He tried pretending that taste is just taste but I see, he's dancing his way back to me

Me, responding over at Tom's tumblr in regard to contenderizer and Tim Finney on this ilX Pitchfork's Albums thread (search for "tough and complicated idea" and "partners"*)(I like ogmor's comments**). I'm repeating myself, of course (saying in less full form what I'd said here), but I think this needs to be repeatedly hammered in: "Personal taste" and "objectively true" not only aren't the only two choices, neither can be fallen back on when the issue is a value judgment. Here's what I wrote:

The problem with either analogy - taste in music is like taste in gender, taste in music is like taste in partners - is that "best album" is not an expression of taste. It's a value judgment, and in our society, at any rate, no one has successfully been able to pry it loose from "value judgment" and relegate it to the "taste" category. If anything, the reverse is true: apparent expressions of taste - "I love this," "this is my favorite," "this is boring," "this turns my stomach" - tend to play as value judgments anyway. So even if my judgments are just rationalizations of my taste, they function in the world as judgments. Now, there's plenty of recognition that judgments are connected to taste and to personality and to social role and the like, so we're not expected to all make the same judgment. But in my online world we are nonetheless encouraged and even expected to give reasons why we think something is good or bad, not just reasons for why something appeals to us. People's outrage or contempt at our taking Mariah and Taylor and Ashlee seriously (to take Dan's triumvirate of dislike) isn't outrage at our taste, at our personal preferences, but at our thinking that we're at least in some way right, and that those who dislike those artists are wrong, and at our thinking these women are worthy of time and space, the reader's or listener's time as well as our own - and those who won't give them time can fuck off with their opinions (except that such opinions are usually a sociological gold mine).

*I'm searching for both.

**Does anyone know who contenderizer and ogmor are (or their former ilX names, at any rate; I've lost track of who is who)?

Buffy Season Two Episode Four

"You gave up your life."

"But I had you to bring me back."

Another monster-of-the-week episode, but this one they pretty much ace. A mummy comes to life as a beautiful sixteen-year-old girl, wanting back the life that she sacrificed five centuries earlier. Obvious analogies to Buffy, but done not for weepiness but to further underline the ramifications of Buffy being potentially doomed herself. Not only can't Buffy have a normal life (this is standard to the superhero genre, and to some extent also to the western and to the detective story), but she is also the center of a group, the young woman who gives purpose to her friends and allies, connecting them to each other as well as to her: there's Buffy and Mr. Giles, of course, and also Xander and Willow, but (um, these are minor SPOILERS if you are reading despite not having seen the show) Angel and Cordelia are sort of in the circle too, now, as is Miss Calendar, possibly. So all these people need her but none of them can quite have her; yet if they lose her they might lose their center. Angel and Buffy can maybe have a romance since neither of them is normal, but both know there's no way they can really be a couple, since he can never join her day, or her his predicament. And, well, that bit of dialogue above, from the end of the episode, is rich:

( More SPOILER under the cut )

I love that courtyard: cheap functional "pillars," a bush, and a tree of some sort, you see its trunk only (eucalyptus? palm?), hard to tell if it's regular bark or metal mesh atop the bark to protect it from students. Courtyard convos are always so great; the courtyard seems to be the truth spot, the characters hidden in full view, the multicultural swirl going by (a couple of Chicanos on a bench, an Asian teacher, diverse ethnicities and all colors but still mostly white) while Xander or Buffy or Willow or Rupert speaks to one of the others about what he or she is most troubled by.

This entire school is suggested by: a lawn, two classrooms, a hallway, a principal's office, a library, a locker room, a gymnasium, a boiler room, a closet, a girl's lavatory, and a few more nondescript rooms as needed. I recall in one episode there was also a media room with several computers. Also an episode with stage and auditorium. (Other places?)

( Cordelia watch )