Let’s Talk About Love

Is dis­dain for Céline Dion innate or learned? Is our love or hatred of My Heart Will Go On the result of a uni­ver­sal, dis­in­ter­ested instinct for beauty-assessment? Or is it some­thing less exalted? Carl Wil­son tends to side with the French soci­ol­o­gist Pierre Bour­dieu, who argues that taste is never dis­in­ter­ested: It’s a form of social cur­rency, or “cul­tural cap­i­tal,” that we use to stock­pile pres­tige. Hat­ing Céline is there­fore not just an aes­thetic choice, but an eth­i­cal one, a way to ele­vate your­self above her fans—who, accord­ing to mar­ket research, tend to be dis­pro­por­tion­ately poor adult women liv­ing in fly­over states and shop­ping at big-box stores.