Are We All Snobs Now?

[Music] critics and artists alike are sounding increasingly bummed about the State of Pop Culture especially the struggling film industry Martin Scorsese declared that MCU movies are more theme park than Cinema while AO Scott former New York Times film critic is leaving his job because he felt there was no more cultural space for original and ambitious work simultaneously this tough talk about pop culture has led to a backlash best embodied by the let people enjoy things meme this pushback reflects something commentators call optimism meaning the optimistic celebration of popular culture especially pop music Vox correspondent Constance Grady notes that throughout the odds we saw an era of extreme snark a continuation of 90s anti-sellout culture in which one could gain Social Capital by hating unpopular and often corporately produced things well that's unfortunate because it's sex ass she writes it used to be cool to hate stuff then came optimism which celebrates the Artistry of Pop Culture but recently opposition between those who decry pop culture and those who Revel in it has become testy and increasingly critics or artists who hate on pop culture are called snobs which makes us wonder what is the function of snobs today are snobs just haters who want to infringe on my god-given right to enjoy watching Tony Stark eat shwarma would we be better off without them or do they serve a cultural function let's find out in this wisecrack Edition do we need snobs in order to understand the modern Clash over popular culture and snobbery we first need to understand the 19th century origin of the wall between pop culture and high culture now snob initially meant of the ordinary or lower classes typically folks lacking a college education though the meaning has flipped today with snobbery now associated with consumers of highbrow art its association with class remains strong English poet and social critic Matthew Arnold is often considered to have founded the study of high culture versus pop culture he was hostile to the latter he wanted his compatriots to aim higher than the commercial culture that thrived in taverns which he compared to Anarchy Arnold believed that art criticism should be a disinterested Endeavor to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world and thus to establish a current fresh and true ideas in this way critics could educate and humanize folks who Arnold pretty rudely called the Philistines importantly with the rise of mass industrialization and Commercial culture pop culture would be defined by Financial accessibility maybe you couldn't afford a ticket to the ballet but you could read a mass-produced Penny Dreadful novel like Varney the vampire the Feast of blood so in one way snobbery is a refined sense of aesthetic appreciation the challenge is culture to produce high quality art on the other hand snobbery is long involved the upper class using culture to signify superiority so which view is Right philosopher Matthew Kieran characterizes snobs as more concerned about seeming cultured and intelligent than about engaging with actual work he claims that a snobbish judgment or response is one where aesthetically irrelevant social features play a causal role in the subject's appreciative activity and coming to judge the value of x claw aesthetic object in layman's terms a snob is a poser who uses high-class signifiers not because they like them but because saying they do affords them social currency consider the wine snob and if you make the mistake of asking for a recommendation you usually receive a response like this so here we have a Chevrolet this is a premier crew so there are nine grand Crews and 14 Premier crews in this area these tannins are fantastic especially when you have some very bold big Foods you know cure insights a 2001 study in which connoisseurs failed to distinguish between red wine and white wine dyed red they also rated wines more highly when they came in fancier bottles or decanters and of course rare and extensive wines are explicitly tied to Notions of class and taste I hyper decant you don't hyper decant according to Karen snobbish appreciation fails to meet Aristotle's definition of a virtuous act which is an act that is ethical and aims at some higher notion of the good for him an act is virtuous only if a person chooses it for its own sake rather than forth say appearances and Kieran notes that snobs often get things right even reliably so but his point is that snobbish judgments are often made for the wrong reasons like embracing a French New Wave film not because of its bold rejection of cinematic Norms but because your Film School Professor told you it rips but of course snobs often get it wrong as well Alfred Hitchcock's vertigo was panned upon release The Shining earned two razzies nominations for worst actress and worst director and Scarface was considered junk by critics even in the action happy 80s hardly a perfect track record and don't even get me started on the reception of soon to be cinematic classic Babylon Babylon Hive know that I'm here for you and with you and we will one day Reign Over culture our time is Yet to Come Eureka I am not alone [Music] yeah to this end Kirin poses a new skeptical question can we ever really know whether our artistic appreciation is snobbish or not how could we be sure if we deeply appreciate the art or dislike the social status that goes with appreciating it after all snobs often speak very convincingly about the craft and details of Art and fishing for clout amongst Piers I.E virtue signaling is not just an upper class thing journalist Stephen Poole notes that the use of pretentious as criticism is a smug knowing wink to one's presumed peers anti-intellectualism in this way is a type of snobbery too there are even types of snobbery that don't involve praising the upper class for example consider the Hipster who over the years embraced working class Aesthetics ranging from cheap beer to trucker hats to mechanics jackets despite often having no participation in or