Two Trashy Dames
Two Trashy Dames
Hello! As longtime members of Dames Nation (we remember when it was but a delightful hashtag), we are thrilled to be your guest editrixes this week. We're Kait (@fourteenacross) and Renata (@renatasnacks), two friends and, more importantly in this day and age, podcast co-hosts. We're the hosts of The Worst Bestsellers, a podcast where we read popular books of questionable quality, so you don't have to. (If you're not familiar with our show, some great eps to check out might be the ones featuring the Dames! Such as when Dame Margaret explored the wild world of Tyra Banks's Modelland with us or joined us for our first ever live show, where we pored over Nicholas Sparks's handwritten, tear-stained pages of The Notebook, or when Dame Sophie indulged her Franzenfreude and read Purity with us, or climbed into V. C. Andrews' rocking chair to read My Sweet Audrina with us.
When spitballing about what subject we could possibly speak to on any authority for this issue of TBD, we came to the conclusion that the best thing we could do was embrace our #brand--we unapologetically spend a lot of our time consuming "trash."
Trashy books for our podcast, garbage movies, and guilty pleasure teevee make up a sizeable chunk of our media consumption. And while it's fun and pithy to tweet about your garbage tastes, we thought we'd spend some time exploring what we really mean by "garbage" and why our society is so quick to label anything fun as a "guilty pleasure."
In her New Yorker piece "Against 'Guilty Pleasure'," Jennifer Szalai defines "guilty pleasure" thusly:
Guilty pleasures refer to cultural artifacts with mass appeal—genre novels, catchy pop songs, domestic action movies (foreign action “films,” no matter how awful, tend to get a pass), TV shows other than “Breaking Bad” and “The Wire”—that bring with them an easy enjoyment without any pretense to edification. What’s even more perverse is that these so-called “guilty pleasures” never involve actual transgression: the bland escapades of Bridget Jones are a guilty pleasure; the depraved orgies of the Marquis de Sade are not.
With this definition as a jumping off point, we have some thoughts about trash.
Two Trashy Dames Expound on the Cultural Junk Heap
Kait: Right off, I feel obligated to address the limitations of doing this in a newsletter--we probably don't have time to do a deep dive into perils of capitalism and the deeply classist and frequently racist subtext of people looking down their noses at "guilty pleasures," or even really the way that men's entertainment is often held in higher esteem, while media aimed as women is more likely to be thought frivolous or something to be embarrassed by. (This is something we talk about on our podcast a lot, so if you do want a discussion of that, you're in luck!) But beyond that, people painting whole genres and swathes of media as "garbage" honestly amps up my anxiety the same way as kids who crowed when I got a less than perfect grade on an English essay in high school--I always feel immediately ashamed and nervous, like my enjoying X-Men comics and hating Jane Eyre makes me less worthy and deserve ridicule.
Renata: Speaking of racism, I also want to acknowledge that pop culture can be complicit in holding up our racist/sexist/cissexist/homophobic/generally terrible society, and there's a difference between "Oh, this bro hates Twilight because he thinks it's ruining serious gritty vampire movies because teenage girls like it" and "Oh, this Native American tribe hates Twilight because its portrayal of werewolves reinforces unfortunate stereotypes about their culture." And, again, we don't have time to dig into all of that within the confines of TBD, so we’re trusting that Dames Nation is smart enough to understand that when we speak about our enjoyment of fluffy garbage, we do not mean to excuse the racist/sexist/other-ist flotsam that can get swept up in our otherwise-enjoyable trash bags as we walk along the pop culture tideline, picking up whatever enjoyable whosits and whatsits we can find among the thingamamobs that have washed up on shore.
Tragically astute observations from Sebastian :(
Kait: I'm also fascinated by what, exactly, it is about honestly bad media that we can find so enjoyable. I honestly can't remember a time when watching bad movies and pointing out their ridiculous qualities wasn't a part of my life. I used to tape MST3k off of cable and I spent many an afternoon watching shitty SciFi Channel movies with my brother and father. (And now, of course, it's "SyFy," which in and of itself feels like a sideways attempt to add legitimacy to its brand.) When I moved home after college, I spent nearly all day every day watching a cable channel called Monsters HD (RIP) that played old B horror movies 24/7 with no commercials. My mother would frequently walk in and scoff and wonder how I could watch that trash and I honestly had no explanation. I enjoyed it--it made me laugh. I was having fun. I didn't have any deeper motivation, and, despite this being a discussion on why the label of "guilty pleasure" is one we should try to discard, I still feel like there has to be something that I was getting out of it in order to make those hours worthwhile.
