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The Joys of Snobbery
Is it possible to be “discerning” and have “refined” tastes without being a grump? Can a person be sharply critical of art and entertainment without being constantly annoyed by mediocre works?
In seeking what is good and beautiful, should we readily dismiss lesser works? Should we try to overlook flaws in order to appreciate as much as possible? Or is that settling?
Published in General
I have never understood the Rothko thing. Then again my views on modern art were formed from reading The Painted Word years ago.
On a previous thread, I commented that seeing an opera the first time live is the best way to learn the opera. Modern opera houses (Chicago Lyric, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Toledo, etc.) have the translation on a screen above the stage. If you sit (like I do) in the cheap ($30) balcony seats, you can easily read the libretto while seeing the action. And the operas on TV also have the translation. And there are some operas, such as Tosca, that you’re glad to see once, but have no desire to see again.
There’s a two-thousand-years-old expression to the effect that there can be no purely logical debate about aesthetics. Nuts to that, I say!
I like a bit of everything and am rarely snobbish. So I am willing to chalk up quite a lot to subjective differences of taste. But there are basic objective standards within each genre.
It’s okay to call something crap. But one should generally want to be pleased. Refined tastes are not an excuse for frequent grumpy comments that rob others of joy.
No excuse for grumpy comments, but what to do about the inner dialogue? We snobs are our own victims. I once asked a clerk how she could stand the particularly hideous music that was playing and she responded “What music?” Well she was right, it wasn’t really music, but my point is that I would have given a a lot to have been able not to hear it. I’ve also had many meals the provenance of which I wish I had not known. It isn’t easy being right (or Right).
hehe…
Lohengrin isn’t really that bad.
These are very different things. If ‘one should generally want to be pleased’ means what the lady meant when she said Churchill was easily satisfied with the very best, then yes, it makes sense.
But then there is this business of making other people feel bad–that is imprudent, impolite, uncivil–which has precious little to do with knowing what’s great & what’s not.
There’s table wine and fine wine. Do not confuse them.
When I drink table wine, it’s just to wash down the beef stew. When I drink fine wine, I want the drinking to be the experience. I’m not a snob about table wine, but when the wine costs more than a dollar per milliliter, I get snobby awful fast.
Speaking of The Painted Word:
I fear not.
But I will confess my snobbery: I am a snob about Indian food.
I know I shouldn’t despise people who think butter chicken is the best curry ever, but at some level I do.
I know I shouldn’t despite people who don’t say please or thank you. But I do.
It is a grievous fault.
Um…..reincarnation? Channeling?
I’m intrigued.
So, Zafar, when are you cooking for me? ;) I’ll make kibbe if you make curry.
I am a snob when it comes to originality. My taste in music runs to the Great American Songbook. Too often on my Pandora feed I will hear the opening notes of a Frank Sinatra recording only to find out it’s not Frank. Yes, the Riddle/Mays/Q. Jones arrangements are great, but they were made for Sinatra’s voice and range. And when the original exists why listen to a lesser wannabe?
Sinatra admired Crosby to no end, yet when Frank covered Bing’s hits he substantially changed them and gave them new life. And that can still be done. Michael Bublé took the ballad from Singing in the Rain and turned it into a world class swing tune which I enjoy immensely.
As for opera, well, as Sylvia Fine Kaye once said, “If you don’t speak Italian you think it’s about something.“
I hope I am not an offender Zafar. I love chicken makani. That’s different than butter chicken, right? It does seem to have a lot of delicious fat in it. The food in India was amazing. I still dream about it.
And to translate Mr. Watson from English to American, he said he doesn’t care for French Fries. And what we colonists call “chips,” he calls “crisps.” That’s the natural snobbery of England that we love so well.
I think Zafar may be on to something. I’m not sure to raise an eyebrow over food–not that I disagree with him doing it–in my case, it’s the word philosophy & the people who use it. I find it remarkable, almost every time it happens, how accepted, how widespread, how casual & yet how flattering use of the word is. I do not usually pass comment, but I smile-
If you make kibbe nayye 2ana ra7 itbukh kafta hindi, w mne-kul kill il khuru-f. Tame-m?
Well you do have lovely manners Merina, and since you’re saying nice things about Indian food (oh, this national ego of ours is our downfall!!) I can find no fault in you. Chicken Makkhani does translate as Butter Chicken, but a Murgh Makkhani in India is a far cry from Butter Chicken at your random Indian diner.
I am a massive snob about all kinds of things, but I realize snobbery is usually shallow, so I keep most of them to myself. Chalk most of these down to personal preference, and leave people alone. Openly expressing snobbery unnecessarily divides people.
That said: I am obviously and openly a snob about quality of thought and writing. I have very limited patience for idiots. I suspect most of you share this, and none of us consider it a defect.
Snobbery is bad. But I think most snobbery today is really anti-anti-snobbery. And that’s good.
The anti-snobs were rebelling against the snobs who typically hated anything new and different. That was probably good too.
But then the anti-snobs took over and they love anything new and different. And now they are telling us that a rubber bathtub is the same sort of thing as David.
Anyone looking down on those people is ok in my book.
This is the snobbiest site on the internet!!! Which I like, I just wish we’d stop giving ourselves gold stars. (Because, of course, I am snobby about that too.)
We’re not snobs, Zafar. We are opinionated.
I usually make kibbe bi sanieh with m’humsah. And of course, there’s usually tabouleh or butinjan tabbleh, some juddara, and I make the best baklawa.
It’s a dinner date! Now to just book that flight to Sydney…
Sprezzatura
It’s one of those irregular verbs, isn’t it?
I am understandably particular, You are a snob, They have OCD.
Please take your Klingon discourse to another thread. ;)
Snobbery–or anti-Klingon sentiment?
Does our discrimination, especially within an art form we have studied, bring us joy? I have become more discriminating in my taste in music as the years go by and how it is performed. I think I have traded one kind of appreciation and joy for another. Performers and bands I used to enjoy bore me now, even if they play the same music (songs or tunes) as my current favorites. My source of enjoyment has narrowed. I think about this a lot when I am the only one in the crowd grinding my teeth at that piece or that performance. How sad that I can’t just let it go.
I think snobbishness has to do with it not being enough for you to be able to appreciate something, you must be condescending to those who don’t, while disparaging their taste for things for which you do not share their appreciation.
It took many years to realize that I prefer to have things I love around me, whether it be books, music, the type of art I like, clothing, and home decor. If I don’t like it, I don’t care how “high culture’ it might be, I don’t want it around. There are many things about which I’d like to educate myself in order appreciate them even more and learn to recognize quality, but the same rules hold true.
No snob is going to get me to give up my love of the occasional trashy historical romance novel, true crime TV shows & documentaries, terrible 80’s New Wave music, Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Phantom of the Opera, and love of our annual Lord of the Rings (extended edition, of course) New Year’s Eve 12-hr movie marathon, complete with drinking game featuring shots at scene of gratuitous horse nostrils.
This may be my favorite meme, by the way:
Now that would be interesting. No, just studying his past bach chorales, establishing the rule set, and creating more four-part harmonies as Bach would have done. It’s about as fun as it sounds… And we all had to do it for years.
Zafar – I believe it’s called working in the smoke-filled Bach Room. You have to get a license to it and go through an FBI Bach-ground check.