Good Bad Taste vs. Bad Bad Taste
Excerpt from Rookie Mag’s interview with John Waters.
Whats the difference between good bad taste and bad bad taste?
You have to know the rules of good taste to have bad taste. With good good taste, you just know the rules. You like something not because its worth money, but because you know its value, and you dont care if anyone else knows it. You pull it off seamlessly without looking down on anybody.
Good bad taste is celebrating something without thinking youre better than it. You think its so amazing, and you could have never even thought it up. But the people who have [this thing] have it without irony. And so youre stupefied by it and you have to respect it because it is so peculiar and so weird and much crazier than you could ever think, but those other people think theyre normal.
Bad bad taste is condescending, making fun of others. An old plastic pink flamingo on a lawn that two older people have had forever is just good taste. But a plastic pink flamingo on a yuppies front lawn is bad bad taste.
Its not even the originalits mass produced, and theyre way too late on the joke.So thats the difference for me: if youre celebrating something or youre looking down on something.
