undermine the objective standards. To me, that isn’t proof that the objective standards were complete bullshit, it’s only proof that there are modes of expression outside of those we thought were the only modes.

I am very much an “art for its own sake” person. I seem to have been born that way, as far as I can figure. Though I think there are numerous examples of taste as status-seeking throughout human history - particularly among those who don’t actually care about or like art - I don’t think that’s the sole reason taste exists. I think there’s something innate in some of us - I would have said “all of us” before reading Scott’s pieces - that craves art, aesthetic bliss, the “new,” the “beautiful,” and so forth. I feel it in myself. I see it in others.

How I Became a Snob

As I’ve indicated above, I’m not really sure where I, the snob, came from. My parents were not and are not particularly interested in the arts. My mom and step-dad go to plays, but I don’t believe she did when she was a single mother raising my brother and I. My dad listens plenty of “classical” music but I have zero memory of being exposed to it when I was a child.

I was not exposed to a lot of highly sophisticated art when I was a kid, as far as I can tell. The thing I remember most is a Sesame Street LP that taught me the instruments of the orchestra. But that’s all I can remember from my earliest years. Also I went to the odd play for children, and I went to a version of The Nutcracker for children. But I don’t remember much else. I was not surrounded by artistic beauty as a child.

I grew up listening to Oldies which, in the 1980s, meant music from the 1950s and 1960s and, in the early 1990s, mean music from the 1960s and the safest, softest music (soft rock and country pop) from the 1970s. I also grew up listening to Weird Al which is, I suppose, where my love of different music genres comes from.

One Christmas, in my mid teens, my father bought me a bunch of CDs I hadn’t expressed in as a way of helping to educate me musically, including some Romantic music. But this was in response to me becoming interested in prog rock and not something that caused that interest. It was already it there. (Musically, it comes from listening to The Beatles, as far as I know.)

I grew up watching War movies and Westerns from the 1950s and 1960s (and occasionally later). They were very heavy on genre conventions and trained me on the idea of genre conventions outside of the sitcom. My mom introduced me to Hitchcock, who was the first “auteur” I attempted to watch all the films of. (I have yet to complete that mission.) Someone at my church - it might have been my Cub or Scout leader - introduced me to Charlie Chaplin. Watching older movies meant for adults, more often than I watched kids movies, likely trained me to think differently about the movies meant for kids and teens I did watch. Like so many young men, at some point I found my way to Kubrick. Fortunately, I also found my way to the Coen brothers at the same time so I had obsessions with two very different aesthetics.

At some point I watched The Kids in the Hall (and later Monty Python’s Flying Circus), which is my best guess as to where my interest in and love of the transgressive comes from. (My interest in transgressive stuff predates my first exposure to KITH but, unless you count Weird Al, I don’t know where it comes from.) Later I discovered John Waters and David Lynch but KITH was well before either of them.

I think the idea that some or much of this was status-seeking when I was a teenager is actually quite reasonable. I was not a popular kid. I was smart and extremely shy and awkward. I was teased from a relatively early age and I was never good at responding cleverly or well to the teasing. Once I grew to a size at which I could easily threaten nearly anyone who teased me, I was way too meek to do so. (I have exactly two memories of me threatening bullies, who were both smaller than me. Both threats worked. But I really didn’t like conflict and basically just took the abuse.)

So, yes, knowing more about the music of the 1960s and 1970s than anyone else I knew was a coping mechanism and a way of showing that I was superior to other students in some way. Same with my love of and knowledge of old movies and, later, art films. This theory makes some sense in describing my behaviour in high school.

But I do think it was mostly for its own sake and that only became more true when I went to university and grad school, where it was way more normal to have cultural obsessions. But mine still weren’t everyone else’s. Most of the guys I knew in university loved the Dave Matthews Band who, at the time, I really didn’t like. I definitely thought I was into to cooler music than they were but they didn’t agree with me. Sure, there was the odd person who I had similar taste to, and I guess we maybe felt like we had our own superior tastes but it didn’t get us anywhere. I had a show on my university radio station. Nobody listened to it.

Once I entered the working world, I was a complete snob, having seen more movies than anyone I worked with and listened to more music than anyone I worked with. I worked in jobs where most of my colleagues had high school education and were not super interested in culture. I can assure you that my sense of taste did not help me any, beyond one coworker once describing me as “worldly.”

I think it’s fair to say that I tried to use my seemingly elevated sense of taste to improve my own personal status when I was an insecure teenager and twenty-something. I think it’s truthful to say it didn’t work very well. But I don’t think that social elevation was the only reason for me pursuing these tastes. Again, maybe I’m glossing over my life, and an objective observer would have a list of all these times I used my snobbery to gain an advantage, to portray myself as a part of an elect. But I don’t think that’s how it went. Certainly, as I age, the pursuit of the best art is something I pursue for my own enjoyment, not to show I’m better than you or smarter than you.