Taste, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly - Essay Example

In our postmodern society, does it make sense to discuss fashion in terms of 'good' and 'bad' taste Introduction Culture and its influence on our postmodern society can be seen as the eye of the cyclone that taste and fashion circle around. For in trying to define what taste and fashion are, theorists have looked at culture as it is evidently one of the major players the influences how we perceive and conclude what taste and fashion are. In this essay I use empirical data to explore, with reference to the works of Piere Bourdieu's Distinction: A social critique of the Judgement of Taste (1984) and Georg Simmel Philosophical Culture (1911), why in our postmodern society it does makes sense to discuss fashion in terms of good and bad taste. Perhaps the best way to begin such an intensive explanation would be to consider what the principle argument is, and by firstly diverting the attention to the social and cultural correspondences of tastes in fashion. What is culture then and how does it influence our concepts of taste in fashion Culture is defined in many ways, but it is clear that it encompasses a few common and agreed upon basic concepts: religion, values, beliefs, knowledge, attitudes and behaviour. It is without question that these concepts influence whether readily or subtly our understandings of the world around us i.e. how we embrace and perhaps verbally view our tastes in fashion. But one cannot fully understand cultural practices unless culture, in the restricted, normative sense of ordinary usage, is brought back into culture in the anthroplogical sense, and the elaborated taste for the most refined objects is reconnected with the elementary taste for the flavours of food. The ideology of charisma regards taste in legitimate culture as a gift of nature; however scientific observations show that cultural needs are the product of upbringing and education. Surveys establish that all cultural practices (reading, museum visit etc), and preference in literature, painting or music, are closely linked to educational level and "social origin". Taste Taste to the common man is just that which is perceived as a personal preference. It is also largely defined by people as a strategy for managing relations with others, and as a mode of self-discipline which relies on the mastery of a number of general principles that are resources for people to position their own tastes within a specific social sphere. Yet, it is clear that such understandings do not encompass or embrace the obvious fact that culture and society are the catalyst behind these 'personal preferences'. What then is the criterion employed for differentiating between 'good' and 'bad' taste In depth findings lead me to believe that in many instances everyday judgments of taste are not only understood as a question of aesthetics but that they are also a matters of moral, ethical and communal sensibility. This is also seen in Bourdieu's explanation of taste based on the criteria of interest: gratification of pleasure through the senses, utility, or moral position. "Nothing is more alien to popular consciousness than the idea of an aesthetic pleasure that. To put it in Kantian terms is independent of the charming of the senses:" (Bourdieu 1984) It seems relatively difficult to define good taste than bad taste. To some degree it seems easier for people to specify what they don't like than what do like. Bourdieu has observed that "it is no accident that, when they (taste judgements) have to be justified, they are asserted purely negatively, by the refusal of other tastes. In matters of taste, more than anything else, all determination is negation, and tastes are perhaps first and foremost distastes, disgust provoked by horror or visceral intolerance("sick making") of the tastes of others."(Bourdieu 1984:56) Conceptual schemes that people have are invoked to help them classify objects, behaviours, attitudes, or aspects of self-presentation into broad categories of 'good or 'bad' taste. These schemes or ideas have been organized into three prominent analytic spheres, thus aiding in a sense the creation of some form of coherence to taste preference (whether culturally or socially influenced) and fashion. The analytical spheres are mainly: quality, composition and quantity. Quality In order for fashion to be in 'good' taste it must possess certain nonfunctional qualities. Generally notions of elegance, timelessness and classicism are used by a number of professionals to explain the concept of 'good' taste in relation to quality. Often quality is associated with monetary status, although it is clear that one does not need to have a lot of money to obtain quality. Quantity In assessing something or someone as in 'good taste' an important component is one that involves an appreciation of the acceptable quantity for the thing to present to others; that is, emphasising the socially acceptable, 'correct' amount of something. For example wearing clothing that has screaming colours or is just too subtle, or having shoes that are a centimeter too high may prickle a person outside acceptable limits of what is tasteful. Obviously this reverting back to own, personal, cultural and social experience (that mainly encompassing the influence of the media) as these ideas or influences aid to tip the persons view of what is tasteful. Knowing when enough is enough is the expression for when quantity is used to express taste. It is then clear that quantity is also a major player when people decide or experience a personal revelation for