knowledge of working class life this type of contrary social signaling says I appreciate things that snobs Overlook which ironically is quite snobby we also see this with film Buff's widespread Embrace of b-movies from the room which is loved for its sheer incompetence come on [Music] to troll 2 which is loved for its accidental humor to my personal favorite Freddy Got Fingered [Music] also while many men go to strip clubs for their bachelor parties at mine we sat in a room together watching Freddy Got Fingered this isn't just a joke that's what we watched if anyone from a bachelor party watches this video comment and say we really did that thank you so if both high and low art consumption can be snobby maybe it's worth asking are snobs just getting a bad rap and also are snobs just bad at rapping don't put that in the video and does criticism of snobbery sort of Miss the point now it's tempting to dismiss snobbery as classist social signaling and as art appreciation for the wrong reasons but according to cultural critic Kate Wagner the silencing refrain of let people enjoy things has shortcuts she argues that the let people enjoy things crowd usually means to say one of the following I do not want to feel judged for my consumption choices I.E don't shade me for loving Super Mario Brothers I was stoned look at then there's I want to silence people who disagree with me about this particular piece of media by making them feel like they are cheerless or judgmental I.E calling anyone who doesn't like Transformers critical grinches who should shut up I am directly below or I recognize an aspect of this piece of media that is worthy of criticism and I am defensive of this I.E knowing in your heart of hearts The Matrix resurrections was a tough hang but not wanting to acknowledge it to yourself this cannot be another reboot retread regurgitated Reba itself and I do not want to think critically about the things I consume and if I absorb any criticism about the things I consume it will magically ruin my enjoyment of them I.E wine and Scorsese to shut the up before he makes me realize I should have spent a lot less time on Disney plus and way more time on the Criterion Channel I think those movies are for for you know grown male nerd Childs and and and and oh really oh yeah right take the hit you guys are in charge of culture now to the first one she replies that we should not take media criticism as a personal attack it may be uncomfortable to enjoy a movie that gets critically panned but she argues luckily there exists a simple remedy don't identify with what you consume that is to say when the haters say that Babylon is trash remember that you aren't Damien chazelle so no one is attacking you so number two she replies that there is no need to shut down critical discussion unless you are an authoritarian basically let people criticize things even if you find it annoying remember you can always just close Twitter you just close it you just make it go away so number three she replies that this person is a cultural nihilist who though they understand the critics arguments refuses to care themselves or even to acknowledge that someone else might care in this way they're saying criticism doesn't matter so number four she replies that simple escapism and entertainment value is not the aim of Art though it might well be the goal of enormous media conglomerates she notes that many criticize Marvel movies not for their big budgets and massive explosions but for their militaristic and nationalistic themes I have successfully privatized World Peace 0.4 also seems to get the distinction between art and content which we've talked about before but it's an important distinction nonetheless now we may fear the criticism will ruin our enjoyment that's a bad reason to dismiss it and it may just be wrong as feminist video game critic Anita sarkeesian said it's both possible and even necessary to simultaneously enjoy media while also being critical of its more problematic or pernicious aspects it's being able to watch zerodark 30 recognizing its superb filmmaking and still acknowledging that it has a pretty up perspective on the war on terror from Wagner's perspective critics are concerned not with signifying social class but with artistic quality and Merit as well as the broader conclusions we can make about our world based on Art like when Richard Brody declared that blonde is The Passion of the Christ for Marilyn Monroe describing the way the biopic like American society seems inordinately obsessed with painting Monroe as the ultimate victim in this vein critics are typically much more concerned with criticize using the type of society that produces low quality art than with criticizing the people who enjoy that art and this is also why criticism often has a pretty explicitly philosophical tendency as it uses the analysis of art to explore various conceptions of ideology and truth so next time you're watching movies and and your mom's like you do your homework be like I'm doing philosophy mom if snobbery is liking or disliking things because social signifiers make you feel you should criticism is about deeply inquiring about how we should judge appreciate and understand art but we still haven't solved our initial question would Society be better off without snobs From kieran's perspective snobs who prioritize gatekeeping and posturing over real artistic engagement and who prays or deride things just to be contrarian aren't that useful in my humble opinion can be pretty annoying but critics are a different matter while some critics May exhibit snob-like Behavior Society always have a need for people who consume art with a Discerning Eye as at their best they can help us see its deeper meanings of course it isn't always easy to tell the difference as Kieran puts it the lack of publicly available regulative norms and Aesthetics means that it is hard to tell when and where someone's appreciation is appropriate or driven by snobbery that is to say our lack of a shared vocabulary about art can make people trying to be