Bad Taste by Nathalie Olah review – the good, the gauche and the ugly

The author of Class dissects the cultural codes of the instagram generation – but there are some curious omissions

There’s a delicious moment in the new Netflix documentary Beckham that feels destined to be replayed in sociology lectures. Victoria Beckham, in a tasteful white blouse, announces to the camera that she works very hard and is actually “very working class”. Whereupon David pops in to ask what car her father drove her to school in. “Be honest.” Victoria evades, avers and finally admits it. “In the 80s my dad had a Rolls-Royce.”

Nathalie Olah, I suspect, would have a field day with this. Bad Taste is her update of Distinction, Pierre Bourdieu’s classic 1979 inquiry into the tastes of Parisian intellectuals, retooled for the age of Instagram, Kinfolk magazine, Glossier makeup tutorials and the sort of minimally chic interiors favoured by the Beckhams, Britain’s pre-eminent social voyagers.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/AWcQC4D