5th Feb 2007
The Pleasure of Guilt
On the state of guilty pleasures in an age without hierarchies.
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.
