Novara Media Novara FM: Why Posh People Have Bad Taste w/ Nathalie Olah
Nov 16, 2023
Writer and critic Nathalie Olah discusses the politics of taste and its impact on self-image and belonging. Topics include minimalism, posh people's indifference to style, the evolving meaning of the hoodie, and our right to enjoy supermarket pizza.
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Wealth Frees You From Taste’s Rules
- Taste is a bourgeois preoccupation that relaxes once wealth and status are secured.
- Aristocratic ‘opting out’ performs the highest display of status: you needn't prove respectability.
Rejection Of Respectability Can Attract Voters
- Figures like Donald Trump succeed by rejecting elite respectability codes, making his style relatable to those who feel excluded.
- Garishness can be politically powerful when professionals feel required to perform respectability.
Puritan Aesthetics Shaped Taste
- Historical religious aesthetics (Calvinist restraint) shaped modern ideas of tasteful modesty and respectability.
- What began as spiritual humility became a social code of elite dominance.