Renata: I've come to realize that if media can be placed on a bell curve of quality, I'm most interested in outliers on either end. A lot of perfectly fine, middle-brow things leave me cold. The appeal of high-quality media speaks for itself. (Though, as has been oft-noted, prestige TV and literature tends to focus unduly on the straight white male experience.) But real pieces of trash are often entertaining in surprising ways. It's just like how Tolstoy said that happy families are all alike but bad movies are all bad in different ways. Like, okay, yes, Hitchcock captured the horror of regular birds, I'm familiar and frightened. But over on the other end of the bell curve, Birdemic is making birds explode with the worst effects imaginable, and I love it. It's unexpected; it's ridiculous; and I don't have to think too hard about it. Honestly: I shouldn't think too hard about it. I spend a lot of time thinking hard about my work and the current political hellscape and other things, it's extremely enjoyable to consume media that I don't have to think too much about.
Kait: I think I probably enjoy more "middle-brow" things than you, but you probably enjoy more "high-brow" things than me. Maybe it's my lack of attention span, but I honestly don't have the energy to wade through dense great literature or most prestige television. I'm just so much more comfortable plowing through a couple seasons of a murder show or reading some fanfiction about my faves. (Which isn't to say you don't do those things, where "murder show" is equal to some other television mundanity.) Especially now that I'm getting older--I just don't have the time to try and force myself to jump on the zeitgeist and I don't have the energy to pretend. I remember having a discussion with a bookseller friend a couple years ago about the compulsion to lie about having read many of the classics because that's what you're SUPPOSED to have read, especially if you're a book kid. I do that less now, but it's still hard. I try not to feel guilty, but even when I'm purposely making a point to say, "These are my tastes, these are things I like, and there's nothing shameful about that," a part of me can't shake the feeling that someone is whispering about it behind my back.
Renata: I also think that maybe the perception of "middle-brow" is changing? I think a lot about nerd gatekeeping and how things like Marvel comics are pretty mainstream now, even though a select handful of (mostly) dudes seem to think that you have to be a member of a small, exclusive club to really appreciate the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I think the MCU is actually probably middle-brow now (or, given Black Panther's deserved Best Picture nomination, high-brow even??), but I'm used to thinking of all superhero stuff as trash. Trash that I love very much. Speaking of which, have we done enough chitchat about the general concept of trash now? Can we move on to showing Dames Nation some of our very favorite pieces of trash, like a magpie or mermaid proudly showing off their glittery rock or silverware collection?
Kait: Yes, let's.
Renata’s Favorite Trashy Thingamabobs
The Fasts and Furiouses
Same, Dom. Strongest imaginable same.
I'm a fan of action movies in general (which is hard, as a lady, since the genre can be fairly problematic and involves a lot of fridged women, I AM LOOKING AT YOU, JAMES BOND FRANCHISE). But the Fast and Furious franchise is a balm to my explosion-loving heart. The movies tend to pass the Bechdel test! They have a diverse crew! They're fun as hell! I'll see you in the theater on opening day for Hobbs & Shaw! (August 2, 2019! It is on my calendar!)
If you'd like to hear me expound about these movies at length, you're in luck: I joined past TBD editrixes, the Bellwether Friends, to discuss the franchise on episode 65 of their podcast.
But also, Roxane Gay wrote about the Fast franchise for The Toast (RIP) and I certainly don't think I can say anything more eloquent about it than she did, so I'll link to her piece and move on.
Vanderpump Rules
I haven't dug deep into the Real Housewives franchise (it's overwhelming! There are too many cities and too many housewives! I'll never catch up!) but I was recently persuaded to start watching the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills spinoff show Vanderpump Rules, set at housewife/entrepreneur Lisa Vanderpump's restaurant SUR (Sexy Unique Restaurant, for real) and it's perfect. In her guide to getting into the show for Broadly, Crissy Malazzo described it this way:
It’s like if that line “I wanted to destroy something beautiful” from Fight Club crawled out of the primordial ooze to become a reality TV show about the beautiful, self-immolating youths—which would make Fight Club actually good.
