Everyone is, understandably, so negative these days. There’s endless list of grievance. Our politics is rotted inside out. Our institutions have whittled down into an absurd hollowness. War continues to brutalise and spread untold misery. Why does it matter if people just want to be left alone to enjoy Marvel movies and listen to Top 40? Just let people enjoy things, right?

It’s easy to get wrapped up in the rosy, idealistic sentiment that all art and entertainment is subjective and is thus equal. But that’s far from true, and making the distinction is important. The popular or mainstream is a place of business, pushed onto a broader public with little incentive to expose anything that’s outside of it. It’s not even necessary in this place of business to entertain or provide a quality experience if there are revenue sources. It’s a restricted realm that only accounts for a tiny fraction of the human imagination.

By submitting to a ‘just let people enjoy things’ mentality we normalise an incurious society, unbothered by the wonders or depths of our creativity. It’s not a requirement that everyone needs to engage with the art they experience or the entertainment they consume on a deeper level, but it is certainly grey skies for culture if a push towards something more meaningful is seen as antagonistic.

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Some are happy to be left to their own devices, forming a bubble around the criticism pointed toward what they consume through fandom. There are plenty of adults who are content to intellectually infantilise themselves, and encourage this infantilisation, and this shows when we look at the popularity and audience of certain trends.

Physical books have seen a sales revival from their predicted death by Kindle and part of that can be attributed to the success of the young adult fiction genre (commonly abbreviated to YA). While it’s a positive thing that young people are willing to engage with reading tailored to their demographic, that’s not the whole story. 51% of YA books are purchased by people between the ages of 30 and 44, with the vast majority admitting that the purchase was for their own enjoyment.

What do adults get out of books written with young teens in mind? These books are simplistically written, with upfront emotions that relate to a young teenage mindset. Either simple stories with strong, unambiguous emotional beats still have mileage to the casual reader, or there is a state of arrested development, where engagement with the world of literature fails to move past an early high school level.

“As long as people are reading, it can only be a net positive” is a prevalent but hollow pushback. Not all books are equal, and culture sits in stasis if there are no moves to differentiate between the value of works. Historically the notion of high value works was determined by canons, and in literature’s case, the Western Canon. This encompasses all the literary works broadly accepted as exceptional in some way. Shakespeare, Dante, Chaucer etc.

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Of course, this has its own problems. It’s dated, problematic, and intellectually incurious to restrain a canon of greatness to Western works and from a Western perspective only, and how can a canon evolve and add to itself if brilliant, new works lack the history of critical rigour required? As much as stiff academics and literary purists swear by the fundamentals of the Western Canon, there is no real answer to differentiating the value of works, but that doesn’t reduce the need to at least attempt to set up simple value judgements.

Engaging with, understanding, and enjoying something like the work of Chaucer is just factually a richer and more meaningful act than the endless reading of YA books will ever be, and points to an example of high creative achievement. It’s hardly elitism to point out fact.

The Herald: It is much more worthwhile and enrichening to engage with the work of Chaucer than to be confined to endless pages of YAIt is much more worthwhile and enrichening to engage with the work of Chaucer than to be confined to endless pages of YA (Image: Britannica)
Yet, it should be said that elitism when it comes to art is necessary, and not always a bad thing. Art is richer when it’s inclusive and encompasses varied walks of life, and historic elitism in the arts was directly or indirectly in opposition to such inclusivity, but elitism is still necessary when art is so at the mercy of commercial opportunity and the predilections of the marketplace. If no gatekeeping occurs and no value judgements are made, then art simply becomes a product with no meaning. Art made in a capitalist society will always be pushed to commodify.

Criticism cannot be restrained for the peace and mind of mass, unabated mainstream enjoyment. It’s important that those who engage with the arts, and the critics who serve to observe and critique the arts, understand how popular works operate culturally, in the marketplace, and in people’s heads, and provoke thought and discussion – and dissension – on such things.

It’s an anti-intellectual stance to shut down critique of Marvel movies, Top 40, YA, or whatever widely enjoyed thing it may be. Maybe the world would be a little nicer and a little gentler if we allowed people to close themselves in and let culture flow without dissent. But as political culture shows, culture is a constant battle. Nothing good comes from being on the sidelines.