Long before the heyday of Instagram Reels, Tiktok was the go-to platform for short-form, eye-grabbing videos. By the time it was banned in 2020, it had created a massive user-base in small towns and rural areas. Thus, while many praised the platform for democratising content creation that had earlier remained the prerogative of the elites, these ‘new’ content creators were called ‘cringe’ and ‘chhapri’ – a derogatory slur with casteist connotations.
This raises many interesting questions about ‘taste’ — specifically, the kind of entertainment we consume and the politics that undergird it. While on the surface, people ridiculing the creators might seem innocuous and stemming simply from a ‘superior’ taste, untethered from any social or political question, it acquires immense political significance in the social sciences as taste is a deeply ideological category and operates as a marker of class.
The core purpose of an education in humanities is to problematise what seems obvious and intuitive, laying bare the sedimented assumptions that pass off as ‘common sense.’ Taste, contrary to popular delusions, transcends individual aesthetic preferences. To study the mechanisms through which certain preferences are valorised while others are mocked as unsophisticated is quite revealing.
To flesh out our argument, we will borrow insights from Pierre Bordieu, in particular his thesis of cultural capital. Although many orthodox Marxists decry ‘cultural capital’ as vague and lacking theoretical precision, it has been extremely helpful to analyse class-based cultural distinctions. When we consume anything, it is not merely a matter of fulfilment of our needs – whether utilitarian or aesthetic. Every act of consumption carries with it an assertion of identity, a silent — but by no means unobtrusive — inscription upon the social fabric. It encodes hierarchies and legitimates exclusion.
If we extend this formulation to the context mentioned above, the mockery and derision directed at the creators would seem symptomatic of deeply entrenched social hierarchies of caste and class. In essence, the brouhaha is less about the content and more about who is producing it.
These creators, more often than not, come from working-class, lower-caste and rural backgrounds. Their content, inevitably, is rooted in this vernacular context and tends to be highly expressive – ‘tacky’ fashion, exaggerated gestures and overly melodramatic performances.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.
When the English-speaking elite happens to encounter such content, it does not merely remain indifferent, it feels compelled to trash such content. This anxiety to render the subaltern forms of cultural expression as illegitimate stems from a self-appointed position as the custodian of cultural legitimacy.
When we consume anything, we are, as Australian social researcher Hugh Mackay says, making a statement about our social position, or reacting to a statement that has been placed before us by others. I would extend this formulation to argue that when there is a blatant disavowal of products and/or services as unfit for consumption, it is rarely about quality or preference, rather, we are making a statement to emphasise social distinctions – to draw a line of ‘us’ versus ‘them.’
The myth of ‘superior taste’ that generates this hubris amongst the elites can also be understood by taking Marx’s oft-quoted dictum into consideration: the ideas of ruling class are, in every epoch, the ruling ideas. Those with elevated levels of cultural capital – education, intellect, style, and mannerisms – dictate what constitutes ‘legitimate taste.’ Taste is effectively weaponised, and any deviation from the constructed ‘normal’ is deemed inferior, and thus subjected to ridicule.
Of late, however, there has been a shift in how this ‘cringe’ content is consumed, particularly among the urban Gen Z population. Rather than outright rejecting it, they engage with such content in what is these days called an ‘ironical fashion.’ They watch, share, imitate such lowbrow and exaggerated content, but with a caveat: it is generally understood among their peers to be a detached and ironic form of amusement, and not genuine engagement.
This ironic engagement comes in quite handy: the elites indulge in it for the sake of entertainment, but are simultaneously nimble enough to signal their dissociation in more subtle ways. Far from challenging the deep-seated cultural and social hierarchies, it reinforces them in insidious ways.
This ability to consume ‘cringe content’ in a detached and self-aware manner itself becomes a nuanced form of cultural capital. Among other things, it indicates a certain social standing that facilitates an awareness of the unspoken codes that operate to gatekeep aesthetic legitimacy. It can not merely be a matter of happenstance that the ‘cringe’ content that goes viral the most, transgresses the accepted meters of aesthetic refinement the most. This virality is predicated upon subtle assertions of ‘superiority’ by the elite consumers for whom a genuine embrace of working class cultural expressions would be too demeaning.
Thus, there are significant links between taste, consumption, class and power. It happens many times that we genuinely appreciate certain artistic expressions, but we shy away from acknowledging them in public due to the fear of social ostracisation. We, in other words, perform for a voyeur – real or imaginary.
We carefully curate our taste to align with socially sanctioned norms. Thus, what is labeled ‘cringe’ is never a pristine and untainted aesthetic judgement, it is, at the risk of oversimplification, a social mechanism to maintain class and caste boundaries under the guise of ‘taste.’ Social media has disrupted the cultural monopoly of the elites over entertainment. The resulting anxiety manifests in efforts to discredit and dismiss subaltern cultural expressions. As we have seen above, this delegitimisation is not necessarily overt and absolute, it also manifests through subtler ways – detached ‘ironic’ engagement.
Shashi Singh is studying history at the University of Delhi.