themselves and others as to what taste is regardless of whether it is bad or good. The latter of course being the conclusion that good taste is the knowing when too much is just that too much. Composition Composition plays a part in people's assessment of taste because 'things have to go well together'. That extends beyond the simplicity of balance, because it is concluded that good taste is' a measure of a person's ability to select or organise matters in a pleasing way to the majority'. Then question then will be how do people distinguish when things hang together I guess people rely on subtle cues to help them gauge the taste expertise demonstrated in the verbal or physical presentation of others. The usage of word such as harmony, balance, complementary, flow, blending seems to indicate that one has 'good' taste. While 'bad' taste is then associated with words such as clashing, mismatched and garish. Fashion The meaning of the term fashion may be clarified by pointing out how it differs in connotation from a number of other terms whose meaning it approaches. A particular fashion differs from a given taste in suggesting some measure of compulsion on the part of the group as contrasted with individual choice from among a number of possibilities. A particular choice may of course be due to a blend of fashion and taste. Thus, if bright and simple colors are in fashion, one may select red as more pleasing to one's taste than yellow; although one's free taste unhampered by fashion might have decided in favor of a more subtle tone. To the discriminating person the demand of fashion constitutes a challenge to taste and suggests problems of reconciliation. But fashion is accepted by average people with little, demurs and is not so much reconciled with taste as substituted for it. For many people taste hardly arises at all except on the basis of a clash of an accepted fashion with a fashion that is out of date or current in some other group than one's own. The term fashion may carry with it a tone of approval or disapproval. It is a fairly objective term whose emotional qualities depend on a context. A moralist may decry a certain type of behavior as a mere fashion but the ordinary person will not be displeased if he is accused of being in the fashion. Any fashion which sins against one's sense of style and one's feeling for the historical continuity of style is likely to be dismissed as a fad. Just as the weakness of fashion leads to fads, so its strength comes from custom. Customs differ from fashions in being relatively permanent types of social behavior. They change, but with a less active and conscious participation of the individual in the change. Custom is the element of permanence which makes changes in fashion possible. Custom marks the highroad of human interrelationships, while fashion may be looked upon as the endless departure from and return to the highroad. The vast majority of fashions are relieved by other fashions, but occasionally a fashion crystallizes into permanent habit, taking on the character of custom. It is not correct to think of fashion as merely a short lived innovation in custom, because many innovations in human history arise with the need for them and last as long as they are useful or convenient. Fashion is custom in the guise of departure from custom. Most normal individuals consciously or unconsciously have the itch to break away in some measure from a too literal loyalty to accepted custom. They are not fundamentally in revolt from custom but they wish somehow to legitimize their personal deviation without laying themselves open to the charge of insensitiveness to good taste or good manners. Fashion is the discreet solution of the subtle conflict. The slight changes from the established in dress or other forms of behavior seem for the moment to give the victory to the individual, while the fact that one's fellows revolt in the same direction gives one a feeling of adventurous safety. The personal note which is at the hidden core of fashion becomes superpersonalised. Whether fashion is felt as a sort of socially legitimized caprice or is merely a new and unintelligible form of social tyranny depends on the individual or class. It is probable that those most concerned with the setting and testing of fashions are the individuals who realize most keenly the problem of reconciling individual freedom with social conformity which is implicit in the very fact of fashion. It is perhaps not too much to say that most people are at least partly sensitive to this aspect of fashion and are secretly grateful for it. A large minority of people, however, are insensitive to the psychological complexity of fashion and submit to it to the extent that they do merely because they realize that not to fall in with it would be to declare themselves members of a past generation or dull people who cannot keep up with their neighbors. These latter reasons for being fashionable are secondary; they are sullen surrenders to bastard custom. The fundamental drives leading to the creation and acceptance of fashion can be isolated. In the more sophisticated societies boredom, created by leisure and too highly specialized forms of activity, leads to restlessness and curiosity. This general desire to escape from the trammels of a too regularized existence is powerfully reinforced by a ceaseless desire to add to the attractiveness of the self and all other objects of love and friendship. It is precisely in functionally powerful societies that the individual's ego is constantly being convicted of helplessness. The individual tends to be unconsciously