in defence of being the worst

"stay with the confusion," my literature professors would tell me.

A horrifying TikTok appears on my Twitter feed: a woman wants books to mark out on their first page their “little tropes” such as “enemies to lovers” or “love triangle” or “grumpy versus sunshine.” She is enraged – asking with asperity why we must read the entire book to find out which tropes it contains.

I think she is quite stupid. Her articulation reflects the stupider still method by which we engage with art: one where it is picked up only when all its contents are precluded by its positioning. There is no surprise left on the table. ‘Preferences’ of genre, form, and style reflect a wish to filter out the chunkiness of intellectual discovery, and consume a product that is programmed to stimulate senselessly. We pretend that we already know all the ways in which art works on minds. Bubbled into aerated nothingness by branding and formulaic composition, art is incarcerated in an à la carte prison. It was supposed to be that with the death of the author, the reader would come alive, front row in the carnival of interpretation. Instead, the reader has hollowed themselves into singular, flat, self-obsessed ‘consumers.’ There’s no need for exertion or self-imposed difficulty. We are the final masters of art, which we do not read or watch, but consume, like gluttonous carnivores. Art must never disobey us or our worldview; it must unravel on sight.

“I liked it” has become a moral force. It obviates statements like, “it was good,” or “it was silly.” It doesn’t matter. It could be bad. Who cares? I liked it. If someone said to me “I liked it,” and I responded with a review of some unsatisfying details, or judgements passed on the writing, or the music, or whatever it is, two things would happen. First, this response would bounce back like a weird, random interjection, because they weren’t talking about whether it was ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ They just said they liked it. And secondly, to point out shortcomings of the writing or the cinematography, I would also just seem like a pretentious asshole, because they just said they liked it! If they – as an individual who derived some amusement from consumption, said they liked it, who was I to cast doubt on whether it was good? Hadn’t the artistic object already served its primary – and indeed – only function, that of delivering amusement?

Everyone wants to have fun. Nobody is afraid or ashamed to say they watch terrible television, or that they get all their music from TikTok, or that they have not read a book in the last 5 years. They use ChatGPT to get by in the one Humanities class they were mandated to take (if that), and complain about the ‘elitism’ and ‘pretentiousness’ of others. By turning ‘pretentious’ into a catchall for any form of artistic taste or critique, we are doing ourselves a disservice. To be pretentious is to be a superficial dilettante, talking belletristically about that which we do not understand so we may appear intelligent or cultured. I think we overcorrected in our disdain of pseudo-intellectual ‘pretentious’ chatter on the interwebs. Reading, reviewing, or otherwise engaging with art in a sensitive, serious manner is not the same as being an insufferable drone who thinks they know everything. Unfortunately, it seems, we were so put off by a few posers that we have given up on the concept of taste entirely. The result of this abdication is a simplistic logical moment where multidimensional thought or contextualised perspectives come off as un-self-aware, not ironic enough, or self-importantly indulgent.

It used to be that discernment, deep knowledge, wit, and intellectual surprise were valued. Audiences were given much credit; the difficulty of interpretation yielded both discipline and taste. Auteurs and authors were told not to spell things out, but to leave room for the most tantalising experience of criticality – confusion. Stay with the confusion, my literature professors would tell me. Read contrapuntally, dialectically, with polysemy, like a rhizome. Read with the messiness of non-linearity, wearing ink on sleeve and heart on page. Refuse to fall into the ‘infinite narcissism of the present.’ Render a world of multiple possibilities by rejecting the domination of one Truth. Let it all air. Think about the unconventional workings of this or that logical strand, and the disruptions effected in your worldview, their worldview, or this text.

Now, a stupid person will say: let people enjoy things. Dear god. People would enjoy just about anything playing on a screen, so long as it was presented in a high enough resolution with direct enough representations of the world. People’s enjoyment cannot be the benchmark of the creative fields; people’s enjoyment is guaranteed by any and every kind of stimulation that does not ask them to exert independent critical thought. (See: ‘Barbie,’ ‘Saltburn,’ ‘Dune 2,’ or pretty much any Netflix/Marvel movie ever. Read also this fabulous critique of contemporary film culture, and the vacuity of Christopher Nolan).  

But it is difficult to fault people for this. Neoliberal individualism has so successfully presented alienation as freedom, and the tyranny of the masses as democracy, that we are ready to do just about anything to feel something, belong somewhere, or escape where we are. Who can be blamed for being creatively wrung dry by the infinite blandness of working life? Imagination is a muscle, as is intellectual exertion. Modern life is structured around securing their atrophy to maintain the status quo.

Yet, it is quite frankly patronizing to say that we have no control over our consumption. And indeed, my ‘diatribe’ is directed firmly at the sophomoric philistines who hate, bore, and degrade culture. It is directed at those whose impulse to sanctify any-and-all amusement exceeds their capacity for critical thought. These anti-intellectual positions are reactionary, and plain lazy. To say that the maintenance of standards is ‘elitist’ is at once conformist, and self-flagellating. In fact, we live in a rare moment where we have access to the best theory, literature, film, and music that has ever been created through the circuits of the internet. This could have been a grand opportunity for critique because once, ‘high-brow’ art was out of reach for the average person. Instead, today, it rots for free on archive.org and in underfunded spaces of imaginative expression. Like the woman in the TikTok who wants to reduce books to tropes, all art suffers because of our discomfort with confusion, surprise, and rigour.

If the thoughtful critiques of others make a person feel inadequate, that’s a good thing. That insecurity is their curiosity bubbling up inside them, searching for articulation. That feeling that you should know more, that instinct that you would like to be deeper within the world of ideas - that feeling is the one which demands more of you. Yes, it is harder to do the work of being intentional with your artistic engagement than to consume superficially. But it is also infinitely more rewarding. The former allows us to connect with texts and artworks that have expanded the emotional, intellectual and creative firmaments of the human experience. This will not drain you, or make your head hurt from thinking too much. It will not ruin entertainment for you, nor deprive you of genuine fun. Instead, it will enrich fun, pleasure, and enjoyment. It will help you lead a life of much more emotional richness, dexterity, and beauty.

I am not saying there is a ‘wrong’ opinion held by the uncultured masses, and a ‘right’ one reserved for the literary. No, I am saying there are many answers, confused and concatenated by other art and context, nourished by reading and cosmopolitanism. The mighty devil of discourse can sometimes produce lovely, disturbing, and awesome interjections to our encounters with the creative. The point is that we must at the very least entertain the conversation about quality, entertain the possibility of reading widely and finding something new in the world, and entertain the demands that all kinds of art make of us. It is only natural that in this process there will be fallacies, pretence, Latin phrases, and attacks on beloved art. It is only natural that sometimes, when you are scraping the canon in your free time, you will sound like The Worst.

Amusement is not nourishing your soul. Enjoyment is not the same as connection. So, go forth and be The Worst. Read the Russians and rip apart the rom-com. Talk theses, learn language, drizzle poetry. The beating heart of the zeitgeist will come to you from the palimpsest of past and contemporary art, resplendent in its tragedy, humour, and undeniable, abundant beauty. You will feel one with those who lived a thousand years before you and you will be laughing hysterically with foreigners from several seas away. Find through this process your taste, and your voice, and then change them up again. Do not deprive yourself of the limitless surprises and joys of discovery that exist in the thoughtful world of art. They are what make life honest, and indeed, bearable.