Guilty Pleasures

[Chris Knipp]

I don't see how "Aliens" could in any sense be a "guilty pleasure." It's a good movie! Sigourney Weaver is great in it.

But you are going back to the idea I was trying to argue against.

I've always felt that the definition of a "guilty pleasure" was something that you liked to do/watch for your own personal enjoyment, without really caring if it was of any great artistic merit.

A large popcorn and Coke--fine--but the part that bothers me is "without really caring." If it doesn't bother you to watch this stuff, what's "guilty" about it? It's just stuff that's not high class or arty that you have a lot of fun watching. But is that really a guilty pleasure? I don't think so.

I go back to my original definition: that a real "guilty pleasure" in the movies is something you really don't think you ought to be watching at all, something beyond schlocky into wicked and evil and immoral, and something that you certainly ought not to be enjoying watching so damn much, given how disgusting and sick it is -- like "Caligula," not like "Aliens," or a harmlessly lowbrow thing like a Three Stooges movie.

I keep pushing for a more rigorous definition of the term because I think there are some really sick and nasty movies out there, and these harmless pieces of schlocky pop art and lowbrow entertainment that keep being mentioned are setting the limits in too tame a place.