I was watching High Fidelity last night. For those unfamiliar with the movie or the book (by Nick Hornby), one of the ongoing conversations in each are top-five lists.
I found the following reference to this movie on the internet:
"Rob and his employees Dick and Barry spend their free moments discussing mix-tape aesthetics and constructing "top-five" lists of anything that demonstrates their knowledge of music."
Is creating a personal "favorites list" at risk of being an act of aesthetic snobbery?
And then there was the following conversation in the movie Manhattan:
"In fact, I think he may be
a candidate for the old academy. Mary and I have
invented the Academy of the Overrated, for such notables
as Gustav Mahler..."
"And Isak Dinesen, and Carl Jung..."
"Scott Fitzgerald..."
"Lenny Bruce. Can't forget Lenny Bruce, now, can we? How
about Norman Mailer? And Walt Whitman?"
"I think that those people are all terrific, everyone
that you mentioned."
"Who was that guy you had? You had a great one last week."
"No, I didn't have it. It was yours. It was Heinrich
Böll, wasn't it?”
"Overrated?"
"Oh, God. Oh, we wouldn't want to leave out old Heinrich..."
"What about Mozart? I mean, you guys don't want to leave
out Mozart, I mean, while you're trashing people."
In our search for the overlooked and the underrated, are we ever at risk of demeaning greatness just because it may also be popular?