The Problem with “Guilty” Pleasure

“Let’s face it, the 21st century is not for the fainthearted — we all need a release.”

So reads the tagline for the UK’s biggest alternative club night, Guilty Pleasures. As I climb the familiar carpeted stairs of KOKO in Camden, I hear what sounds like karaoke en-masse, overpowered by the shrill tones of the Scissor Sisters. I emerge onto the third story balcony level of the restored theatre to be met by bright lights, feather boas, and a glittering green sign overhead. GUILTY PLEASURES, it reads, as a troupe of drag queens perform a provocative (and expertly rehearsed) dance routine beneath it.

In early 2013, The New Yorker published a piece by Jennifer Szalai, entitled “Against Guilty Pleasure.” In it, the editor of the New York Times Book Review mediates on the moralisation of 21st century pleasure seeking, examining the contradictory, burdened nature of the term “guilty” pleasure.

Commonly understood to be cultural artefacts with mass appeal, “guilty pleasures” include vapid pop songs, plotless action films or reality television — popular entertainment you’re supposed to enjoy, with your mind on More Important Things. Szalai concludes her piece by branding the very concept of a “guilty” pleasure as the distillation of “all the worst qualities of the middlebrow — the condescension of the highbrow without the expenditure of effort.” In short, she argues that the “guilt” in guilty pleasure is now popularly used to signal an “anxious mediation between high and low, which at its best generated a desire to learn, to value cultural literacy and to accept some of the challenges it requires.”

Around the same time as I stumbled across Szalai’s piece, I started research for my undergraduate dissertation into the work of David Foster Wallace, a prolific American writer whose most popular work of fiction centres upon the search for a missing copy of a film so entertaining that its viewers die from a “pleasure overdose”. The notion of pleasure addiction and entertainment are Wallace’s primary thematic concerns. In the modernist literary universe, Rhys, Huxley, Eliot and Lawrence had already imagined the “pleasure seeker” as passive and egocentric, but Wallace catapulted literary representations of 21st century “guilty” pleasure to new planes. He offers his own antidote to our “pleasure problem” (low quality and highly accessible entertainment): artistic and aesthetic alienation.

Wallace’s reader persists through endless footnotes, scientific descriptions and hostile, run-on sentences; his work a prime example of “pleasure” that pays off only after months of frustration, patience, and determination. This foray into Wallace’s work brought pleasure and entertainment to the forefront of my mind, and the notion of the postmodern “guilt” that we’ve come to attach to it became a recurrent preoccupation.

There’s a reason that the term “guilty pleasure” only began to emerge in the late nineteen-nineties; it’s 21st century specific, and I want to understand why. What is it about our generation that makes our brand of pleasure and indulgence so distasteful to that of our parents?

Millennial buzzwords are strewn about endlessly: entitled, narcissistic, overeducated, apathetic — I’m unconvinced. I have a feeling that there’s something more salient beneath the surface; something entwined with the proliferation of technology, and subsequently the proliferation of choice. If Wallace and Szalai both speak to a sentiment that’s very real, it’s also very American. The Guilt they refer to is specific; it’s reality-TV, drive-In, US-capitalism Guilt. I’m interested in finding out more about what the idea of “guilty” pleasure looks like for my generation in the UK.

Back in London, Sean Rowley’s ‘”Guilty Pleasures” club night, which began as a five-minute interlude on his Radio London show, has transformed into a nationwide phenomenon over the past fifteen years. Described as the “grand dame of alternative club nights,” it’s been entertaining the nation with cult-pop classics, feathers and glittery indulgence since the millennium.

If this were to be a foray into the confused landscape of 21st century pleasure seeking, I thought it appropriate to embrace our nation’s “guiltiest” pleasure (violently irritating pop music), for an entire night. With my flatmate coerced into participation, I donned the comfiest jeans I own, tied my hair into two unsightly plaits, and ordered an Uber.

