I have a confession to make. I have become a devoted watcher of “The O.C.” I can actually visualize legions of readers right now rolling their eyes at this, but I swear I love this show. If I was still in high school I could probably proudly walk the hallway with a Seth Cohen lunchbox, but as a 22-year-old college student I am fully aware that this show has to be considered a guilty pleasure.
Which brings me to my thought. What is really the guilty pleasure? I know I felt no guilt about being a die-hard fan of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” for all seven seasons, because as a loyal watcher I knew it was a well written show. At the same time I will never try to defend the summer I became hooked on MTV’s “Undressed” via the frequent night-long marathons. Although I realized how crappy the show was, and that it was essentially PG-13 porn, I really enjoyed watching it, even if it was only for a short amount of time.
So when I refer to something as a guilty pleasure, I must mean something I enjoy but let others convince me I shouldn’t. In rare cases, like “Buffy,” a show has a certain mainstream image that isn’t really true. Fans of the show know that despite being portrayed as a “90210” with vampires, it was a fantastic blending of comedy, horror and drama, helmed by Joss Whedon, who I do not hesitate to call a genius. More often though, a guilty pleasure is a show that has no real artistic merit other than entertainment, and for this reason it is considered bad.
“The O.C.” is an example. I will not try to defend it as a serious art like I would my beloved vampire slayer, but it is fun. Unlike predecessors such as “90210” and “Dawson’s Creek,” “The O.C.” doesn’t seem to take itself seriously. Sure it has soap-style story lines like Marissa overdosing on pills or Ryan’s fears about her obsessed friend Oliver; however these episodes feature the foibles of the young Cusack-like Seth and his giddy love triangle with popular Summer and real-geeks-are-never-this-hot Anna.
I found myself in the bizarre position of actually having my life parallel the show last fall when I briefly had the experience of dating two girls at one time. Like Seth, it ultimately proved to be a bad idea. Unlike Seth, there were no foibles. And while Seth ended up kissing Anna on New Year’s Eve, I was at a party in which I was the only guest not in a couple. Rather than get bitter about it, I had fun vicariously, watching Seth Cohen succeed where I had failed. Through entertainment I achieved catharsis.
So why should pleasure make me feel guilty? There’s pretension in the view of the arts that says art for entertainment’s sake is bad. This is particularly insulting to me, as by trade. I am a professional comedian. This means while I do pour myself into my writing, my ultimate job is to be funny.
In the same regard, I have come to prefer the Golden Globes to the Oscars because they have exhibited the intelligence to separate the “best picture” category into comedy and drama.
I do have to give credit for the selections on this year’s Oscar nominee list. Johnny Depp for “Pirates of the Caribbean,” and “Return of the King” are breaking from the Oscar tradition of excluding fantasy and sci-fi movies, acknowledging that the two are just too good to ignore. Depp’s inclusion excited me because his role shows how much hard work can go into pure fluff.
It is ridiculous that those of us with guilty pleasures feel the need to justify them. We do this by pointing out when we also like something that’s “cool” to like. The reverse is never the case. I don’t need to tell people that even though I loved “Lost in Translation,” I also dug “Stuck On You.” So I am here to say without qualification: I was a huge “Buffy” fan, I love “The O.C.” and I am proud of the fact that with this sentence, I will have used the word foibles three times in one column.
Ryan Silverman is a senior in English and can be reached for comment at [email protected].
