I’ve been feeling under the weather all week, and I haven’t had any very profound thoughts, so I decided to start a new meme. I got the idea for this from a conversation with my mother a while ago when she made some passing mention of the TV show The Sopranos. I remarked, “You know, The Sopranos is one of those shows that I’ve heard nothing but praise for, but have no desire to ever see.” My mother said, “Me too.”
This got me to wondering how many other people experience that. So here’s my variation on the Caesar’s Bath meme: what books/TV shows/movies does everybody else seem to like but somehow even the terms of their praise turn you off? Here are some of mine:
– OK, so why don’t I watch The Sopranos, I mean apart from not getting HBO? For one thing, I just don’t share the American fascination with organized crime. This is also why I haven’t seen any of the Godfather movies. For another thing, I’m not interested in stories about families ruled over by monster-mothers. It’s not a type of family dysfunction I relate to, and generally I find dysfunctional families more painful than entertaining to watch, even (especially?) when it’s meant to be funny.
– Pulp Fiction. This is also under the “not fascinated by criminals” heading, but it’s also due to the fact that I’m not interested in artworks that seem to be made in a pop-culture echo chamber. Much of the praise for this — and a lot of books and movies these days actually — seems to focus on how cleverly it plays around with pop-culture, without ever touching the ground particularly. I don’t know, thinking about that sort of thing just makes me want to go out and get a life.
– Unforgiven. This type of thing runs into trouble with me because it’s a fresh take on a genre that I don’t really know the stale version of. I grew up after Westerns had ceased to be popular, so it’s not part of my personal mythos.
– Philip Roth. Or any of a whole bunch of authors who seem to write mainly about the problems of being a perpetually horny male. Part of me feels like maybe I should learn about this because the world seems to be full of perpetually horny men, but generally this falls into the category of things I don’t really want to know about.
– Catcher in the Rye. Like many popular works, this has probably suffered from being over-imitated, so the concept no longer seems that fresh or interesting. However, any work that depends on freshness to begin with is probably doomed to have a limited shelf life.
– Platoon. I remember this came out when I was in high school, and my math teacher said I should see it so I’ll know not to let it happen again. I have trouble with these works that strive mainly to expose the horror of something or other, because a) I have a pretty good imagination, and I don’t need to be slammed over the head with it to know that war is horrible, and b) exposing the horror of something is pretty easy; I’m a lot more impressed with artworks that actually show alternatives to it.
So, anybody else want to play? Maybe hearing from some men would balance this out, since I notice this is an awfully guyish list of works that I’m rejecting sight unseen here.
Updated to add: Dash played here, Mary Beth here, and T.S. O’Rama here. Judging by the responses, I may not have been clear about what I’m getting at with the meme. I didn’t mean any huge pop-culture phenoms that you don’t like; there are a lot of those that are as widely hated as they are loved (Da Vinci Code, Survivor, Britney Spears, etc.). I was thinking of things that you seem to hear nothing but good things about from critics/friends/people you respect but even while you’re listening to them tell you how wonderful it is, you’re thinking, “Boy, that sounds like it is not my thing.” I find that a somewhat more challenging phenomenon because, while I’ve never had to explain to anybody why I don’t watch American Idol, I have had to defend my non-viewing of things like The Godfather, it being widely considered one of the best movies ever made and all.
I tend to have a version of that reaction to whatever’s the current middlebrow literary bestseller. But in those situations I think I’m reacting less to the book itself than to the context of the recommendation, which tends to be, “Hey, I just read this book! It’s cool! Don’t you like books? You read a lot, right? You should read it.” I’m always a bit irked by the unspoken assumption that the culture of reading is monolithic, that anyone who is a serious reader will *of course* love the critically-acclaimed novel of the moment.
(On a not-entirely-unrelated note, I also get annoyed when when people say to me, “You like science fiction? I love Philip K. Dick and Robert Heinlein!” to which I always want to say, “You do know that there is science fiction that has been written in the last twenty years, and that some of it has even been written by women and people of color, right?”)
Comment by Rilina — May 26, 2006 @ 4:59 pm
I know what you mean about the current literary hotness. I must admit I’m sort of prejudiced against such books because I figure that the current Arbiters of Literary Taste must be a lot like whoever picks the short fiction for The New Yorker, which suggests that said Arbiters are really on a different wavelength from me. (It’s funny because I adore so much of TNY’s nonfiction, but I’ve learned to just skip over the short stories by now.)
Comment by Camassia — May 26, 2006 @ 6:38 pm
Hi, found this via Dash. I played at my place. Thanks for letting me vent!
Comment by Mary Beth — May 27, 2006 @ 8:39 pm
Sex in the City (blech), and Seinfeld, and Friends.
Kill Bill or anything by Tarantino.