Rowley’s “Guilty Pleasures” night markets itself as “immersive and unashamedly unapologetic,” the only place to “ditch the guilt and focus on the good”; that being Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry and Whitney Houston. But it’s not just about pop, there’s also an actor dressed up as a vicar, and a confessional booth in which you can “repent for your sins and love of pop.” This is not really an event themed around pleasure at all; it’s one themed around guilt, with a bit of unsettling religious iconography thrown in.

The venue compliments the theatrical nature of the event perfectly, whilst simultaneously offering up its own irony — it’s a Grade II listed theatre and one of the premier live music venues in London. It has played home to some of the most notorious events in UK music history, particularly popular with new wave and first wave punk bands (hosting the likes of The Clash, The Dickies and The Boomtown Rats). For a venue so steeped in British musical history, listening to Carly Rae Jepsen there feels unnatural; and perhaps that’s the beauty of it. The grandeur and reputation of the venue is so conspicuously in conflict with the playlist that you’re made to feel as though you’re being ironic just by being in attendance; taking comfort in a sort of collective superiority. The music’s “bad”, but the venue’s not — so you’re somehow excused.

I’m certain that, drunk and covered in glitter, we weren’t all there to ponder the postmodern irony of our 21st century existence; “Guilty Pleasures” is innocent, brazen fun. The night lacks the pretence you feel standing at the back of dark club in Peckham where they’re playing minimal house at 4am; it’s just gone 12, and everyone here is dancing flamboyantly as giant multicoloured balloons fall from the ceiling at 20 minute intervals.

It’s interesting to note that, owing to our privilege and good fortune, we could have opened a new tab that Friday night and googled the top ten books that were going to enrich our 20s, or the most groundbreaking films of the century. I could have downloaded that Enlightening Book to my kindle at the click of a button, and the Greatest Film Of the 21st Century is probably available to stream on Netflix. Instead, hundreds of Londoners were doused in glitter in Camden at 2 am, singing along to the Backstreet Boys. In her book in entitled The Problem with Pleasure, it’s what Laura Frost introduces as “excessive accessibility,” which creates something called a “paradox of choice”.

Our generation’s “guiltiest” pleasures are, more often than not, the things that we know and love; a sitcom we’ve watched through 7 times or a film with a rating of 26% on Rotten Tomatoes that we fell in love with at 15. Is there something to be said about a specific, 21st century “guilt” that we associate with repetition and safety?

In Barry Schwarz’s The Paradox of Choice, he argues that, the greater the number of options available to us, the less satisfaction we derive from the decisions we make. He makes a case for millennials perpetually feeling overwhelmed by choice, which might explain our tendency to retreat into familiar spaces in search of comfort.

In a world where our choices are almost entirely unlimited, perhaps this is the reason I’d actively choose to watch Bridget Jones’ Diary for the 600th time, rather than actually watching Citizen Kane (so that I can finally stop pretending to have watched Citizen Kane). There’s a safety in predictability, and a comfort in not having to choose. In Infinite Jest, Wallace’s reader is warned, not necessarily against individualistic pleasure-seeking, but against the system it manifests: a system which reveres “the sacredness of the individual choice” as “utterly sacrosanct”. Just as Schwarz poses — the fact that some choice is good doesn’t necessarily mean that more choice is better.

Just as there’s a safety in predictability, our generation takes a similar comfort in irony. Wallace illuminates:

Watching television is pleasurable, and it may seem odd that so much of the pleasure my generation takes from television lies in making fun of it. But you have to remember that we grew up as much with people’s disdain for TV as we did with TV itself.

Take, as an example, E4’s ‘First Dates’ — the most objectively “terrible” show that I love in a genuine way. It’s the epitome of that sweet-spot between low production value and high emotional payoff. It’s a show that’s formulaic, voyeuristic and objectively “bad,” but somehow manages to be comforting, primarily because it’s a joy to make fun of. This type of television is not recognisably “good,” but appeals because it engages without demand, providing us with something to mock.

