Popular Does Not Necessarily Mean "Bad"

It's probably a good thing that my best friend Scott is not actually in charge of this country or, God forbid, the rest of the world. He has a lot of very specific ideas about what should and should not be popular and enjoyed by the rest of the world. He is one of these folks who considers himself a deep-thinker. Therefore, he feels that when he reaches a decision he has carefully considered all of the options and his word should be followed, without question, by everyone else.

Out would be NASCAR, for example. Out would be all sports except for hockey and football. Also out would be any music but the Dave Matthews Band and, maybe, Counting Crows and Tool. Gone would be all television shows except for "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" or "Flight of the Conchords" or anything by Ricky Gervais. Gone would be any movie by Oliver Stone or starring Nicholas Cage.

You can imagine what a dreadfully dull and boring a place the world would be if he had any kind of power. Where as I agree to disagree with people on some things (NASCAR, for example, which I find dreadfully dull and uninteresting) but celebrate the fact that we live in a country so free and full of choice that people can disagree with me and like things that are different from me, he chooses to be embarrassed over what is popular.

There are a lot of people who choose to be snobs about things, like my friend. They pop up all over the place. My friend has a phrase he likes to cite and I think he has credited Mark Twain for it. It reads: "When you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect."

I understand what that is trying to say, but with all due respect to Mr. Twain, I think there is a second half to that quote that should be there and is not. For all I know, Mr. Clemmens did say the second part, but others have chosen not to include it. I believe that the statement should read more like:

"When you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect. Then, if you find you still believe in those things, it's OK."

I am all for people taking time to rethink what they have thunk. I am all for people, at times, reconsidering what they believe in and then, if they decide their beliefs have changed, making changes to them. The entire world should be that way. If commonly held conventions are proved wrong, without a shadow of a doubt, and new conventions are shown to be better all of society should be willing to change its collective mind and celebrate the fact we are all smart enough to think things through.

What I do not believe is that people should change their beliefs just for the sake of changing. If they still believe that belief and even if that belief is the majority, then it should be equally all right for people to continue to believe that thing. If you deliberately change your beliefs just so you are no longer in with the majority, but still believe in that thing, I think you can cause more harm than good.

I found this particularly true when it came to the release of the new Harry Potter book. I was on a writer's forum and I noticed there was a discussion topic about how much they hated Harry Potter. This is fine, if these are people who had read one or more of the books and then decided they just didn't like the story or the writing. However, these people seemed to be hating Harry Potter just because they wanted to hate Harry Potter and not for any reason that had to do with the above mentioned criteria. They hated Harry because he was so popular and people were making such a big deal about him, or so it seemed.

Well, to those who actually stated they wished harm to the Harry Potter lovers, you can have my "Deathly Hallows" when you pry it from my cold dead fingers. I find the books to be rich in detail and story. I enjoy the characters. Rowling seems to have had a clear idea of where the story wanted to go and a clear idea how to get there. The stories move along crisply and deftly. The stories are exciting and full of action. The characters are well-developed and richly drawn.

I had to wonder what these people were writing that they felt was so important. I don't, personally, think that being entertained is a bad thing. Just because a movie is popular, does not mean it's not good. Given a choice between "A Mighty Heart" or "Transformers" I am going to choose the movie about giant robots fighting. Angelina Jolie may turn in a career-making performance in the other movie, but when I go to the movies I do not want to experience the death of Daniel Pearl all over again. I would rather see giant robots beating the snot out of each other, thank you.

People seem to forget that the so-called classics were often written as popular culture. Shakespeare is considered one of the greatest writers of all time. However, he was not writing plays he thought would still be in production hundreds of years after his death. He wrote them to make a buck from the theaters who were paying him to write plays. The only way he got paid was if the theater got money and the only way to make money was to pack the theater with the regular people and not just the aristocrats.

Gilbert and Sullivan's plays are considered quality theater in this day and age. People like Andrew Lloyd Webber are looked down upon. However, both Gilbert and Sullivan wrote their musicals for the widest possible audience they could at the time. They considered their plays low burlesque and not high opera. I am betting that they did not know that people would still be performing "The Mikado" these many years later.

Charles Dickens' books were released a bit at a time, in smaller chapbooks, at the time they were written. Crowds would form in front of book stores as people waited for the next chapbook to come out. Once, so many people came they created a near riot when the bookstore was slightly late in getting the latest chapter out. Sounds familiar doesn't it? Sounds a bit like Harry Potter right?

Of course, for me, given a choice between reading any of Dickens' work or re-reading Stephen King's "The Shining" for the third time, I will pick King. Given a choice between Hemingway and the latest Grisham novel, I will choose Grisham. If I were asked to choose between Austen or Ayn Rand and the newest Dean Koontz novel, I will pick the Koontz book every time. I want to be entertained and escape when I read, not find myself puzzled and reading and re-reading a book trying to grasp it.

I am willing to bet that these writers are just jealous. I know I would sever a limb or donate an un-needed organ to have written something people love so much they line up to read it or that would make me more money than the Queen. I am willing to bet none of these writers would turn down a multi-million dollar contract for their writing. The fact is, they probably write such horrifically boring stuff hardly anyone wants to read it and it just burns their buns to see people falling all over themselves for Harry.

Bryan W. Alaspa's novel Dust is available in print and eBook format at his website www.bryanalaspa.com and www.amazon.com. He also has some short stories available for download at www.amazon.com. Finally, you can pre-order his non-fiction book about haunted houses at www.amazon.com.