Preston Sturges’s splendid old Sullivan’s Travels is a wonderful film with an important message. (I assume a spoiler warning is not necessary for an eighty-year-old film.) The protagonist, John Sullivan, is a director of lowbrow comedies who aspires to instead make serious art about the suffering of the poor. He tries to do experiential research about their suffering, and winds up being falsely imprisoned at hard labour. The prisoners’ one reprieve is to watch a Disney Goofy cartoon, at which Sullivan finds himself laughing uproariously. His lesson, from actually experiencing the suffering of the poor, is to go back to making silly comedies. The film closes with his lines: “There’s a lot to be said for making people laugh. Did you know that’s all some people have? It isn’t much, but it’s better than nothing in this cockeyed caravan.”

The story of Sullivan’s Travels serves as an eloquent defence of lowbrow or shallow art, of kitsch and even smarm. And I think it helps us see what is wrong with the philosophical critique of kitsch.