A Pet Peeve of Mine

[aikaterini]

Why is it that some people assume that everyone else’s standards and knowledge should be the same as theirs?

What I mean are those people who look at a movie or a display of skill, see everyone else’s amazed reaction and then disdainfully say that it’s no big deal and that people are too easily impressed or appalled.

For example, I went with a group to see a Christmas show that featured figure skating a couple of years ago. Most of the audience was impressed by the skaters. And yet there was one member of the group who had to turn up her nose and loftily declare that such tricks weren’t as hard as everyone thought and that she’d seen skaters do that in her lessons.

A similar thing happened with an online discussion about the movie, “Black Swan.” One of the posters, with the same type of attitude, sniffed that the movie’s harrowing depiction of bulimia, drug use, and other harmful activities associated with the pressures of training was “nothing new” and that she’d seen stuff like that happen all the time when she went to ballet school, thus the public’s reaction was unwarranted. Why was everybody so shocked?

Gee, maybe because most people don’t go to ballet school? Maybe it’s because when people watch a ballet, they don’t think, “Wow, I wonder if that ballerina’s doing drugs in her spare time.” Maybe because most of us don’t have the opportunity to see what goes on behind the scenes. You know, because we’re not ballet dancers. I wasn’t aware that drug-addicted ballerinas were supposed to be common knowledge. I wasn’t aware that the average moviegoer was supposed to know about things like that and thus be totally unimpressed by “Black Swan.”

I felt the same way with the snobby skater. Okay, so you may think that the skaters' tricks are no big deal, because they pale in comparison to the feats that you've seen as a skater. Guess what? Most of the audience can't skate. So, they have nothing to compare the performance with. If the skaters can do fancy flips and turns without falling once, that's usually all you need to be good in an audience's eyes because most of the audience can't do what those skaters do.

It would be one thing if these kinds of people had issues with judges or professional critics being easily impressed. Then that would be understandable, because it’s the job of judges and professional critics to be selective and critical. Or if a person judged a museum for buying a painting solely consisting of three lines, but left the fans of the painting alone. But when they go after ordinary audiences just for being impressed by something, then it just looks rude.

I think that what bothers me about this kind of attitude is that it comes off as snobby and elitist. “Oh, you ignorant peons there have no idea! You think that you know, but you don’t. I, on the other hand, as a privileged insider, have far better taste than you do. How can you not know these things? I do! Are your standards so low? Are you so easily impressed?”

No, it’s because we don’t come from the same background as you. We don’t have the same experiences and qualifications as you. If you’re not impressed by something, fine. But you don’t need to look down at everyone else and question their collective intelligence just because they don’t share your reaction. Stop being Debbie Downer and let people enjoy the show.