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By exploring
taste, kitsch, culture, fans, the state of contemporary criticism,
Quebec nationalism, and economics in Céline Dion's
Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste,
Carl Wilson manages to produce one of the most interesting
and erudite books on why people love and hate certain kinds
of art. Starting from the position that everyone reading the
book is more akin to Wilson than they are the average Dion
fan, he slowly begins to erode the illusion that liking or
disliking a particular musician or band makes one superior.
Wilson
begins the book with a pop-cultural touchstone that will resonate
with many readers—Elliott Smith's performance on the
1997 Academy Awards. His song for the Good Will Hunting
soundtrack, "Miss Misery," was nominated for Best Original
Song, as was the ubiquitous and overly emotional Céline
Dion number, "My Heart Will Go On" from Titanic. Smith
appeared in an ill-fitting, borrowed white Prada suit, and
was denied even the stool he requested to sit on. Later, Dion
performed, dramatically dressed and gesticulating wildly as
she does. In this way, Wilson sets up the obvious schism between
his readers who are probably Elliott Smith fans (or at least
sympathizers), and the rest of the world who adored the sentimentality
and predictability of "My Heart Will Go On." Clearly, there
is a notion that Elliott Smith fans are the smarter of the
two groups—their taste is more refined, advanced, and
sophisticated. They don't accept the low-brow, schmaltzy melodrama
expressed by Dion and her kind. And then Wilson spends the
rest of the book examining whether or not that opinion is
simply a form of elitism.
Wilson
focuses his study only on Dion's album Let's Talk About
Love, which was not her best-selling album, but is probably
her best-known to non-Dion fans because of "My Heart Will
Go On." But in talking about this album, he discusses all
the wider issues involved in arts criticism, like taste, class,
and education. He also spends time discussing her appeal,
especially in Canada, from where both Wilson and Dion hail.
People
identify and group themselves via artistic tastes. Those who
enjoy independent cinema, indie music, and experimental fiction
find themselves outside of the mainstream, and they often
like it that way. Their exclusion from the hoi polloi allows
them access to the more exclusive subculture of people who
like to be challenged by art. The outsized emotions and predictable
harmonic progressions of Dion are mocked by most rock critics,
who themselves belong to this elite musical subculture.
It's
no accident that most of the people who populate this clique
are middle- and higher class, white, and highly educated.
According to studies by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu,
which Wilson cites, "poorer people were pragmatic about their
tastes, describing them as 'entertaining, useful and accessible,'
while middle classes and higher use their tastes to define
their values and personalities." For many, likes and dislikes
are used as "symbolic power," or ways to show that they are
cool. And people then try to identify themselves further within
their clique. Some can be so cool that they will admit to
guilty pleasures—the philosophy PhD candidate who watches
Dancing With the Stars, or the meta-fiction writer
who reads Tom Clancy. By admitting these guilty pleasures,
one is saying, "I am so confident of my symbolic power that
I will admit to occasionally enjoying art for entertainment's
sake." Wilson contends that his fellow music critics may see
his book as exactly that—a boast of his symbolic power.
Wilson
later goes on to take a specific swipe at arts criticism and
offers a solution to what he sees as a problem inherent in
certain types of reviews: "What would criticism be like if
it were not foremost trying to persuade people to find the
same things great? If it weren't making cases for or against
things? It wouldn't need to adopt the kind of 'objective'
(or self-consciously hip) tone that conceals the identity
and social location of the author, the better to win you over.
It might be more frank abut the two-sidedness of aesthetic
encounter, and offer something more like a tour or an aesthetic
experience, a travelogue, a memoir."
Wilson
has written one of those rare books that succeed in simultaneously
stroking the reader's ego and hitting them in the knees with
a baseball bat. Readers will find themselves evaluating their
views on arts with added scrutiny after reading this surprising
and provocative book.
(January,
2008)
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