This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost Australia, which closed in 2021.

Loving Trashy Movies Probably Means You're Smart, Says Science

Loving Trashy Movies Probably Means You're Smart, Says Science
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Can’t wait to see “Fifty Shades Darker?

Well, leave your judgy friends behind, grab the popcorn and indulge in all the trashy movies you want.

Seriously, it’s a sign of your brilliance.

In a study published this summer in the interdisciplinary arts and culture journal Poetics, researchers found that people with “bad” movie preferences tend to be, well, smart.

The study was conducted by film scholar Keyvan Sarkhosh of the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt, Germany, and relied on an online survey to collect data from 372 participants ― largely university students and people with a presence on Facebook and trash film-focused online forums. Their mean age was 34.6 years.

The survey asked participants to provide up to 20 words they spontaneously associated with the term “trash films,” and to describe the feelings these films elicited and how often and in what context they typically watched them. Participants were also asked to list up to 10 film titles that came to mind when they thought of “trash films.”

“There was no pre-selected list of trash-film titles,” Sarkhosh told The Huffington Post.

Participants described “trash films” as cheaply or poorly made films that feature embarrassing or disturbing content. In an unsurprising twist, “Sharknado (and its sequels) were among the films most often mentioned by trashy cinema intellects. Because, hello, Fin and April 4ever!