Comment by Elliot — May 29, 2006 @ 2:35 am
“When a book makes a sensation it is just as well to wait a year before you read it. It is astonishing how many books then you need not read at all.” Somerset Maugham, “The Voice of the Turtle”
Comment by Richard Lawrence Cohen — May 29, 2006 @ 7:09 am
Monty Python. I’ve always been a nerd, and many of my friends have always loved everything the Pythons ever did. It’s precisely the sort of thing that I might be expected to enjoy. But I have no interest in their work whatsoever. I think part of the problem is that their humor relies upon unexpected juxtapositions, and my friends essentially ruined it for me by memorizing the routines and reciting them to me awkwardly but nearly verbatim.
Comment by Tom T. — May 29, 2006 @ 10:19 pm
I don’t know if this is appropriately pop-culture-y, but I haven’t been able to work up any interest at all in the books of Brian McLaren (”New Kind of Christian,” “A Generous Orthodoxy,” etc.). The way people describe and praise them makes me think I would find them insufferable.
Comment by Lee — May 30, 2006 @ 8:29 am
Rather than avoid things, I tend to see things that get great reviews and then wonder, “What was up with that?” “Pulp Fiction” is an example. I avoided it because of the reviews (I have a limited tolerance for sardonic humor about murrder and mayhem (though, even though I feel challenged to justify it by my pacifist convictions, I h do see war and crime movies.) I don’t usually avoid things that are favorably reviewed by people I trust. So Roger Ebert’s affirmation will suck me in. But sometimes I’m left with “Huh?” I do, however, usually avoid movies about the Holocaust (because I think they tend to diminish the event to “perceivable” size) and most summer comedies in movies.
“Friends” and “Seinfeld” are examples of things I just don’t get.
Dwight
Comment by Dwight — May 30, 2006 @ 8:32 am
In my experience, Python is funnier being re-enacted by friends anyway. The guys were better at writing than performance imho.
Comment by Camassia — May 30, 2006 @ 8:40 am
Seinfeld, definitely. “American Idol”, obviously; “Middlesex”, Jeffrey Eugenides; Kanye West…
Comment by Hugo — May 30, 2006 @ 11:35 am
Thanks for the meme! I linked to this entry from my blog.
I’d include Matthew Barney’s Cremaster film series, The Davinci Code (the book), Survivor, Sex in the City.
Comment by Troy — May 30, 2006 @ 1:12 pm
What baffles me with trailers that seem sub-moronic is the whole X-man phenomenon. It’s like Star Trek was–back when it was new–idiotic–but apparently with a huge and loyal following.
Comment by Rob — May 31, 2006 @ 5:30 am
Close to Home.
LOTR. I’ve tried three seperate times to read these books. Yes, yes I’ve heard all about their contribution to the scifi/fantasy genre and how he really just wanted to world build, but it wasn’t very good story telling.
City of Angels. If I’m going to see a drama/romance? I would like it to follow the standard romance formula. K thx.
Most of the kind of books that you have to read for AP or Honors English. These books were declared Good long ago by dead white guys, and are mostly books about dead white guys written by dead white guys. Can we have something a little more relevant please? Did you not notice over half the class was girls? And don’t give that pitiful Z for Zachariah. As far as I can tell, english class is suppose to teach you how to break down the elements of a story/different types of written media and create your own. Um, why do we have to read outdated books to do that? And why do we always do Greek and Roman myths? There were other cultures with fun myths that adhere to the archtype forms.
The Great Gatsby. I get the feeling I was suppose to take him seriously, but I couldn’t.
The Scarlet Letter. Emo whipping boy reverend? You made me laugh.
Seventh Heaven.
Comment by Carnadosa — May 31, 2006 @ 12:04 pm
This isn’t quite on topic, but your post helped me realize that there’s such a thing as “Approved Clergy Literature.” To get on the Approved Clergy Lit list it seems helpful to: 1. Be interviewed by The Christian Century, 2. Be quoted in a Barbara Brown Taylor sermon, or 3. Be quoted extensively in a work of feminist pastoral theology.
There’s things I’ve read on the Approved Clergy Lit list, and things I haven’t/won’t:
Yes: P.D. James, J.R.R. Tolkien, John Updike
No: Marilynne Robinson, Toni Morrison
For the Most Part, No: C.S. Lewis. (A book titled “The Horse and His Boy?” I mean, Why bother?)
As far as I can tell, the Aubrey-Maturin series is not on the Approved Clergy Lit list, and I hope it never makes the canon, so I can still regard myself as something of a lit heretic.
I’m currently reading a book called “Eat this Document” because I saw it in the library the same day as I read “Eat this scroll” from Ezekiel for my morning devotion. Is that a good method for choosing books? There’s a good passage in there about how you can be like totally non-conformist and still be like totally into The Beach Boys because a cult classic isn’t necessarily something that nobody’s ever heard of. A cult classic can also be larger than life. Which makes me feel better about getting on the American Idol bandwagon.
This is a long comment. Have I started blogging again?
Comment by Marvin — June 2, 2006 @ 5:15 am