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Hating Celine…

This is pretty funny:

Wilson’s real obsession here is not Céline but the thorny philosophical problem on which her reputation has been impaled: the nature of taste itself. What motivates aesthetic judgment? Is our love or hatred of “My Heart Will Go On” the result of a universal, disinterested instinct for beauty-assessment, as Kant would argue? Or is it something less exalted? Wilson tends to side with the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who argues that taste is never disinterested: It’s a form of social currency, or “cultural capital,” that we use to stockpile prestige. Hating Céline is therefore not just an aesthetic choice, but an ethical one, a way to elevate yourself above her fans—who, according to market research, tend to be disproportionately poor adult women living in flyover states and shopping at big-box stores. (As Wilson puts it, “It’s hard to imagine an audience that could confer less cool on a musician.”)

2 thoughts on “Hating Celine…

  1. That’s hysterical.

    I think she has an immense natural talent – that is, her voice really is objectively incredible. I’ve never listened long enough to know if her songs are any good. After thirty seconds I get a headache. And I can go from 15,000 feet to sea level in ten minutes without getting a headache.

  2. LOL. You’re right. I heard one of her first songs on the radio before I ever saw her, and liked it. Then I saw her on TV and she scared the hell out of me. There’s something just a bit off, out of proportion, about her that completely turned me off.

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