thrown back on him and demands more and more novel affirmations of his effective reality. The endless rediscovery of the self in a series of petty truancies from the official socialised self becomes a mild obsession of the normal individual in any society in which the individual has ceased to be a measure: of the society itself. Changes in fashion depend on the prevailing culture and on the social ideals which inform it. Under the apparently placid surface of culture there are always powerful psychological drifts of which fashion is quick to catch the direction. In a democratic society, for instance, if there is an unacknowledged drift toward class distinctions fashion will discover endless ways of giving it visible form. Criticism can always be met by the insincere defense that fashion is merely fashion and need not be taken seriously. If in a puritanical society there is a growing impatience with the outward forms of modesty, fashion finds it easy to minister to the demands of sex curiosity. However, fashion never permanently outruns discretion and only those who are taken in by the superficial rationalizations of fashion are surprised by the frequent changes of face in its history. That there was destined to be a lengthening of women's skirts after they had become short enough was obvious from the outset to all except those who do not believe that sex symbolism is a real factor in human behavior. "Fashion is the imitation of a given example and satisfies the demand for social adaptation, it leads the individual upon the road which all travel, it furnishes a general condition, which revolves the conduct of every individual into a mere example. At the same time it satisfies in no less degree the need of differentiation, the tendency towards dissimilarity, the desire for change and contrast, on the one hand by a constant change of contents, on the other because fashions differ for different classes the fashions of the upper stratum of society are never identical with those of the lower, in fact they are abandoned by the former as the latter prepares to appropriate them." (Simmel 1904 (1957):543) "For Simmel, fashion was a kind of public playing out of taste mechanisms - it was a domanin where levels of public taste were constantly established and re-appraised. Imitation was a fundamental component of this process, because it was the central practice or technique for individuals to orient themselves to the social. As it involved both reflection and mindless copying, Simmel charactersised this component of fashion as at once "a child of thought and thoughtlessness" For the modern person, imitation was not a merely negative thing, for it did free the individual from the responsibility of maintaining self, and the work of generating an authentic individual style." (Woodward & Emmison 299) The chief difficulty of understanding fashion in its apparent vagaries is the lack of exact knowledge of the unconscious symbolisms attaching to forms, colors, textures, postures and other expressive elements in a given culture. The difficulty is appreciably increased by the fact that the same expressive elements tend to have quite different symbolic references in different areas. Gothic type, for instance, is a nationalistic token in Germany, while in Anglo-Saxon culture the practically identical type known as Old English has entirely different connotations. In other words, the same style of lettering may symbolise either an undying hatred of France or a wistful look backward at madrigals and pewter. In custom bound cultures, such as are characteristic of the primitive world, there are slow non-reversible changes of style rather than the often reversible forms of fashion found in modern cultures. The emphasis in such societies is on the group and the sanctity of tradition rather than on individual expression, which tends to be entirely unconscious. In the great cultures of the Orient and in ancient and mediaeval Europe changes in fashion can be noted radiating from certain definite centers of sophisticated culture, but it is not until modern Europe is reached that the familiar merry-go-round of fashion with its rapid alternations of season occurs. Modern fashion tends to spread to all classes of society. As fashion has always tended to be a symbol of membership in a particular social class and as human beings have always felt the urge to edge a little closer to a class considered superior to their own, there must always have been the tendency for fashion to be adopted by circles which had a lower status than the group setting the fashions. But on the whole such adoption of fashion from above tended to be discreet because of the great importance attached to the maintenance of social classes. The increasingly varied activities of modern life give greater opportunity for the growth and change of fashion. No individual is merely what his social role indicates that he is to be or may vary only slightly from, but he may act as if he is anything else that individual fantasy may dictate. Fashion concerns itself closely anal intimately with the ego. Hence its proper field is dress and adornment. There are other symbols of the ego, however, which are not as close to the body as these but which are almost equally subject to the psychological laws of fashion. Among them are objects of utility, amusements and furniture. People differ in their sensitiveness to changing fashions in these more remote forms of human expressiveness. It is therefore impossible to say categorically just what the possible range of fashion is. However, in regard to both amusements and furniture there