Of the Standard of Taste

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. That quote from 1878 novel Molly Bawn, has become ubiquitous while the source material faded into obscurity. Though it is a cliche worn thin by ugly ducklings and grade-school art teachers, its survival is testimony to the truth it contains. It is a succinct reframing of Hume’s essay published over a hundred years earlier whose title I have appropriated for the purposes of this post. The saying is a double entendre because it means that beauty is not only subjective, but also exists only as a quality in the viewer, not inherent to the object itself. Hume, and then Kant not long thereafter, took this to mean that there is no such thing as objective taste, and though I am inclined to agree, I think there is something to be divined from someone’s taste.

The first order of business, or perhaps the only order of business, is to establish what it means to have taste. In common usage, taste is ironically both subjective and objective: people will colloquially both say “that’s not my taste”, to politely indicate that they don’t like something, but it’s not altogether bad, and then comment that someone “has no taste” to mean that they like ugly things. Similar to the literal sensory definition it sprung from, intuitively it should vary from person to person. Someone habituated to eating Thai food will enjoy dishes that are too spicy and sour for a British palate, and the reverse is true as well.

The analogy extends beyond habits, but to upbringing and customs as well. Just as childhood pleasures and memories influence gustatory taste, the same applies to books, movies, visual art, and clothes related during the formative years of ones development. Cultural milieu impacts the food that one consumes, including rituals and what is held in esteem. Does food taste better if it’s been prepared according to religious custom? Someone from an inland city might have been raised to believe that seafood is expensive and rare, while someone living in a coastal city might prize beef. The same goes for brown rice and white rice. One’s experiences will dictate their preference for classical, modern, or contemporary art. Depending on upbringing, Burberry trenches can be elegant or chavvy.

Though sensory taste can be classist (preference for certain wines, delicacies, and preparation methods), aesthetic taste is much more guilty of this. This returns to the conundrum of “not my taste” and “has no taste” once again, and the latter starts to seem a lot more malevolently prejudiced. The only people who have time to devote to aesthetics are those who have had all their basic physiological, personal, and social needs met. Those who are struggling paycheck to paycheck have no capacity to reflect on the complexity of what makes one Mercedes better than another Audi. This isn’t to say that the poor are unable to identify beauty: the Appassionata, Guernica, and Spirited Away can be appreciated regardless of class, culture, or education. However, a nuanced perspective on contemporary art or couture necessitates background and understanding.

In addition to this, the classism of taste is further compounded because like food preferences, many aesthetic preferences are cemented in ones formative years, be it childhood, adolescence, or young adulthood. Becoming wealthy doesn’t admit one to the tasting club, “money doesn’t buy class” people will say, as someone wears loud branded clothing or a luxury car with big rims. Even more sinister is jealousy which then excludes these nouveau riche from their original circles: they repeat “money doesn’t buy class” for that which they understand and envy, and for that which they don’t, they are quick to label pretentious.

However, there is an important distinction to make between having poor taste and having no taste. Although the latter is often used interchangeably with the former, having no taste should be reserved for situations when no decision was taken, for whatever reason. Like no one judges the outfit in which someone rushes to the hospital to see someone who has just been in an accident, when consideration isn’t taken, it’s tasteless, not in bad taste. When someone living paycheque to paycheque buys clothes from Wal-Mart, it’s not an example of bad taste, it’s simply tasteless: aesthetics wasn’t a consideration when making their purchase decision.

I venture so far as to say that even watching movies that are clearly products of the culture industry are not necessarily bad taste, just tasteless. Those who are spoonfed another poorly-made, studio-ordered, streaming television series aren’t making a decision so to speak: they just want something to watch with dinner. Would someone who considers themselves a serious cinephile deign to promulgate the merits of late twentieth-century war films with someone who consumes Hallmark Christmas movies? Of course not. Tastelessness should simply imply that the individual has not made an aesthetic choice in this regard.

But as inaction is an action, this returns us to the initial point that taste is essentially a classist marker of value, which signals the ability to be idle and enjoy doing nothing productive. Although not having taste is certainly better than having poor taste, both indicate a lack of leisurely reflection. Taste not only takes wealth within ones formative years to cultivate, it also requires reflection and a certain degree of innate. Despite the effort made to distinguish bad taste and poor taste, both are ultimately markers of negative value within Dr. Ford’s Flight of the Peacock.

In spite of its classism and seemingly uselessness, taste is important to society. Like the Meryl Streep’s infamous monologue from The Devil Wears Prada, taste in all fields is really a trickle-down effect. It takes Nolan and Raimi to take superhero movies seriously, creating movies that were well-received, but almost pretentious when compared to their predecessors. Tastemakers identify the zeitgeist of the era, and create works to distill that spirit for the masses. Without taste, nothing we enjoy or admire has context or reasoning.

So we need taste, and it will continue to exist. Sensory taste originally helped us assess what was healthy and nutrient dense; though it sometimes works against us now, it still helps with identifying rotten foods and expensive gastronomy. Aesthetic taste is very similar is that it provides fewer tangible benefits, but remains invaluable, not only to signal other humans, but to humanity as a whole. For the culture.