A new film asks, is there such a thing as a guilty pleasure?

Is there such a thing as a guilty plea­sure? It’s cer­tain­ly com­mon for peo­ple to feel a sense of shame over their enjoy­ment of a par­tic­u­lar kind of film. Indeed, it can be eas­i­er in con­ver­sa­tion to praise a canon­i­cal clas­sic instead of pro­fess­ing your love of some­thing that might be deemed to have less artis­tic mer­it. But in Guilt-Free Plea­sures, a new hour-long essay film by Cather­ine Bray, the above ques­tion is posed in a deep­er sense.

Is that feel­ing of guilt over enjoy­ing a movie com­plete­ly due to social sit­u­a­tions or is it root­ed in some­thing more psy­cho­log­i­cal? Fur­ther­more, is guilt use­ful for film­go­ers in deal­ing with our own moral con­sciences? Along­side edi­tor Antho­ny Ing and nar­ra­tor Mae Mar­tin, Bray utilis­es footage from over 100 films to attempt to answer these ques­tions and fig­ure out why audi­ences keep com­ing back to works that make them feel ​‘guilty’.

Bray has her own the­o­ry as to why audi­ences con­tin­ue to embrace films that can cause them social dis­com­fort. ​“Maybe we just like feel­ing a lit­tle bit bad some­times,” she says. ​“My film pro­pos­es essen­tial­ly that we try to own our harm­less plea­sures and not apol­o­gise for what we like. But maybe I’m tak­ing away that sin­ful feel­ing. If watch­ing some­thing pure­ly because it’s so wrong is what you enjoy, then me telling you, ​‘It’s total­ly fine, enjoy your­self’ might take some of the fun out.”

The film begins by explor­ing tra­di­tion­al sub­jects of ​‘so-bad-it’s‑good’ cin­e­ma, like Tom­my Wiseau’s cult clas­sic The Room. There is detail pro­vid­ed of the lev­els of fail­ure and why cer­tain types of audi­ences are drawn to dis­as­ters, with enjoy­ment appar­ent­ly derived from watch­ing some­thing go wrong. The film jumps between big-bud­get flops and inde­pen­dent films by direc­tors with big ideas but not a lot of tal­ent or mon­ey. Bray exam­ines the cults around these idio­syn­crat­ic films, show­ing how they’re warm­ly embraced specif­i­cal­ly because of their faults.

Fun­da­men­tal­ly, Guilt-Free Plea­sures explores the nature of guilt in our response to art. The major­i­ty of the film is devot­ed to pop­u­lar films, block­busters with lots of explo­sions, and roman­tic come­dies that ful­fil emo­tion­al fan­tasies. Bray details the promi­nence of their respec­tive audi­ences while show­cas­ing how many peo­ple feel embar­rassed over their affec­tion for them. It is clear­ly not the same as laugh­ing at Xanadu but some­thing far deep­er about the ways canon­i­sa­tion affects cul­tur­al perception.

Bray’s the­sis is strength­ened when she exam­ines genre cin­e­ma. While hor­ror films are fre­quent­ly dis­missed if their pur­pose is sim­ply to pro­voke fear or dis­gust, those with grander ambi­tions are often praised for going ​“beyond hor­ror”. Bray dis­miss­es the idea that hor­ror has to make an artis­tic state­ment in order to be wor­thy of praise, cit­ing Jor­dan Peele’s Get Out as an exam­ple of a crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed hor­ror movie which drew inspi­ra­tion from dis­missed genre classics.

Giv­en that cin­e­ma is too many peo­ple a means of escapism, why should we feel guilty about tak­ing plea­sure from jump scares and gen­er­al silli­ness? ​“I love hor­ror, I love rom-coms, I love films where a giant or what­ev­er attacks some­thing,” Bray admits. ​“But I noticed that whether peo­ple use the spe­cif­ic term ​‘guilty plea­sure’ or not, there’s a con­sis­tent pat­tern of apol­o­gy for lik­ing cer­tain kinds of hor­ror, cer­tain kinds of rom-com. It’s okay to like Hered­i­tary, but if you’re into the Saw sequels it’s seen as a lit­tle bit less legit.”

In the final part of the film, Bray tack­les heav­ier sub­jects such as direc­tor Roman Polan­s­ki, a con­vict­ed sex offend­er who has cre­at­ed some of the most influ­en­tial films ever made. Bray’s focus shifts from lib­er­at­ing audi­ences’ need to feel shame to under­stand­ing the jus­ti­fi­able feel­ings of guilt that come from enjoy­ing the work of a dis­graced artist. It helps strength­en the idea that our col­lec­tive guilt should move away from deny­ing our affec­tion for car chas­es towards some­thing more important.

There isn’t any judge­ment against those who can set aside a filmmaker’s trans­gres­sions, but it’s guar­an­teed to make you reflect on your own artis­tic per­cep­tions and bias­es. ​“Towards the end of the film,” Bray explains, ​“we ask peo­ple to con­sid­er the ways in which guilt might be pos­i­tive­ly reimag­ined as part of our view­ing choic­es, act­ing almost as a kind of col­lec­tive con­science, which I hope is a thought­ful, bal­anced moment amid all the fun stuff.”

Guilt-Free Plea­sures airs on BBC Four at 10pm GMT, and will be avail­able to watch on iPlay­er thereafter.