sincere appear snobby like how I know the costume design in Greta gerwick's Barbie will probably be excellent commentary on Womanhood under Lake capitalism but even saying that out loud makes me feel kind of embarrassed for his part AO Scott is unhappy with his attitude and wants to make space for the appreciation and valuing of good taste he says the world of the Yelp score the Amazon algorithm and the Facebook thumb is a place of liking and like-mindedness of niches and cauteries and shared enthusiasms a utopian Zone in which everyone is a Critic and nobody is a snob because nobody's taste can be bad better than anyone else's Scott defends his own taste arguing that he's interested in art that requires him to do a lot of work as an audience member like say the four hour long 2018 film an elephant sitting still a bleak portrait of modern industrial life in China rather than art that's simply about affluent people like triangle of sadness which he didn't particularly enjoy either did I you know a movie was better than that Babylon importantly he portrays himself as seeking quality and authenticity not highfalutin art however scholar Gregory flaxman prefers the style of another critic Pauline kale who famously worked to bridge The Divide between High art and low art she championed what she called trash them like the now cult classic wild in the streets while deriding serious films like Lawrence of Arabia which she often found to be self-important flaxman writes if anything snobbery today is the symptom of a criticism that is refused to work through the Schism between a fading film culture and an ascendant fan culture this he argues requires the expression of a Sensibility that is smart Supple and sincere enough to bring the two cultures together coincidentally if I was on a dating app I would describe myself as smart Supple and sincere it means taking high and low art alike seriously and their ability to reflect the world around us it means understanding that a blockbuster like Jurassic Park can teach us as much about say the foibles of human greed as a critical darling like There Will Be Blood I drink your milkshake I drink it up snobbery has its shortcomings but good taste and thoughtful criticism is necessary for a healthy flourishing Society rather than falling into the Trap of social signal or blanket praise for high-class prestigious work critics should also take pop culture seriously bring your rollerblades I literally go nowhere without them and the rest of us should probably be a lot less defensive when they think something we love sucks even though it's hard because Babylon was good it was a good movie you all just you all just weren't ready for it such criticism can help us as art lovers develop our cultural palettes and articulate our own opinions and dialogue with critics that is to say instead of getting angry we can have fun trying to articulate why we think Venom is Iconic despite basically being about a guy arguing with a pile of goo are you gonna you're gonna eat anybody else most likely oh God and at a time of rampant anti-intellectualism critics remain a necessary counterweight they help us see the ways that mass-produced media often fails to be art something that should improve our understanding of humanity instead corporate-backed media with its obsession with product tie-ins and the cynically minded proliferation of Ip can reinforce cultural norms maybe a bit sus enjoying media uncritically can be a damn good but it risks veering into escapism and at worst a naivety about the economics of cultural production but above all appreciating art developing good taste and critically engaging with media continues to be a uniquely human project as the future of AI produced content looms some say a good taste will become a hot commodity cultural critic Daisy elioto argues that one of the few remaining competitive advantages going forward will be the ability to create media that can't be replaced by AI because it comes from a strong POV meaning taste ai's inability to exhibit standards of taste suggest that aesthetic appreciation May remain one of the last things only humans can do and if the critics and maybe even the snobs can help us to continually develop and refine our own taste then they can't be all bad I'm going to tell you something for your own good pal that's the worst sweater I've ever seen it's a Cosby sweater a Cosby sweater what do you guys think is there a place for snobs in our world there's good criticism a necessary part of enjoying art or should everyone just shut up and let you enjoy stuff like this let us know in the comments thank you as always to our patrons for supporting us um if you like critical debate maybe join our patreon community you get on our Discord server where we talk about movies and games and books and shows and other stuff it's fun you also get videos early with no ads extra audio and video content and you know if you pay us enough money I'll let you name my firstborn maybe and thank you so much to everyone for engaging with our content for watching us for not being too snobby when we go low brow it means a lot we appreciate you enjoy some artsy content in the meantime and we'll see you later [Music] gets mad at me because I keep reminding her that one day this baby we have is gonna like look her in the eye and be like you mom she's like no she'll never do that and I'm like she's going to she's going to be like you Mom we're like I hate you Dad or she'll be like Dad you're a you're a bald

Channel: Wisecrack

Views: 116,333

Keywords: video essay, podcast, Wisecasts, Film analysis, philosophy, Show Me the Meaning, Wisecrack Edition, What Went Wrong, Wisecrack, snobs, snobbery, criticism, media criticism, critics, pop culture, pop culture critics, hipsters, film critic, film criticism, film snobs, film appreciation, film analysis, critical, critical theory, critical thinking, pop culture crisis, film criticism marvel, elitism, classism

Id: TDukoXM6bmc

Length: 18min 0sec (1080 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 28 2023