Ever since John Stuart Mill posed the question ‘what would you rather be a dissatisfied Socrates or a satisfied pig?’, intellectuals have been looking on swinish pleasures with a fustian disdain. Comparing Beethoven’s Ninth with Crazy Frog may show conclusively that pleasure can be ordered hierarchically, but never objectively. For what is pleasure but that which engages us? And that which is engaging must hold some kind of challenge within it, otherwise it would be boring. Nevertheless, being challenging doesn’t necessarily mean it has to have long words.
When my friend Tim came up to visit us a couple of weeks I was pleasantly invigorated by his uncanny ability to channel the zeitgeist into all conversations. As features editor on Channel 4’s Slash Music website, he spends all day talking to and thinking about the latest bands with their funny haircuts. He loves George Pringle, Girls Aloud and Coco Rosie, but he is also a Dylanologist who has studied acting theory. The idea that some of these pleasures are more or less worthy is abhorrent to him, guilt just doesn’t come into it.
Perhaps its a remnant of the days when people believed that culture moved forwards. Indeed, the clubbing phenomena is based largely around “cheesy” disco records, the kind of “naff” music that the year zeroism of punk attempted to obliterate. It never ceases to amaze me, the lengths people will go to in order to legitimize their tastes.
In last Saturday’s Guardian, the dubious concept of the guilty pleasure is used as a means to understand modern intellectuals. All the usual suspects are there - AC Grayling (Boxing), Richard Dawkins (Computer Programming), Steven Pinker (Rock Lyrics), Elaine Showalter (Trinny and Susannah) - justifying their lumpen pleasures. It’s as though the Modern Review never existed! Not that any of them are particularly guilt-inducing. Only Slavoj Zizek’s choice of Military PC games has even the slightest possibility of being offensive or sinful. Imagine if Roger Scruton had revealed a passion for necrophilia or John Carey for bestiality - that might be interesting - but no, it’s dull dull dull.
And me? Well, accounting for all my “guilty”, low brow pleasures would take all day but these are the ones that spring to mind. I love playing darts, watching buddy comedies, and reading science fiction.
What are your guilty pleasures?
Link: Guardian Weekend: Doh!
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Reading G2. That’s honest, self-induced guilt.
Other times I try to consider my socially disapproved tastes, but feel utterly superior when I remember that everyone I know watches Neighbours. I could be doing Heroin speedballs every other night and still feel aloof with that reminder tattooed to my arm - with my utter contempt for the state of the pleasure receptors of those who watch daytime TV out of choice, I don’t think I’ll ever need religion.