"Taste defines and divides classes by virtue of its negative essence, "tastes are perhaps first and foremost distastes, disgust provoked by horror of visceral intolerance('sick-making') of the tastes of others." Bourdie's formulation of taste of distaste allows for a reading of Last House that acknowledges its status as a "disgusting" experience for a variety of audience across the "art" and "expolitation" spectrum... the reactions of disgust generated by the film overwhelm viewwer defenses geared to realign taste boundaries after "the sacrilegious reuniting of tastes which taste dictates shall be separated." In other words, disgust has the potential to conjoin artful taste and low tastelessness in a shocking allegorical moment, to exporse "with horror the common animality on which and against which moral distinction is constructed." ... So, the Hollywood Renaissance ultimately depends upon a sense of "having it both ways" - weaving together artistic ambition ("good" taste) and visceral provocation ("bad" taste) ... Craven's film allegorically uncovers how the workings of taste shield us from recognizing, amid the national trauma of Vietnam, the otehr bald of political demonology's tortured oppositions: right/left, old/young, prowar/antiwar, bourgeois culture/counterculture, middle class/working class, and finally, art/exploitation."
Excerp from Adam Lowenstein's "Shocking Representation: Historical Trauma, National Cinema, and the Modern Horror Film"
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