Bad taste is generally a title given to any object or idea that does not fall within the normal social standards of the time or area. Varying from society to society and from time to time, bad taste is generally thought of as a negative thing, but also changes with each individual.
Some varieties of black humor employ bad taste for its shock value, such as Pink Flamingos or Bad Taste. Similarly, some artists deliberately create vulgar or kitsch works of art to defy critical standards or social norms. Some artists argue that the only thing that is in really bad taste or that is vulgar, is the Kitsch, intended as a lack of "technical awareness". Despite the economic risks, some retailers also deliberately design and sell objects ordinarily regarded as vulgar, relying on inflated price tags to instill an Emperor's New Clothes effect amongst customers.
Aristophanes, Plautus, François Rabelais, Laurence Sterne, and Jonathan Swift never considered "good" or "bad" taste to be a way to judge their classic works of art.
Read more about this topic: Taste (sociology)
Famous quotes containing the words bad taste, bad and/or taste:
“At bottom, to be colored means that one has been caught in some utterly unbelievable cosmic joke, a joke so hideous and in such bad taste that it defeats all categories and definitions.”
—James Baldwin (1924–1987)
“Art is a jealous mistress, and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider, and should be wise in season and not fetter himself with duties which will embitter his days and spoil him for his proper work.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Anyone with a real taste for solitude who indulges that taste encounters the dangers of any other drug-taker. The habit grows. You become an addict.... Absorbed in the visions of solitude, human beings are only interruptions. What voice can equal the voices of solitude? What sights equal the movement of a single day’s tide of light across the floor boards of one room? What drama be as continuously absorbing as the interior one?”
—Jessamyn West (1902–1984)