Article written by Samuel Burnett.
Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again, the sequel to the successful juke box musical, was released nearly a month ago and the phrase I hear again and again about the franchise is “guilty pleasure.”
“Your guilty pleasure prayers have been answered,” says Vanity Fair writer, Yohana Desta, as if enjoying a particular film is an admission to committing some sort of heinous crime. Why else would she use the word guilty if you weren’t supposed to feel shame at enjoying it?
An explanation as to why we should feel guilty for enjoying a work of fiction is curiously absent from Desta’s article.
Before launching into a seven-and-a-half-minute song about cheese, comedian Tim Minchin had a few things to say about guilty pleasures. When people suggested guilty pleasures could include Bananarama and MasterChef, he seemed bemused that those things were “guilty.”
“Those are your guilty pleasures?” he exclaims, “That shows an incredibly low thresh-hold for both guilt… and pleasure!”
I share his confusion at the term. What is a guilty pleasure anyway?
While writing this article, I started thinking about some of my guilty pleasures. Here are a couple:
Cougar Town.
Batman the Animated Series.
Power Rangers.
Yu-Gi-Oh!
Reading and writing fanfiction.
Once Upon A Time.
Titanic.
If you wanted, you could take the words “guilty pleasures” and replace them with “things that entertained me” because it’s certainly a more accurate description.
It’s actually rather strange that Titanic makes the list, isn’t it? After all, it is the second highest-grossing film of all time. Why would that be a “Guilty Pleasure”? It even won eleven Oscars including Best Picture, but if you tell someone that you genuinely enjoy the film, be prepared to get a lot of condescending looks. Many people do like the film, but they won’t openly admit it. It will be a shy, nearly shameful admission to liking the film while being upfront that they know of course it’s terrible, they just like it ironically. It’s even worse if you’re a guy, after all, it’s usually dismissed as a chick flick and we all know that any guy that enjoys feminine things is less of a man. Ignore that it was once the highest-grossing movie of all time (meaning that people definitely saw it) and has the same number of Oscars as film buff darling, Ben-Hur, ignore that it has one of the clearest cases of consent in a mainstream movie sex scene and ignore that the second half is one of the most tense disasters scenes ever put to film, it’s a girl movie and is not deserving of serious enjoyment.
There’s also an argument to be made that the label “Guilty Pleasure” is disproportionally thrown at works that are made by and for women but, quite frankly, that is a whole different article that really shouldn’t be written by a man.
And how dare I enjoy writing fanfiction? What does it matter if it’s a great way to practice my creative writing while receiving feedback from people all around the world? After all, fanfiction is just stupid, childish scribblings with no importance. After all, it’s not like Ben-Hur isn’t essentially fanfiction of the Bible, taking characters from the original text and having them interact with original characters and…
Oh wait, it is.
It’s snobbery, plain and simple snobbery.
Ben-Hur and Titanic both won eleven Academy Awards and were the most profitable films of the years they came out and were huge game changers for cinema, but only the former is respected as a classic while the latter is derided as a sappy romance aimed at teens. Who gets to decide what is a guilty pleasure and what is art?
More importantly, why do we care?
Why should we give a damn about what some elitist snobs think about us or the stories that we love?
Why the bloody hell should I ever feel guilty over the media I enjoy? Why should anyone care if I enjoy Once Upon A Time and Cougar Town? They’re both thoroughly enjoyable shows with extraordinarily fun casts that elevate the writing to a higher level. Unless your pleasure is torturing children or being a Nazi, you should never feel guilty about what you enjoy.
Embarrassed, maybe, but never guilty.
So, let’s all take the term “Guilty Pleasure” and leave it on the dumpster fire to die with phrases like “The Friend Zone” and “YOLO.”
And then, we should all get together and watch the musical episode of Once Upon A Time.
Captain Hook’s Revenge Is Gonna Be Mine music number is ridiculously catchy.
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