I absolutely detest this take. The notion that understanding things makes them less enjoyable is just assinine bullshit peddled by people who feel insecure about their ignorance.
And I do want to be absolutely clear about what I’m saying here; the problem is the insecurity, not the ignorance.
Ignorance is, by and large, morally neutral. Everyone has things they are ignorant of. We can’t all be experts on everything, and expertise is not a requirement for enjoyment.
But once you start deluding yourself into believing that ignorance is some kind of morally or practically superior state - that you have achieved some kind of zen nirvana by not knowing things - you’re one step shy of putting on a MAGA hat.
The elitist cinema snob who can’t enjoy anything exists in the same place as the hipster barrista who refuses to acknowledge that filter coffee exists. You have never actually met this person. What you have, perhaps, met are people with different tastes than yours. People who don’t enjoy Bayformers but do enjoy Parasite. Why is your enjoyment of the former morally superior to their enjoyment of the latter? What leads you to believe that the joy you experience from the former is greater than the joy they experience from the latter? Do you have any evidence for that at all, or is just something that needs to be true in order for you to feel good about yourself?
Again, there is nothing morally wrong about enjoying Bayformers or whatever. If those movies bring you joy, that’s great. There is so much trash that I unironically love. You can enjoy things despite their flaws, and you can even enjoy things because of their flaws. No one is coming to arrest you for your love of Naruto.
But if you truly believe it’s OK to enjoy those things, grow the fuck up and act like it. Stop inventing miserable strawmen in a pathetic act of self-justification. And stop getting so fucking insecure every time someone says anything bad about a thing you enjoy. If your entire fucking philosophy is that it’s OK to enjoy things that are trash then why are you so god damn upset about people pointing out that they’re trash? Own it. Fucking commit. Show some fucking backbone and proudly enjoy the things you love instead of fantasizing about how everyone who disagrees with you is secretly miserable.
I mostly agree with you, but I don’t think that the “take” you criticize is really present in this meme.
I read the meme as: “Sometimes when I watch a movie, part of me enjoys it impressionistically and another part of me does not enjoy the lack of depth. I struggle to clarify what exactly I liked about the movie, but I can express it as whimsy. It’s easy to clarify what I didn’t like about the movie, and it makes me sound like a high-brow film critic.
Of course, my true opinion on the movie lies somewhere in the middle.
Surely we are all like that, to some degree.”
I absolutely detest this take. The notion that understanding things makes them less enjoyable is just assinine bullshit peddled by people who feel insecure about their ignorance.
And I do want to be absolutely clear about what I’m saying here; the problem is the insecurity, not the ignorance.
Ignorance is, by and large, morally neutral. Everyone has things they are ignorant of. We can’t all be experts on everything, and expertise is not a requirement for enjoyment.
But once you start deluding yourself into believing that ignorance is some kind of morally or practically superior state - that you have achieved some kind of zen nirvana by not knowing things - you’re one step shy of putting on a MAGA hat.
The elitist cinema snob who can’t enjoy anything exists in the same place as the hipster barrista who refuses to acknowledge that filter coffee exists. You have never actually met this person. What you have, perhaps, met are people with different tastes than yours. People who don’t enjoy Bayformers but do enjoy Parasite. Why is your enjoyment of the former morally superior to their enjoyment of the latter? What leads you to believe that the joy you experience from the former is greater than the joy they experience from the latter? Do you have any evidence for that at all, or is just something that needs to be true in order for you to feel good about yourself?
Again, there is nothing morally wrong about enjoying Bayformers or whatever. If those movies bring you joy, that’s great. There is so much trash that I unironically love. You can enjoy things despite their flaws, and you can even enjoy things because of their flaws. No one is coming to arrest you for your love of Naruto.
But if you truly believe it’s OK to enjoy those things, grow the fuck up and act like it. Stop inventing miserable strawmen in a pathetic act of self-justification. And stop getting so fucking insecure every time someone says anything bad about a thing you enjoy. If your entire fucking philosophy is that it’s OK to enjoy things that are trash then why are you so god damn upset about people pointing out that they’re trash? Own it. Fucking commit. Show some fucking backbone and proudly enjoy the things you love instead of fantasizing about how everyone who disagrees with you is secretly miserable.
Art isn’t a puzzle to decode.
I mostly agree with you, but I don’t think that the “take” you criticize is really present in this meme.
I read the meme as: “Sometimes when I watch a movie, part of me enjoys it impressionistically and another part of me does not enjoy the lack of depth. I struggle to clarify what exactly I liked about the movie, but I can express it as whimsy. It’s easy to clarify what I didn’t like about the movie, and it makes me sound like a high-brow film critic.
Of course, my true opinion on the movie lies somewhere in the middle.
Surely we are all like that, to some degree.”