Accounting for Taste

"There's no  accounting for taste" or so goes the old saying. Yet billions are spent annually to do just that. Marketing, advertising, public relation budgets easily stretch into the billions. But the question is always are they fulling a need or merely creating one. We've seen the George Harrison/Susan Campey scene in A Hard Days Night. Little has changed since then.

SIMON
And that pose is out too, Sunny Jim. The new
thing is to care passionately, and be right
wing. Anyway, you won't meet Susan if you don't
cooperate.

GEORGE
And who's this Susan when she's at home?

SIMON
(playing his ace)
Only Susan Campey, our resident teenager.
You'll have to love her. She's your symbol.

GEORGE
Oh, you mean that posh bird who gets
everything wrong?

SIMON
I beg your pardon?

GEORGE
Oh, yes, the lads frequently gather round the
T.V. set to watch her for a giggle. Once we
even all sat down and wrote these letters
saying how gear she was and all that rubbish.

SIMON
She's a trend setter. It's her profession!

GEORGE
She's a drag. A well-known drag. We turn the
sound down on her and say rude things.

SIMON
Get him out of here !!

Well it doesn't work well with George but it does work with enough people that it's worthwhile doing.

One of the criteria Marcel Duchamp used in the selection of his ready mades was to try and select objects without taste, without good taste or bad. Esthetically neutral objects. That would be very hard if not impossible today because everything is so heavily branded. You are not buying an object, you are fulfilling a need, a desire, creating a personal mythology. The world becomes skewed into serving your needs instead of you serving the world.