may be observed the same tendency to change, periodicity and unquestioning acceptance as in dress and ornament. How then can we not discuss fashion in terms of good and bad taste when already from childhood we are 'educated' in seeing through the eyes of our culture and social influences It would be like denying the fact that we do see things differently and there are greater catalysts that act as the binoculars through which we see the world. Arguably one can state that we are in a mind frame of sheep, where we just follow the crowd. But that cannot be true because with time, education and social exposure our views change and expand making us explore the world in a deeper more meaningful way. By not looking and accepting that fashion is an object influenced by culture and society we would be, in a sense, be blatantly refusing to admit the existence of these entities. Film provides a fascinating look into culture. A good yet relevant example is in the case study of how the media (which is a "social influence") influences teenagers, which as we all are aware is where the changing and "finding ourselves" period. Teen Movies - a case study of a form of Popular culture by Robin Julian (Monte Sant' Angelo College, North Sydney) In this case study we are made aware of how our views can be influenced, therefore eliminating the notion that things such as taste are non-existent. The teen movie, or 'teenpic', is a genre which exploits the teenage market as a mass audience. Variously described as 'whimsical, ephemeral and pervasive' (Martin 1994, 65), this is not a strict, enclosed genre. Ideas of what constitutes a popular culture are continually changing. In this case, the nature of the teen movie genre changes very rapidly over time and there are crossovers with neighbouring genres, for example, horror ("Buffy, the Vampire Slayer"), sports ("American Anthem"), musicals ("Grease") and romance ("Romeo and Juliet"). James Fenlon Finley (1957), writing in 'Catholic World', expressed his concern that the public faced the prospect of the movie-makers 'getting hungry enough to start indulging the banal, untrained, irresponsible tastes of the average teenager'. Finley's comments were inspired by the success the year before of Sam Katzman's film "Rock Around the Clock". It is clear from the abstract above that taste and culture are interlinked and by bombarding the young minds with what is suppose to be good or bad taste the media is sending a clear message which indicates that a persons ideas can be influenced into the one or the other direction, depending of course on what the goal is. The evolution of our views influenced by society is evident yet again in the following abstract: The stories of most teenpics are about what theorists call 'the liminal experience' (Martin 1994, 68), that is that intense, suspended moment between yesterday and tomorrow, between childhood and adulthood, between being a nobody and a somebody, when everything is in question, and anything is possible. Importantly, for a teenager, the liminal experience does not feel like a passing phase; it is a complete and significant moment. There, lurking in the background are Pete Townsend's legendary words, penned in the Sixties, 'hope I die before I get old', suggesting a frozen teenage time, a time when the teen movie genre 'keeps falls in the mad thrall of an eternal, delinquent, vacuous youth' (Martin 1994, 64). Cross-cultural influences and generational differences, modern youth-culture and traditional arts, all influence value systems and spirituality. Popular culture, i.e. fashion, music, and slang, provide youth with a voice for social commentary. Conclusion It is clear that the chief aspects like culture and society influence fashion and taste. It seems unavoidable since we are already born into a world where we are made familiar with the concepts of fashion and taste at an early age. Our culture helps us in the path of self acknowledgement and our society bombards us with many options and frame of mind. So clearly one cannot deny the obvious truth that we will discuss fashion in terms of "good" and "bad" taste, because it is to have common sense to do so. Because in refusing to admit to ourselves that these concepts exist would be the ignorant refusal of the things that keep us sane. I think that if one had to put the equation of all the above mentioned issues into a simple mathematical equation it would most probably look like this: Taste + fashion = culture & society After all it is your choice. Or is it And in taking account to the fact that cultures are intermingling as the world is getting smaller through globalization it goes without saying that fashion is gaining a more prominent place in the world. With changes influenced by technological developments it is clear that drastic transformations in the cultural arena will and are being experienced. References Bourdieu, P., 1984. Distinction. A social critique of the Judgement of Taste. Routlede, London Simmel, G 1904 (1957). Fashion. The American Journal of Sociology. LXII(6), 541-558. Robin Julian 2000. Teen Movies- a case study of Popular culture. Monte Sant' Angelo College, North Sydney Woodward, I & Emmison, M ., 2001. From aesthetic principles to collective sentiment: The logics of everyday judgements of taste. St. Lucia, Australia. Poetic 29(2001) 295-316 Sources Internet Fashion and deception http://wed.media.mit.edu/bcd/dsm Pierre Boudieu: Introduction a la Distinction, anglais 1979 http://www.homme-moderne.org/society/socio/bourdieu/distinct/intoUK.html Taste for makers http://www.paulgraham.com/taste.html Read More