Anti-Cheese Manifesto

We live in an awesomely bad world, and I'm not referring to any of the planet's roiling political or global crises. It's impossible to turn on the TV without seeing celebrations of the dubiously gifted (America's Got Talent, Sanjaya on American Idol) or resurrections of jowly stars of forgotten sitcoms (latest depressing example: Scott Baio Is 45 ... And Single). Online, we can watch Minisodes--condensed versions of hardly classic TV series like T.J. Hooker and Pam Anderson's VIP. A few months back, Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse fetishized the low-budget, badly acted gore-fests normally relegated to the wee hours of the Sci-Fi Channel. A few months back, the latest pop veterans resurrected and proclaimed underappreciated geniuses were ... America.

Yes, that America: the denim-clad, mellow-gold strummers who gave us "A Horse with No Name," "Ventura Highway," and other peaceful-easy-feeling serenades of three decades ago. I'll be the first to admit that, as an impossibly naïve teenager, I actually bought an America album, and I like a few of their old songs just fine. But, still ... America, one of the greats? Reviving Johnny Cash is one thing, but the guys who harmonized on "Sister Golden Hair"? Oh, come on.

Unfortunately, I feel like I've been uttering "oh, come on" far too many times lately. The era of so-bad-it's-good pop culture is not only upon us, but more omnipresent than ever. Anyone whose career has faded away, deservedly or not (but usually the former), is now declared a neglected artiste, a king or queen of all things magnificently awful. Think of hair-metal leftover Sebastian Bach, overacting warlord David Hasselhoff, or the puffy has-beens who've populated the houses in The Surreal Life. Phrases like "awesomely bad!" are ubiquitous, applied to reruns of hokey sitcoms, Martha Quinn-era videos aired on VH1 Classic, and Hollywood blockbuster-wannabes like last year's Snakes on a Plane. Everything bad is good, and sometimes great; the campier and junkier, the better.

This new development isn't new at all, of course. In the late '80s, when Tom Jones inadvertently inaugurated this trend with his semi-schlocky remake of Prince's "Kiss," some of us chuckled and thought it was amusing: Put it on the mix tape or answering machine--now! It was a novelty, but that's what made it worth noting: it was novel. These days, it's hard to tell when the irony-stoked appreciation ends and the genuine admiration begins. Imagine taking up permanent residence on the set of The Late Show with David Letterman.

Like many people, I've been guilty of guilty-pleasure overload myself. A while back, I began reassessing AM-radio pop of the '70s and made mix tapes filled with Cher's "Half Breed," Alice Cooper's "School's Out," and far too many Three Dog Night songs to mention. Anyone visiting my apartment or stuck in a car with me was subjected to this barrage. As much as I truly loved many of these records and was surprised at how well they'd held up, I'll confess that part of me was laughing at them, too. I've also been known to wax semi-poetically on, yes, T.J. Hooker (a bludgeoning example of early '80s Reagan-era conservative militarism, right there on the small screen), and not long ago, my brother-in-law and I belatedly caught up with Cool As Ice--Vanilla Ice's one and thankfully only venture in front of movie cameras--and laughed ourselves deliriously silly.

Part of me, I suppose, was reacting to the canons that have arisen in the arts: all those movie and album guide books that tell you what to catch up on and what to avoid, as if personal taste was not an issue. But whether they intended it or not, the people who compiled those books were onto an idea that needs to be revived. At a time of cheese-love overkill, there once again needs to be a return to some kind of standards. Not a dreaded consensus, mind you, but something approaching common, unironic sense.

Making the case that trash equals some type of twisted quality reduces everything to the same playing field, and it's time to acknowledge that that field is in seriously bad condition. David Hasselhoff is not David Mamet, much less David McCallum. Cruel Intentions, the teen psychodrama fetishized on VH1's ain't-crap-wonderful series I Love the '90s, is not the same as Splendor in the Grass. Paris Hilton, whose album received a baffling number of decent reviews, is not Gwen Stefani, much less Madonna. We need less cheese and more bread.

The danger in perpetually embracing the awful is the way it trivializes sincerity and makes earnestness seem mawkish and old-fashioned. It says: Don't take it all so seriously, since nothing matters. In a world where it's easy to feel let down--on any number of levels--this impulse is, on one hand, understandable. Perhaps it is simpler to chuckle than invest genuine feeling in anything, since that can be too chancy, too uncool, and too emotionally risky.

In the last few months, we've seen encouraging signs that this trend may be peaking: neither Grindhouse (which, admittedly, had its moments) nor Snakes on a Plane pulled many people into theaters, and the Paris Hilton and America albums only contributed to the decline in CD sales. So maybe there's hope for gravitas. Whatever the cause of the situation, it's time to acknowledge that some pop culture byproducts aren't "genius bad" or "wonderfully bad." They're just bad, and often not worth the time it takes to experience them. Much less the time it takes to say, one more time, "Oh, come on."