Taste and identity

Reviewing Lynn Shelton’s Humpday, Adam Cadre arrives, by way of a book wherein Jeffrey Steingarten forces himself to eat everything he dislikes to attain “perfect omnivore” status, at an intersection of the ideas of opinions, tastes, and identity that’s occupied my mind lately:

When Steingarten speaks of becoming a "perfect omnivore," what he really means is a "perfect hedonist": his contempt is palpable for those, including his past self, who deprive themselves of pleasure by disliking something. This is an interesting issue for someone like me who doesn't really like a lot of stuff. It also dovetails with a story I read a couple of days ago, "Reasons to Be Cheerful" by Greg Egan, which Elizabeth brought me four months ago but which I didn't get a chance to look at until just this week for reasons I've discussed. It deals with a guy who has the pleasure receptors in his brain burnt out by a virus and then receives an experimental treatment that amounts to receiving grafts of pleasure pathways from four thousand people. The problem is that initially they're all operating at once and so if even one person in four thousand liked something then he likes it too. In short, he now has "the widest possible taste," exactly the condition to which Steingarten aspires — but he's not happy about it. "Should I still be like this?" he asks his doctors in a panic. "Omnivorous?"

Before long he decides that if he's ever going to develop a sense of identity he somehow needs "to break the symmetry, to make some things a greater source of pleasure than others." Now, I can certainly see a case against this view: developing an even more refined sense of identity might be counterproductive if the self is mostly illusory, and developing a list of likes and dislikes might be counterproductive if true happiness comes from escaping craving and aversion.

Recording an interview with filmmaker Aaron Katz the other week, I mentioned my creeping envy for the kind of cinephiles who’ll enjoy, say, a Michael Bay movie as much as a Yasujirō Ozu movie. I could just front like I do, I suppose, but the fact of remains: I’ll enjoy the Ozu movie. Even beyond cinema, I can’t shake the nagging feeling that anything I don’t particularly like represents a grievous hit to my potential joie de vivre. I suppose this gives some sort of identity as a selective appreciator of, oh, films that have stood the test of time or what have you, but I don’t find it very useful, especially in the grander task of trying to keep my identity small.

Should I therefore thrust myself into an ordeal of Nietzschean self-overcoming by watching all the films to which I feel the least attraction — by megadosing debased genres, say? Should I eat superhuman amounts of whatever I fear most? While I feel no pressing need to go that far, I admit that I’ve felt flashes of vast contempt — though only flashes of it — when people write off a swath of cultural experience as not their “thing.” I desperately wish not to return to middle- and high-school days, when we could only build identities out of abstract likes and dislikes. That didn’t work out so well for me, one reason being that it cut me off from too much of the rest of humanity — but then, I’ve already covered this.

The possibility remains that this likes-and-dislikes business actually bears less on my ability to connect with others than I think. Take Adam Cadre’s site. Most of his writeups on film come to the exact opposite evaluative conclusion I would have — Syndromes and a Century, Tropical Malady, Old Joy, The Limey, In the Mood for Love, Paranoid Park, Silent Light, and Woman in the Dunes all score one point out of ten with him — yet I eagerly read everything he posts. Some film bloggers — let’s face it, many film bloggers — hold opinions that nearly replicate my own, but I don’t read them. Oftentimes I don’t read them because of their bad writing, but really, if I want a lionization of Abbas Kiarostami, I’ll write my own. I stand in the choir’s front row; I don’t need the sermon.

In any intellectual area, give me opinions that aren’t mine, as long as their holders express them well. Scratch that: only if their holders express them well; I’d rather not fill my mind with strawman stuffing. Not only does the very act of coming up against differing opinions make the world an interesting place, it makes me less likely to hold opinions of my own, or at least to hold them with quite as much strength as I would have, which reduces the risk that an identity will dumben me. Which, of course, will eventually make it hard to find conflicting opinions to come up against. Which will make the world a less interesting place for me. Oh well!

