Let's Talk About Art Snobs

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

I am a lover of the arts. I love getting lost in a good book, film, or tv show. I’m constantly listening to music. I even collect vinyls and CDs; I know, how hipster am I? But my taste in art is what some might call basic. What makes me say that, you ask? Well, my favourite genre of music is pop. My favourite musical artist is Taylor Swift. My favourite book series is Harry Potter. My favourite movie is Hamilton. Most of my favourite tv shows are sitcoms. You might notice something everything I just listed has in common, and that is that they are all popular and mainstream. And for whatever reason, in today’s society, popularity equals basic.

If you’re not entirely sure what I mean when I say basic, just know that in Gen Z culture, being called basic is an insult. If someone calls you basic, they’re essentially saying you’re boring, vanilla, and overall uninteresting. Within the last few generations, a hipster mindset has taken over. It’s been decided that liking mainstream and popular content is uncool and “basic,” while liking underground and unknown content is cool, unique, and original. This idea often leads to snobbery, and the belief that if you like art that is popular, that automatically means you have bad taste.

Art snobs are some of the most irritating people to interact with. An art snob is someone who believes that their taste in art- whether it be music, film, or literature- is better than and superior to everyone else’s. Typically, art snobs will put people down or even shame people for liking things that are considered basic. Art snobs are the kind of people who think that pop music isn’t “real” music, Marvel and DC films aren’t “real” cinema, and YA/children’s books aren’t “real” literature. Please notice the air quotes, because all three of those statements are false.

Pop music has a bad reputation, because a lot of it is arguably pretty generic. It was built not to be incredibly emotive and moving, but to dominate the charts as much as possible because of its catchy hooks and replay value. Because of this, pop music can often come across as shallow. But not all pop music is soulless. As I said earlier, pop is my favourite genre, and even saying it, I feel a twinge of embarrassment because admitting pop is your favourite genre is almost like admitting you have bad taste in music. To be clear, I listen to and like a lot of genres, but pop music is what I find myself gravitating towards the most. With any genre, there’s going to be bad stuff out there. There’s a lot of bad pop music out there, but there’s also a lot of great pop music out there.

I mentioned Taylor Swift earlier, and I will forever believe the music she creates is quality and I will die on that hill. I think a lot of people listen to her big radio hits, you know, the Shake it Offs and the We Are Never Ever Getting Back Togethers and assume that all of her music is like that, when that couldn’t be further from the truth. Those songs only scratch the surface of Taylor’s discography; when you dig a little deeper, you find that there are dozens of hidden gems. Songs like All Too Well, Dear John, my tears ricochet, Would’ve, Could’ve, Should’ve, I could go on. Multiple times I’ve played a deep cut from Taylor’s discography and someone I know has said, “this is Taylor Swift? I didn’t know she made music like this.” Because they assumed all she does is make generic pop music. But other than Taylor Swift, there are plenty of other artists out there who I believe make emotive pop music that isn’t shallow- Lorde, Harry Styles, Olivia Rodrigo, Conan Gray, Sabrina Carpenter, Ashe, Billie Eilish and Finneas, just to name a few. But at the end of the day, so what if pop music is generic anyway? Yes, sometimes you want a song that’s perfect to cry to. Sometimes you want a song that tells a story. But sometimes all you want is a song that is catchy and fun and perfect to dance to. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Over the last few years, BookTok has become a cultural phenomenon; and for the most part, I think that’s great because it’s made so many young people interested in reading. But as someone who is a frequent lurker on BookTok, believe me when I say I’ve seen a lot of snobbery on there. In the reading community, there are two genres that are repeatedly not taken seriously, and those are YA and romance. I’m not a romance reader, but I do understand the appeal. YA, however, I do like to read every now and again. I think the reason why those two genres are constantly the bud of the joke is because they’re genres that are often filled with cheesy or cringy lines and tropes, and more often than not, involve a lot of clichés. However, YA arguably has the biggest book audience. Think of how many massive YA books there are- The Hunger Games, The Fault in Our Stars, Twilight, Divergent, most of the viral books on TikTok. And romance in its own right is a massive genre, what with all the insanely popular Colleen Hoover books (not that I’m so sure that’s a good thing as Colleen Hoover is pretty problematic). All this popularity, and yet I see so many art snobs mocking people who read exclusively YA and romance books.