Postmodern art notoriously draws on this same notion — the interpretation of individual experience, self-consciously and ironically commenting on formulae or styles borrowed from the past. The art we’re exposed to and the literature we consume is built upon irony and the presumption of a “superior distanced selfhood.” Frederic Jameson defined the postmodern sphere as one in which “culture has become a veritable second nature”. He argues that, in our overly commercialised universe, culture has become a commodity in its own right. It’s what he deems “sheer commodification as process.” If, indeed, culture is commodity, then patterns in consumerism apply to pleasure seeking just as aptly as they do to supermarket shopping.

When you’re traipsing through your nearest Sainsbury’s local after a long day at the office, you’ll always be more tempted to buy a branded product; something familiar that you’ve seen advertised, or have bought before. Our “guilty” pleasures tend to be the same — familiar, comfortable and instantly recognisable.

Time and commitment play an equally crucial role in our generation’s preoccupation with “guilt” and pleasure. Free time is more precious than ever before, the number of people working more than 48 hours a week having increased significantly over the last ten years.

In comparison to other European countries, we average a full three working hours per week more in the office. Do longer working days and higher professional expectations have significant consequences on the ways we choose to unwind? Goldman Sachs recently published an infographic exploring the effects of the Millennial generation’s “coming of age” and the impact we’re going to have on the economies we contribute to.

Our median marriage age is now 30 (compared to 23 in the 1970s), with a huge increase in the percentage of young people reluctant (or unable) to buy property, living at home with their parents. It’s not just homes though — we’re just as reluctant to invest in cars and luxury goods. “25 years from now,” argues Jeremy Rifkin, “car sharing will be the norm, and car ownership an anomaly.” We’re the largest generation in Western history and we have access to more information than ever before. Our “pleasure” time is shortening, which might be responsible for the fact that we’re less likely to put in the work required to appreciate “high” art.

We’re exercising more, we’re smoking less and we’re using apps to track our health, banking and shopping. There is a distinct change in the way we consume goods, which goes hand in hand with the changing way in which we consume entertainment.

In Bauman’s Intimations of Postmodernity, he argues that “what there is, is only the constant urge to structure everything,” but that true structure (of society, of time, or space) doesn’t exist in a postmodern world.

Postmodernism signals the rejection of structural confines; a world in which we find ourselves unconstricted by time (if the shop is closed, we order food at 3am), entertainment (most of us have not watched a scheduled television show in roughly 5 years) or space (we communicate online, travel internationally and relocate more readily than any other generation). A recent study conducted by Verizon found that we’re replacing real time television with On Demand entertainment, expecting everything we consume to be broadcast in ultra-high definition. 65% of millennials use a secondary device while they’re watching TV, their focus split between two different means of consumption at any given time. I’ll be the first to admit that I will probably never pay for a TV license in my adult life; everything I consume is streamed, and the same applies to almost everyone that I graduated with.

The study ends by advising how digital media companies can expect to “keep up” with changes in millennial viewing habits: “marathoning and binging must be supported,” it states. Just as technology is shaping the way we consume, the way we consume is shaping technology; this is where the problem lies. If our “guiltiest” habits are being exposed, they’re simultaneously being accommodated and encouraged.

In her book, Frost argues that the “problem with pleasure arises when we conceptualise different kinds of pleasure as mutually exclusive and their mixture as perverse.” Her point is that a fascination with difficult art (Wallace) should not be jeopardised by, or compared to, an appeal to the senses (Miley Cyrus). As a generation, what we tend to pass judgement upon is the latter — assigning the term “guilty” to what should simply be considered sensory. I’d argue, however, that this is not the only problem with the way that we experience pleasure in the 21st century.

When asked to detail his own guilty pleasures, Dave Grohl famously replied:

I don’t believe in them. If you fucking like something, like it. That’s what’s wrong with this generation: that residual “punk rock guilt”.

I don’t think that the question is whether we consider any given pleasure to be “guilty” (or what we base that judgement upon), but rather, the values that manifest when we assign guilt, and more importantly, what those values say about our generation, consumption habits and ultimately, our future.