Uploaded May 2019 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
How is it even possible to appreciate art that's "so bad, it's good?" What is it that makes hideously awful movies like "The Room" & "Plan 9 from Outer Space" enjoyable? Susan Sontag has a one-word answer: STYLE.
-Links for the Curious-
“Can You Make a Movie So Bad It’s Good On Purpose?” by PBS Idea Channel - youtube.com/watch?v=YwQjBC0_2eA
“Notes on ‘Camp’” by Susan Sontag - https://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/Sontag-NotesOnCamp-1964.html
“Why We Love Bad Movies” by Dan Neil - latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-aug-07-tm-neil32-story.html
“What is camp? The Met seeks to find out through fashion.” by Eliza Brooke - vox.com/the-goods/2019/5/6/18534583/met-museum-camp-fashion-exhibit
Reasonably Sound is amazing and Mike Rugnetta is like Midas but everything he touches becomes charming & interesting - reasonablysound.com
“Can You Make a Movie So Bad It’s Good On Purpose?” by PBS Idea Channel - youtube.com/watch?v=YwQjBC0_2eA
“Notes on ‘Camp’” by Susan Sontag - https://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/Sontag-NotesOnCamp-1964.html
“Why We Love Bad Movies” by Dan Neil - latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-aug-07-tm-neil32-story.html
“What is camp? The Met seeks to find out through fashion.” by Eliza Brooke - vox.com/the-goods/2019/5/6/18534583/met-museum-camp-fashion-exhibit
Reasonably Sound is amazing and Mike Rugnetta is like Midas but everything he touches becomes charming & interesting - reasonablysound.com
How is it even possible to appreciate art that's "so bad, it's good?" What is it that makes hideously awful movies like "The Room" & "Plan 9 from Outer Space" enjoyable? Susan Sontag has a one-word answer: STYLE.
-Links for the Curious-
“Can You Make a Movie So Bad It’s Good On Purpose?” by PBS Idea Channel - youtube.com/watch?v=YwQjBC0_2eA
“Notes on ‘Camp’” by Susan Sontag - https://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/Sontag-NotesOnCamp-1964.html
“Why We Love Bad Movies” by Dan Neil - latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-aug-07-tm-neil32-story.html
“What is camp? The Met seeks to find out through fashion.” by Eliza Brooke - vox.com/the-goods/2019/5/6/18534583/met-museum-camp-fashion-exhibit
Reasonably Sound is amazing and Mike Rugnetta is like Midas but everything he touches becomes charming & interesting - reasonablysound.com
“Can You Make a Movie So Bad It’s Good On Purpose?” by PBS Idea Channel - youtube.com/watch?v=YwQjBC0_2eA
“Notes on ‘Camp’” by Susan Sontag - https://faculty.georgetown.edu/irvinem/theory/Sontag-NotesOnCamp-1964.html
“Why We Love Bad Movies” by Dan Neil - latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-aug-07-tm-neil32-story.html
“What is camp? The Met seeks to find out through fashion.” by Eliza Brooke - vox.com/the-goods/2019/5/6/18534583/met-museum-camp-fashion-exhibit
Reasonably Sound is amazing and Mike Rugnetta is like Midas but everything he touches becomes charming & interesting - reasonablysound.com








![257. Orality & Literacy
Our mental landscape is irrevocably bound up in variations of 26 characters, but were historical exceptions.
- Links for the Curious -
1. Dissemination (J. Derrida, 1972) - http://archive.org/details/derrida-dissemination
2. List of languages by first written account - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_languages_by_first_written_account&oldid=1266554494
3. Literacy (Roser, M. & Ortiz-Ospina, E., 2018) - https://ourworldindata.org/literacy
4. Literacy in Traditional Societies (Goody, J., 1975)
5. Orality and literacy: the technologizing of the word (Ong, W. J., 2012)
6. Silent reading - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Silent_reading&oldid=1258004457
7. The Consequences of Literacy (Goody, J. & Watt, I., 1963) - http://www.jstor.org/stable/177651
8. Phaedrus (Plato, 360BC) - https://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedrus.html
9. The Power of Names (Graham, L., 2011) - http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14746700.2011.547020
10. The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling (Chiang, T., 2013)
11. ‘There’s been a genuine vibe shift and it is no longer “cool” to be—’ You bolt awake. It is 2600 BC in holy Sumer. You are a scribe lately experimenting with rotating pictograms into an abstract, repeatable, recombinant logosyllabary. Your work, all of it, must be destroyed. (Jacob Bacharach [@jakebackpack], 2025) - https://x.com/jakebackpack/status/1878559969735573709
12. Word And Object, Quine (Von Quine, 1977) - http://archive.org/details/word-and-object-quine
13. Writing on the Wall: Social Media - The First 2,000 Years (Standage, T., 2013)
14. Literacy acquisition facilitates inversion effects for faces with full-, low-, and high-spatial frequency: evidence from illiterate and literate adults (Yang et al, 2023) (Thanks Ripple_Echo!) 257. Orality & Literacy](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/N7Q4yU719FA/mqdefault.jpg)