It's a beautiful trainwreck. It's like an "Oops! All Villains" reality show, where I'm rooting against all of them and loving every minute. (It is perhaps the exact opposite of the Great British Bake-Off, in this and every other way.) Anyway, it's on Hulu if you're looking for a delicious treat for your brain.
Kim Kardashian Hollywood
Of all my pleasures, the Kim Kardashian Hollywood app is the one I come closest to feeling embarrassed about. I know in general "mobile gaming" is an oft-scorned category of time-wasting, and this is a game that doesn't even require the basic skill or attention span of a Candy Crush or a Two Dots. It lets me live out capitalist dreams that I don't even really possess--I have no desire to own a yacht IRL but my KKH avatar has one. And a koala lives on it. More in line with my actual dreams, I have unlocked all the good hair colors. It's a weird fantasy life that I can play on my lunch break or on the bus and never once feel stressed out about.
(That's me and my cat and my yacht and my koala and my fake husband, who in this screencap appears to have put his dick in a box. So thoughtful of him.)
Disney Channel Original Musicals
We would never have bet against you, Troy!!
I love pretty much all musicals, even the ones that aren't trash. (I know that some people think all musicals are trash in comparison to non-musical straight plays, but of course refined TBD readers know better.) Disney Channel Original Musicals, however...are like, objectively not good? But incredibly enjoyable, even for me, a 30-something adult person who doesn't even have any children to make me watch these movies. I love the stilted dialogue (written by adults who have never spoken to a teenager or maybe even another human being in their entire lives) and the aggressive bubblegum pop songs (and their many inescapable reprises, guaranteed to earworm you for weeks). Of course, the High School Musical trilogy remain the gold standard for the DCOM, but there have been some more recent delights, such as the truly bonkers Teen Beach Movie, in which some modern-day cool #teens get sucked inside the world of a Gidget-meets-Grease-style surfer movie musical. (Plus, DCOMs are good ways to keep your eyes on rising young talent: Jordan Fisher, who recently starred as Mark in the Fox Live production of Rent and just joined the cast of Netflix’s To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before sequel, appeared in Teen Beach Movie as the enigmatic surfer known only as "Seacat.") Life-giving!
(On the far right: future star, then-Seacat, Jordan Fisher)
Kes($)ha
Honestly, this gif really speaks for itself.
Most fans of pop music agree that Kesha's (she officially dropped the $ from her name in 2016) most recent album, Rainbow, is a beautiful work of pop art, a triumphant, genre-blending Fuck You to Dr. Luke. (Who, BTW, is still making money off of Kesha! INFURIATINGLY!!) But I'm here to tell you that Ke$ha's pre-Rainbow stuff is totally underrated and funny-on-purpose. (Too often I think people (1) only know “Tik-Tok” and (2) think Ke$ha is too dumb to realize that song is hilarious.) Have you seen the video for "Blow"? Kesha and James Van Der Beek (playing himself, though Ke$ha slanderbeeks him by calling him "James Van Der Douche") have an iconic dance battle. Though Blow's video is hard to top, there are plenty of other songs with lyrical gems like “Dinosaur” (D-I-N-O-S-A/You are a dinosaur/An O-L-D M-A-N/You're just an old man/Hitting on me, what?) and "Cannibal," which has maybe the only pop music reference to Jeffrey Dahmer I've ever heard? (Use your finger to stir my tea/And for dessert I'll suck your teeth/Be too sweet and you'll be a goner/Yeah, I'll pull a Jeffrey Dahmer). Back in 2011, in the debut episode of comedian Louis Virtel's short-lived (because he moved on to better-paying things) web series Verbal Voguing, he described Ke$ha this way: "She has an empowerment anthem called 'We R Who We R', which is a staggering thing to say when you are...trash. But I love trash, see! I prefer that an artist own her trashiness." That is pre-2017 Ke$ha, my perfect trash queen!
Kait’s Wonderful Waste-bin Whosits and Whatsits
We hope you find a dinglehopper you’re really sprung on in here.
Real Murder
Alfred Hitchcock: a total creep, but not without insight!
