Love What You Hate
In the world of Everything is a Remix, doing great work is about immersing yourself in what you love and drawing inspiration from it.
But what about disliking bad work—or even hating it? What about the cleansing fire of pure white-hot hatred?
You need hate too. Hate is fuel. Hate can even be inspiring.
Steve Jobs knew this. Jean Luc Godard Godard knew this. Miles Davis knew this. Frida Kahlo knew this. You should know it too.
Too much nicey-nice
In our current media ecosystem, we’re all people-pleasers craving clicks and likes and shares. We’re needy little puppies trying to be as cute as we can to get attention. Online culture is teeming with people-pleasing.
Our hyper-commercial, algorithmic, attention-seeking media environment lacks people who just don’t care what you want. They’re making what they want to see. If you like it, great. If not, whatever.
This is always the most exciting and vital work. And often, the people who make this kind of work are driven by a deep dislike of what’s out there.
The preeminent example of this sort of creator is Stanley Kubrick.
Stanley Kubrick
Kubrick hated most films, especially sci-fi
Antagonism towards movies drove Kubrick’s career. He grew up watching as many films as he could and disliking most of them. As he later said:
One of the things that gave me the most confidence in trying to make a film was seeing all the lousy films that I saw. Because I sat there and thought, “Well, I don’t know a goddamn thing about movies, but I know I can make a film better than that”.
A genre he thought was especially bad was science fiction. Kubrick thought sci-fi films were complete trash.
The science fiction author, Arthur C. Clark, who cowrote 2001 with Kubrick, recommended that Kubrick watch the 1936 H.G. Wells classic, Things to Come. Afterward, Kubrick complained to Clark, “What are you trying to do to me? I’ll never see anything you recommend again!”
Science fiction films were an anti-influence on Kubrick. Instead, he drew inspiration from European art films and other non-science fiction. But his biggest influence was simply reality – the work being done by NASA in the mid-sixties.
The resulting film, 2001: A Space Odyssey, was worlds better than any science fiction yet made, both in its imaginative scope and its visual execution.
The prehistoric monolith scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey
So what should you hate?
Think about what you hate and draw inspiration from it. Trust me, there is so much to hate. Greed. Waste. Destruction. Apathy. Bigotry.
Study what you hate. Deconstruct it. Understand it deeply.
And the beautiful thing that will happen in this process is you will transcend this hate. You’ll understand the perspective behind bad work. You’ll be grateful for these works because they’ve inspired you.