Frustration Friday: Guilty Pleasures, The Perfect Burger, and Loving Crap

There's liking crap and then there's liking crappy things.  OK you movie makers, writers, game makers and the like, figure out the difference.

We can all enjoy crappy thing.  Silly B-movies, overblown games made of explosions and paper-thin plots, cheesy novels, and stupid TV.  We can enjoy these things and do enjoy these things for the same reason we can enjoy a greasy burger – it's lousy but has some right stuff that makes it taste great.  Heck, the guilt is half the fun.

What we don't like is things that are crap.  Sure we may like a silly B-movie but we have certain standards.  Our trashy vampire romance better have a certain level of readability and characterization.  That silly video game better have good controls and graphics.  We may want something that is not good but we want it done good enough.

This is something I don't think a lot of people get.

Cheesy is fine.  Silly is fine.  Stupid is fine (in some cases it makes great comedy).  But these things that are not "good" have to be done "right."  You want that greasy burger, but it better be decent enough meat, decent enough cheese, and bread that doesn't fall apart and drop the whole fattening mess in your lap.

We want our crap done right.  We want it like a good, big greasy burger with lots of cheese and condiments.  They may not be good for us but they do the job of what we want – they taste good (probably too good) in their own bad-for us way.

I don't think this is understood by many professionals in the area of media.  We'd be better off it if it was understood.

Make the burger right – in the wrong way.  That's the right way.

– Steven Savage