Enjoying trash films: Underlying features, viewing stances, and experiential response dimensions

•We explore how trash films’ characteristics support positive use of the label.•We give evidence for the close affinity of cinematic trash to low-budget films.•We show that liking trash films goes hand in hand with a preference for art cinema.•We uncover that the enjoyment of trash films is related to an ironic viewing stance.•We identify trash film fans as a primarily well-educated ‘omnivorous’ audience.

By means of an explorative online survey, the present study identifies key characteristics of ‘trash films’ from the perspective of their regular consumers. It focuses on how these characteristics support the evaluative turnaround underlying the positive use of the label, i.e. on how something can be identified as cheap and worthless ‘trash’ and still be embraced and (re-)evaluated as providing positive enjoyment. The data reveal that trash films are, indeed, identified as ‘cheap’ and hence as a variety of low-budget films. At the same time, viewers attribute to trash films not just amusing/entertaining qualities, but also a positive, transgressive deviance from the cinematic mainstream, and their appreciation of these films is coupled with marked preferences for art cinema. The majority of trash film fans appear to be well-educated cultural ‘omnivores’, and they conceive of their preference for trash films in terms of an ironic viewing stance.