I think it goes the same way as it does for pop music. Yes, there’s a lot of YA and romance books out there that are embarrassingly cringy, but there’s also a lot of good YA and romance books out there that don’t deserve to be discredited just because of their genre’s bad reputation. I enjoy reading YA because it’s fun and exciting. No, they’re not always deep and moving nor is the writing usually the pinnacle of literature, but just as with pop music sometimes all you want is a catchy tune, sometimes all you want in a book is pure entertainment, not some deep message to take away. And YA books are pretty gosh darn entertaining.

But there’s one specific type of snobbery on BookTok I want to discuss- the classic literature snobs. I love classic literature; some of my all-time favourite novels are classics like Little Women, Pride & Prejudice, and Emma. However, just because you read classics, that doesn’t mean you’re better than readers who don’t read classics. There’s a whole toxic community of readers who believe that their taste in books is superior to everyone else’s because they only read classics, not that garbage that’s modern literature, if you can even call it that. F. Scott Fitzgerald could write The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo but Taylor Jenkins Reid could never write The Great Gatsby, blah, blah, blah. We get it. You read classics. For as long as I can remember, there’s been this idea in the reading community that just because you’re a reader, that means you’re better than non-readers. It automatically makes you smarter and more sophisticated and cultured than them, which is not true.

It’s an idea that has always made me uncomfortable. You’re not better than everyone else just because you read. I swear some people read only because they want to feel better than everyone else. I feel the same way about people who boast that they only read classics. Classics are not for everyone. A lot of people can’t stand the old-fashioned language. I love classics, but even I have to be in the right mood to read one because they’re tedious at times. It’s the equivalent of people who brag that they only listen to music from the 70s and 80s and hate all modern music. You should read because you enjoy it, not because you want to rub your supposed superiority in other people’s faces. It doesn’t make you cooler, it just makes you a snob.

A couple of years ago, famous director Martin Scorsese said in an interview that in his opinion, Marvel movies aren’t real cinema. I was originally going to argue against what Scorsese said, but then I read the follow up article he wrote for The New York Times. Listen to this quote: “Cinema was about revelation — aesthetic, emotional, and spiritual revelation. It was about characters — the complexity of people and their contradictory and sometimes paradoxical natures, the way they can hurt one another and love one another and suddenly come face to face with themselves.” How could I argue against that? How could I criticise something so beautifully worded? I’m a literature nerd, I can’t help it.

But still, I think a lot of people dismiss action and superhero films as explosions and car chases and fights in space with no depth to them. I have watched every single movie in the MCU. I’m not going to sit here and pretend like every single second of it is good, quality cinema. But even though its quality isn’t necessarily consistent, it deserves praise in other categories. I am a sucker for lore; for little tiny details and inside jokes and things that only fans will understand. I love when things are woven together and connected. A big part of why I love the MCU is because of that. I love that you need to watch every single film to really get the full picture. I would argue that it is false that Marvel movies have no depth to them. If that was true, could the Carlin Brothers and so many other YouTubers make not one but multiple two hour video essays discussing nothing but Marvel movies and dissecting them frame by frame? It’d be hard to do that with something that has no depth. Yes, there are explosions and car chases and fights in space, but there are also many fleshed out characters with arcs and development. There is still a lot of humanity in Marvel films.

All of this, as a collective, leans into the idea that art = pain; the “tortured artist” archetype. I despise this idea. I whole-heartedly reject the notion that good art must be born from pain and suffering. That is not true. Yes, oftentimes when people are feeling strong emotions of despair, they find themselves turning to a specific artform, whatever that may be, as a form of catharsis, and yes, they often end up creating art that is deep and meaningful and really, really good, however; just as rightfully and just as legitimately, art can be created from feelings of happiness, and joy, and excitement.

At the end of the day, what it all boils down to is this: why can’t we just let people like whatever art they want to? Why do we have to belittle and judge and criticise people who enjoy art that we may personally deem bad? I am someone who holds the belief that art is 100% subjective. You cannot say that a song, or a book, or a film is objectively bad, because I guarantee you, there is someone who disagrees with you. There is no objectivity in art. There is no right or wrong in creative expression. So how about instead of judging people for having “basic” taste, we instead respect each person’s individual opinions and let everyone enjoy whatever the hell it is they want to?

We should all aim to be a little bit less of an art snob.