Comments

[Jonathan M]

I've been thinking a lot about the relationship of blockbusters to cinephilia as a whole and I thought I'd share some of my conclusions.

Firstly, there's a danger that this sort of exclusive cinephilia is not actually about the films. Everyone goes to see blockbusters and everyone seems to enjoy blockbusters so by refusing to countenance watching a Michael Bay film you are defining yourself in exclusive terms through your purchasing decisions: "Oh I'm not some Bay-loving prole... I spend *my* money on Ozu box sets and Fassbender restrospectives".

Of course, there's nothing wrong with that but if you *are* doing this then is it really about the film or is it about your desire to set yourself apart from the herd?

Secondly, I think there's an important distinction to be made between admiring a film and enjoying it.

I enjoy some blockbusters and hate others but this is also true of art house cinema. I can admire L'Avventura and I completely understand why it is significant, how it changed things and what it does that is different. But it bores me to tears.

The ability to decouple "I like this" from "I think this is a well made film" is, in my view, central to being able to think seriously about film. The techniques that make many art house films worth watching are also present in genre films and blockbusters (in fact, I'd argue that the blockbuster is a genre in and of itself with its own values and tropes) and sometimes bigger films do show remarkable innovation in their use of these techniques.

I didn't like Transformers but I admired its technical prowess and its raw cinematic power. Similarly I didn't like L'Avventura but I admired its deconstruction of traditional cinematic narratives and its pitch-perfect capture of an ambivalent attitudes towards the fact that one's life is meaningless but one simply coasts through it from moment to moment, taking up 'causes' and 'purposes' and then dropping them when something better comes along.

I like film. I love film. And while I do not like all films, I like the medium enough that I am interested in what different people do with the medium.

So there you go... there's my pitch for why you shouldn't turn your nose up at Blockbusters :-)

Blockbusters are films and if one wants to understand film as a medium then I think it is kind of important to be able to appreciate all forms of film. After all, many of the techniques used in blockbuster film making (mis-en-scene, editing, lighting etc) are also used in experimental and art house films. Good editing is good editing whether it's footage of an elderly Japanese guy who feels mistreated by his children while being unable to vocalise this sense of betrayal or Vin Diesel punching the Rock in the face.

You may not like the aesthetics or the values of the blockbuster but I think, if you are serious about film, then you still need to be able to admire a well made blockbuster.

My problem with the alternative to this viewpoint

[Jonathan M]

Oops... disregard everything after the smiley, I meant to delete that.

[Colin Marshall]

Exactly! That's my whole driving force with this post; I want to appreciate it all. The problems just come when I sit down and actually watch the neglected half of "it all." Blockbusters may indeed wield great technical prowess and its raw cinematic power, but damned if I can get over the stumbling block of why the exist. Not just in an intellectual sense -- "to make money," etc. -- but, y'know, the deeper "why" of their existence.

[Anna]

I can't stop thinking about the concept of keeping your identity small. I can see how letting something becoming part of your identity means you can't be objective about it, but if it's really who you are, then aren't you been untrue to yourself by denying that? In the grander scheme of things, doesn't everything just becomes about consumption (or experience), without regard to value or content?

[Colin Marshall]

Yeah, this is the question that makes my brain fold in on itself. I hold a tentative position, though, of doubting the usefulness/truthfulness of concepts like "who you really are". I've come to suspect that nobody "really" is anything.

[Robby Shaw]

If you move away from the idea of identity a little and begin to think about efficiency and the content of your soul, I should think that Nietzsche would roll over in his grave hearing of someone valiantly trying to absorb all of the un-artistic fluff.

The problem is that watching/eating something that falls below your taste/content threshold is going to deaden your soul, your passion, and especially, your INSTINCT.

Unless, of course, you are merely on a strange fast, and then it might have the opposite effect.

(Just happened upon your blog, Colin. Good work.)

[giubbotti belstaff jacket]

Don't know what is wrong what is rite but i know that every one has there own point of view and same goes to this one