Welcome to the Era of Unapologetic Bad Taste

Perhaps the backlash isn’t coming because there’s so clearly nothing of substance to get up in arms about. Who but the dourest prudes are left to trash the bad-taste aesthetic, when we’re all busy trying to shock the pandemic into submission by living—vicariously, if not physically—as if we’re immortal?

There’s obviously something shallow about trading genuine cultural affinity for cosplay, yet it also reflects an understanding that style can signify a fleeting personal or societal mood more than a fixed identity.

It makes sense that norms are shifting in this direction as Gen Z’s influence spreads. Raised on social media, with access to once illicit bad-taste touchstones like Rocky Horror just a click away, they’ve largely replaced IRL subcultures with a constellation of aesthetics—cottagecore, dark academia, Y2K—to be performed, then discarded or demoted t... See more

Now it takes more energy, more audacity, more spectacle to jolt us out of our malaise—and that’s where bad taste comes in.

Where good taste is demure, bad taste is bawdy. Where good taste is minimalist, bad taste is maximalist. Where good taste whispers, bad taste screams: “Look! React! Feel!”

The upshot of taking mass culture seriously has been a growing awareness that much of what we call good taste is merely an aesthetic like any other.

The old high-low spectrum was policed by people who shared identity markers, experiences, and educational backgrounds, so it reflects their prejudices.

what’s remarkable about this particular pendulum swing is that after centuries of wrestling with hierarchies of taste, the cultural stigma that has always come with indulging in bad taste has disappeared.

And nothing kills numbness like a sensory onslaught—color, sound, hedonism, melodrama, sleaze.