Why would anyone feel guilty for finding something of value in a thing that a lot of other people have dismissed as unworthy? Isn’t that a large part of the history of art?
I enjoy the following movies: Last Action Hero; Showgirls; Made in Heaven; My Giant; Double Team; Hudson Hawk.
I enjoy the following musical acts: Abba, Yoko Ono, Yma Sumac, Eminem, Marilyn Manson, the Jackson Five.
Why on earth would I feel guilty about liking something in which I have found something of value?
I’m with you.
The guilty part is because we don’t want to admit to someone else that we don’t like something that is not heavy, hip, slick, cool, or a profoundly moving or a life altering experience.
I’m mean it’s just not cool for me to say I like the BeeGees, unless it’s in the context of, oh yeah, it’s a guity pleasure.
Inspiered by the movie “Young Frankenstein” I am a BeeGees fan!
Well, that’s your problem right there: if you like something, even something unpopular, because you’ve found quality in it, then it isn’t a guilty pleasure. A real guilty pleasure is something which you know lacks quality, but which you like anyway.
I like Last Action Hero too, and I don’t consider it a guilty pleasure, because I thought it was a pretty clever satire of the action genre. I also like Commando, which is unadulterated crap. I can’t point to any part of that movie and say “This part here was really well done,” because the whole thing is so ridiculously stupid without having any aparent self-awareness of how stupid it is. But I’ll still watch it when it turns up on TV.
That’s a guilty pleasure.
While I agree, I still like to play along.
It all goes back to high school. Heaven forbid I mentioned that I was a big ABBA fan.
Nowadays, if you like something and someone else thinks it’s uncool, too bad. They can get over it.
Very well put.
Like, for me, Dances With Wolves. I know it’s sentimental, anachronistic glurge. I know Kevin Costner is a poor-to-middlin’ actor. I know the screenplay is a predictable amalgam of half a dozen better movies. I know the cinematography and score do most of the heavy lifting in terms of covering up the film’s numerous deficiencies. I know it robbed Goodfellas of a much more deserved Best Picture Oscar.
But when Wind In His Hair bellows “Can you not see that you are my friend,” I get choked up anyway. Sue me.
That is a guilty pleasure. 
Wouldn’t finding The Little Mermade hot, be a guilty pleasure?
I think of guilty pleasures as just those things you enjoy that are far outside the expectations for the person you seem to be to others. So a macho man might have a guilty pleasure enjoying the Gillmore Girls 
And sometimes, they just suck.
Seriously. Or perhaps you’re a better person than I, but there are things (tv shows, movies, songs, books) that have nearly no artistic merit whatsoever. They’re poorly designed, poorly executed (poor acting, directing, writing, singing, technique, all of the above), and poorly displayed. They’re bad, bad, bad. I cannot defend them, nor will I defend them, because they are indefensible.
But for some reason, I like the thing in question. I might have good memories of viewing it (e.g., I watch certain movies and remember the friends I hung out with watching the same movie). I might take perverse delight in its sheer awfulness. I might like one small element of an otherwise horrible artwork.
Hence, guilty pleasure.
Wow. Just, I mean, wow.
Dances with Wolves is so irredeemably bad that the mere thought of it actually pisses me off. I can’t think of anything I like in a comparable way. I enjoy Predator, but I think its pacing and action choreography are pretty good; everything else about it is pretty bad. Buckaroo Banzai, maybe? But it’s funny as hell. I feel a little ashamed that I watch so much Law & Order and CSI, because they’re such bad shows but they hit all their marks and pass the time.
For me, guilty pleasures are things like fried meat, and marshmallow spread; things I know are bad for me but I eat anyway. It’s hard for me to think of any “art”–movie, music, whatever–that I think of in the same way.
I agree with amarinth. There was a time during which I liked Dragonball Z. I currently like Steel Angel Kurumi. Both of these animes completely and indefensibly suck. A lot. Like a Hoover during a lightning strike. Like ten thousand babies on the same pacifier. Like Monica Lewinsky on…okay, I think I’ve gotten the point across.
“Goodness” has always been seperate from actually liking something for me. I have three levels of categorization: Goodness, Enjoyment, and Recommendation. Some examples:
Punch Drunk Love was a good movie, but I hated it. I would recommend it, however, because the reasons I hated it were (I imagine) somewhat rare.
The Ring was not a good movie, but it scared the hell out of me, so I enjoyed it. I would recommend it if the person was into scary things.
Cowboy Bebop is good, I enjoy it, and I would (and do) recommend it.
Steel Angel Kurumi is crap in a hat (i.e., not good). I enjoy it, but I would not recommend it, for it is stupid.
Serial Experiments: Lain is good. Sometimes I enjoy it, sometimes I don’t. I would not recommend it, because the few people who would enjoy something that bizzare probably already know about it, and the rest would hate it.
See what I’m getting at? Steel Angel Kurumi would be on my “guilty pleasures” list; Serial Experiments: Lain would not, because even though I doubt most people would like it, I still think it’s good.
Weird, I know, but that’s just the way I’ve always looked at things.
I always end up posting to these threads and saying something like “I guess maybe comes close, but I don’t feel guilty about it.” If I think something sucks, I don’t like it. There are things I find good even though they’re simple or stupid, but if they’re simple stupidity done well, they’re not crap, they’re just doing what they’re supposed to. I analyze stuff too much to like something that I think is bad, I think.
