Irony-as-mask gave way to unbridled corniness once elders abandoned taste hierarchies
Evidence
This aesthetic trickled down to less sophisticated millennials as an unabashed embrace of overwhelming corniness. Good taste, after all, is a mask—and the mask of no mask gave young people permission to jettison traditional constrictions of sophistication. This shift was particularly easy in a poptimist world where their elders rejected any elevations of art over kitsch. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 349
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- DEFINE: The ‘mask of no mask’ is a crisp formulation of how anti-taste itself becomes a taste position — a staged authenticity that still signals status.