Response to Torley's video re Guilty Pleasure

Torley:

I didnt have room on YouTube, but I wanted to comment properly about your latest videoblog. I tried to delete and repost since I typo rabidly, but it wouldn't take subsequent attempts to repost, so I undeleted the one I had. Anyway, here's the full response:

As you most likely know, in Japanese a Kanji ideogram alone may mean something totally different than grouped with others. I think the term "Guilty Pleasure" works similarly, as do many other terms we have in English.

I know why I use the phrase and it's to say I have a fondness for something which reminds me of a time or place I'm no longer associated with. For that I think it's perfect & serves a purpose.

Consider this for a comparison: In cinema there's high comedy & low comedy. In the first half of last century, slapstick and physical humor was seen as the commoner's form of entertainment, & someone telling bad jokes with pretty girls dancing around them was seen as high class. By the last half of the century, low comedy by the likes of Lloyd Keaton and Chaplin (among several others) was recognized as genius. Even those still seen as less sophisticated and more formulaic such as The 3 Stooges or Laurel & Hardy were admired for having entertained the masses and taking us through the harder times of our history in America.

I dont mind "guilty pleasure." In context of music it usually means that I enjoy something or someone from a genre I normally don't favor, or more commonly a song targeted for teens at a time when the music was considered frivolous and the artists exploited to the point of embarrassment. For example my last.fm library includes The Partridge Family, Tommy Roe, Bobby Sherman, and other such acts. They were in Tigerbeat & 16 and not Stereo Review, their records made gold & platinum by armies teens who often screamed too loud to listen to their music. I never screamed LOL. And maybe I didn't see them at the time as special or their music as catchy and uplifting as I do. Maybe it was the time away from them. I consider listening to them today as a guilty pleasure. I'm not ashamed to listen to them - in some cases no longer ashamed :P - but they're certainly out of character for someone like me OR someone my age.

Just wanted to feed you a perspective from the other side.