I agree with lissener. If something appeals to me, then I should be able to formulate a reasoned critical defense of it, even if that just amounts to “it has a catchy tune that I like to hum!” That is enough, IMO.
“Dancin’ Queen” has all of the elements that make hit songs: a pleasing yet slightly intricate melody, lush orchestration, solid vocals and a foot-tap-inducing rhythm. Why should you feel guilty for liking it?
I actually enjoy listening to a lot of Blink-182, who I feel have a very interesting and varied creative output and complex arrangements for a band that essentially uses three chord forms and writes most of their songs in the same key.
Law & Order usually has good acting and a solid storyline. A murder mystery in an hour. It entertains. We’re supposed to feel bad for enjoying it?
(Dances With Wolves sucks like the turbine intakes on a Boeing 777.)
Okay, I stand corrected- if I liked Dancin’ Queen, I’d definitely feel bad about it.
I like what I like, and if you don’t like it you can stuff it. Then again, I take pride in being weird. Here’s a list of things I like that a lot of people here don’t: Dave Mathews Band, Waterworld, Starship Troopers, Krull, David Lynch’s Dune, Dances With Wolves, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Willow.
Absolutely. Except, what if it doesn’t even have the catchy tune you like to hum? What if it doesn’t have anything to recommend it… but you still like it? There are a tiny handful of films and books that I feel this way about. My enjoyment of them is indefensible. If someone asked, “What about this do you like?” I would not have an answer. That’s a guilty pleasure.
If it’s got all that, you shouldn’t feel guilty for liking it. If it doesn’t have any of that, and you know that it doesn’t have any of that, and you still like it anyway, that’s a guilty pleasure.
I wouldn’t call myself a fan, but the little Blink-182 I’ve heard, sounded okay to me. I wouldn’t call that a guilty pleasure, either.
Hey, I don’t feel bad about liking these movies. I’m not going to Church every Sunday and saying, “Bless me Father, for I have seen Volcano on basic cable again.” I just can’t give anyone a single rational reason for why I like them. I sure as hell don’t care if anyone thinks less of me for liking these movies. You’re putting way too much emphasis on the “guilt” part of the phrase. It’s just a tongue-in-cheek way of talking about it.
To make a minor addition to Miller’s excellent post: if your defense of the thing in question consists of something that could be said of numerous other things you don’t like, it doesn’t count. For example, if pressed, I could say that I like Steel Angel Kurumi because it has attractive females in it. The problem is that that is true of virtually every anime on Earth, many of which I don’t like, so it’s obviously not why I like the show. Why do I like the show? I have no idea. It has no redeeming qualities that come to mind. I just get a general sense of enjoyment when I watch it, which isn’t a quality per se, since it’s analogous to just saying I like it.
I’ve come to conclude that one of two things is true. Either certain people don’t have this seeming logical disconnect between liking something and thinking it’s good (though that’s specious, as it’d almost have to be a right-brain function and I’m moderatly-to-strongly left-brained), or else they’ve been societally trained to think that you’re only allowed to like good things. That lesson is backed up by the seemingly obvious conclusion that if it’s bad, you ought not to like it. Some people take the tack of adopting a defensive stance on this, i.e. liking things that are bad and insisting that they are wonderful, “and I don’t care who likes it”. To this, I say, I’m glad you have the courage to admit that you like that, but if you can’t tell me why you like it, you don’t think it’s good. Most, though, just follow this societal dictum and set up false “personal tastes” that go along with whatever the majority of their demographic thinks is “good” at the time. They may allow themselves one or two “guilty pleasures” (and they’ll use the term to describe anything that’s unpopular, whether they think it’s good or not), but that’ll be it.
I’m sorry, did I go off on a rant there? That’s just something that’s been sitting in my head for a while, and this seemed like the revelant place to say it.
Well, **Roland Orzabal ** has this thing pretty much nailed, but I do want to add that when I realize that I’d be tremendously embarrassed if so-and-so found out I like Madonna, I look at that as a failure on my part and resolve in the future to “be myself” around so-and-so.
I also note that so-and-so possibly needs to unclench his or her sphincter and try to get cool enough to deal with the glory that is me. 
I’m pretty sure I agree with the general thrust of the OP, but I’m guilty (har har) of talking about my “guilty pleasures” because it’s become such a construct that it’s the quickest way for me to express that I like a certain thing in a certain way. I don’t really feel guilty. It’s code for saying “I love Hudson Hawk (one of these days I’m going to start a SDMB Hudson Hawk Lovers Society, there are a few of us here, while I have never met anyone out in the wild who enjoys it), but I have zero interest in explaining to you why I like it because you are only going to argue and frankly, I’m not in the mood.” Saying it’s a guilty pleasure gets me off the hook socially. Now, I agree with Ilsa Lund that I should have some reasonable defense of Hudson Hawk, but not every social situation in life is akin to a Language of Film class. If I’m in the proper forum and in the mood to throw down over Hudson Hawk, I’ve got my defense ready, but otherwise, I use the guilty pleasure line to move the conversation along.
Just chiming in with a ‘me too’ (though the last thing we need around here is another ‘Kevin Costner must die’ debate ). That ending gets me every time.