Speaking of things that are moving from low-brow to middle-brow or even high-brow, I love a good murder. I have a subscription to Texas Monthly just to read their excellent crime articles. As Renata just said to me (out loud), it feels like everyone these days is admitting to a "guilty pleasure" interest in True Crime and laughing about how weird that makes them. I'd argue that the fact that Unsolved Mysteries ran for nine hundred years and the entire existence of Investigation Discovery prove that we've always loved murder. Lizzie Borden's trial was a sensation in its day and people are STILL talking about Jack the Ripper. And there are certainly legitimate criticisms of the true crime genre (chief among them: the way some people use it to glorify the murderers and forget the victims, and the manner in which it portrays cops as absolute authority and unquestionable heroes), but at the end of the day, I can look past those things to excitedly tell you how fucked up the Lindbergh Baby kidnapping was.
Fake Murder
I generally tell people that I'm into "murder" and not "true crime" because my love for this garbage runs past real crimes and into every single murder show on television. I like to joke that I was raised by teevee and by crime teevee in particular— Murder, She Wrote was my favorite show when I was six and my high school years frequently involved hours and hours of Law and Order re-runs. (It is a TRAGEDY that the frequently forgotten Law and Order: Criminal Intent is not available on any streaming platform, even though I recognize that only about five people were as obsessed with it as I was.) This is a thing I definitely inherited from my parents— when I moved back home for a few years after college, our family bonding time was the hours we spent watching Criminal Minds and NCIS once we all got home from work, a habit so ingrained that when our cable was out for a week, we started ordering Criminal Minds dvd boxsets off of Amazon to keep with our routine. The terrible crimes never really get to me, for whatever reason; I'm not haunted by nightmares of gruesome killing. In fact, there's something soothing and predictable about procedural dramas to me. While Law and Order might be famous for its rigid structure, all of them have a reliable, familiar narrative flow. I use them as white noise when I'm working.
Horror Movies
Horror as a genre is something that's almost universally derided by everyone, save for a few outliers that society has deemed respectable enough to be considered "real" media. Just look at how many tweets/articles/bloviating mansplainers spent most of 2017 trying to convince the world that Get Out wasn't REALLY a horror movie. And while I absolutely adore a good, scary, critically acclaimed horror movie (Go see The Wind, you guys), I also own the 1988 Treat Williams + Joe Piscopo movie Dead Heat on dvd. Really bad horror movies are funny. Mediocre horror movies usually at least have a couple good jump scares in them. And, honestly, sometimes "good" horror movies are so tied up in metaphor and artsy fartsy nonsense that they're a waste of money. (I'm looking at you The Witch.)
Comics
Like any medium, comics quality varies from the very good to the very bad. It feels almost sacrilegious to focus on garbage comics considering what a struggle it is for people to take the medium seriously, but if you're reading TBD, you probably already know how good comics can be. But, honestly, ridiculous comics might even be better than good comics. Sure, we all feel for garbage fire Clint Barton when his life is falling apart around him and Katie Kate took his dog, but sometimes you just have to explain to your friends with a straight face all about that time that Magneto kidnapped the X-Men and used a machine to give them all the motor-control and mental capacity of infants, then had a robot nanny care take care of them in humiliating ways. Or about Dracula wanting to date Storm. Or about Spider-Man teaching the Beyonder to poop.
Fanfiction
Look, smarter people than I have written scads of work on why fandom and fanfiction should be more respected than they are. It's no secret that I write fanfiction, and on our show we regularly offer it up as an alternative to some of the worst of the tropey books we read. Fanfiction can be thoughtful and evocative and well written and interesting, but just like any other form of media, it can also be just plain weird and fun. Sometimes you want a novel-length story about the origins of Kravitz from The Adventure Zone, and sometimes you want a mixed media photo fic about how Stargate Atlantis' John and Rodney, two Girl Scout cookies in love, have cookie sex. Sometimes you want really emotional, thoughtful erotica, and sometimes you want to read about your fave as the town bicycle.
We hope you enjoyed hearing our thoughts on trash. Perhaps you felt validated to find another human still playing Kim Kardashian Hollywood in 2019, perhaps you added some new movies to your Netflix queue, or perhaps you simply enjoyed judging our tastes. If you'd like to hear us talk about garbage at greater length, please join us at worstbestsellers.com where we talk about literary trash every other Monday!
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