You Should Eat Trash
Why it’s good to interact with bad media
29 Jan 2024The title says it all folks, you should eat trash. Don’t go rushing for your bins just yet though, we’re talking a different type of trash today. We’re talking about trash media. I know what you’re thinking, “Anton, why would I want to go watch/play/listen to something that’s bad when I could be watching/playing/listening to something good?” Fret not, I’m here to answer that concern and turn you into a true trash believer.
What is trash?
It’s important that we’re on the same page about what trash is. Obviously it means bad, but on a deeper level, I think trash is more of a spectrum than just a single descriptor. We can mark three distinct points on this spectrum to figure out how trash something is. Those three points are: fake trash, fun trash, and real trash.
Fake Trash
Fake Trash is straightforward - it’s something that people say is bad but actually isn’t bad at all. I’m sure dozens of instances come to mind, and a lot of them are probably in the vein of people being contrarian to a popular thing. Taylor Swift is a great one - I don’t really fuck with her too much on a personal level but it is undeniable that she has some absolute bops and bangers. Nobody can tell me that Blank Space isn’t a good track, you can’t look me in the eye and say “yeah there’s nothing good going on here” when Love Story comes on.
The other thing that comes to mind as Fake Trash is something that’s poorly reviewed widely but isn’t actually bad. To me a great showcase of this is Starship Troopers. It’s a movie that’s drenched in fantastic satire of right wing beliefs like militarism and fascism, but was poorly received on release because people somehow thought it was being sincere. There’s a scene where a retired soldier talks about how war made him the man he is today and it immediately cuts to show him missing limbs, like we’re not talking about subtle filmmaking here. With time I think the movie’s reputation has gotten better but it’s still a good example of Fake Trash to me god damn it.
Fun Trash
Fun Trash can be defined by the phrase “so bad it’s good”. It’s a piece of media that’s so bad that there’s some level of enjoyment to be had while you interact with it. A terrible movie with a poorly written story and even worse acting like The Room, a clunky game with horrible performance like Deadly Premonition, a song that sounds completely out of tune and off beat to the point that you feel like you’re somehow hearing it wrong like Sarah Brand’s Red Dress - all of these things can inspire so much joy and laughter because they’re so bad.
The Fun Trash concept isn’t foreign at all, especially when it comes to movies - shows like Mystery Science Theatre 3000 or Red Letter Media’s Best of the Worst are all about lampooning bad movies. I think it’s something that just naturally resonates with a lot of people, and that’s also why people love to share Fun Trash with each other. How many times have you seen a shit meme on Insta or Twitter and your first reaction was “I have to show my friends this”? We all love a bit of Fun Trash, it’s human nature.
Real Trash
Real Trash is something that is just bad. There’s nothing good about it, no real redeeming qualities or something to enjoy. It’s just bad. I don’t like talking shit about stuff in a solely negative way, I just don’t think it’s a very fun thing to do most of the time, so I’ll only give one example. Wrestling ☯ Wave is one of the worst albums I’ve ever listened to. I like wrestling and I like vaporwave, but the way it’s been mixed together here is just so lame. I don’t need to explain Real Trash any further, I think we all get it.
Why should I eat it?
“Okay, so I now have a long winded and arguably self indulgent explanation of what trash is. Why am I ‘eating’ it?” Hey great question, there’s a few different reasons. Let’s break ‘em down.
First reason is short, easy and ties together with our first kind of trash: it might not actually be trash. It could be a false positive, something that people tell you is bad but it’s totally fine. There’s no harm in trying something out to see if it’s actually bad. And if it is, just stop! That’s the best part of this, you can just simply say “I am done with this” and stop watching/listening/playing. We are masters of our own destinies.
Second reason you should eat trash is you might learn something from it. Even from something terrible, there’s plenty you can learn! Maybe you’re listening to a song that has some of the worst production you’ve heard in your life but there’s a line or rhyme that catches your ear that you’ve never heard before and it leaves you inspired to use it in your own way. Or maybe you’re watching an old bad movie but you see a practical effect that leaves you thinking about how they did that back then without a magic computer doing it all for them, so you go look it up and figure it out.
Hell you don’t even have to learn something like a skill or anything. Instead you might be able to articulate why the thing is bad and figure out the right words to describe it to others. You can evolve your understanding of something deeper than just “this is bad” and instead be able to tell people why you feel that way. That’s a very valuable skill to have, and it’s also a lot more fun. You don’t have to write joke reviews on Letterboxd anymore, no more time spent trying to find a better joke than “this happened to my buddy Eric” that will ultimately fall flat.
Maybe Jigsaw had a point, you gotta go through the bad to appreciate the good
One more reason is that eating trash gives you a greater appreciation for the good stuff. It’s like when you do is eat instant noodles and then you finally go get ramen at a place like Hakata Gensuke. The cup noodles were okay but god when you have a proper broth, meat and real vegetables? It can’t compare! It tastes even better because your baseline is so low that the highs are even higher than they would be otherwise. For a media analogue, I recently watched The Iron Claw and that movie’s so good, but it’s made better by the fact that the last biopic I watched was Gran Turismo which felt like corporate slop with no artistic intent. Resetting your expectations by eating some trash always lets you enjoy the nicer things in ways you wouldn’t usually.
There’s one final reason that stands above all others - sometimes you just need trash. We all have guilty pleasure shows/movies/media that aren’t high quality but we love. Housewife reality TV shows, that one harem anime, a book series from when you were younger that doesn’t work as well now that you’re an adult. There’s endless examples but they all have a commonality, they make you feel good when you’re having a bad day or when you just want to have a break from everything. They’re comforting. Sometimes you don’t want a 3+ hour well crafted feature film, sometimes you just want Cats & Dogs featuring Jeff Goldblum. You don’t have to think, you can just enjoy your trash. That’s okay, and don’t let anybody else tell you otherwise.
Beware the Love Tyrant Event Horizon (LTEH)
Ay yo this show is stinky af
There’s just one word of warning I have to give when you’re eating trash, and that is that you should be wary of the Love Tyrant Event Horizon (aka LTEH). Love Tyrant is an anime that aired in 2017. At the time, I used to pick up one trash show per anime season so I could laugh at it and also appreciate the better things I was watching at the time. Love Tyrant was the trash of the season, but I didn’t expect it to get as bad as it did. It had all the worst tropes of a harem show, a story that refused to go anywhere and animation so nothing that you couldn’t even enjoy low quality moments. It ended up being so bad that I just couldn’t do the seasonal trash anymore, the cost was just too great.
This is what the LTEH is. It’s a point where there’s nothing to be gained from the trash you’re eating and instead it’s just all bad times. It’s not good, there’s no joy to be had laughing at it and you can’t learn anything from it. If you ever breach that event horizon, it’s time to stop. You’re more worth it than being able to say you completed it.
I hope you come away from this post with a new found appreciation for trash. This was originally a slideshow presentation I did for my friends so I hope the format translated well enough into a blog post. One lingering question you might have is “Anton you’re Australian why do you call it trash and not rubbish” and to be honest it’s mostly because “you should eat rubbish” sounds like it’d be an insult from a 70s British sitcom more than it does a catchy blog title.
Also hey, if I called something you like trash and you think it’s good, please don’t think anything less of what you like. One man’s junk is another one’s treasure right?