A movie/Book/band that has a following & GAWD knows why

So I saw this "to Kill a Mockingbird" thread & it reminded me that I hated that book. I tried to like it. I tried to read it, twice. I just don't get what the hell was so great about it. I've debated with many-a-friend about this book & no one could convince me, nor could I convince them that it was utter garbage.
Another one (& I think I might get internet lynched for this) is:
The Catcher & the Rye...wtf?? This book to me was about some lame ass that didn't do anything but bitch & moan...(wait, kind of sounds like what I'm doing now...but never mind that).

So my question to you SGers is this, what book, movie, band or other piece of pop culture can you not stand despite the masses feeling otherwise?

Just out of curiosity, is there a book you DO like?

Oh, and in answer to your question, pretty much anything by Stephen King (after Carrie that is.) The writing is bad, the movies are worse, and his insistence on appearing in the films annoys me for reasons I don't really want to think about.

oh yes, I addddooorre books! I don't even know where to start but some of my faves are:
anything Tolkien
In the Time of Butterflies
Watership Down
Anything by Jon Kraukauer (Into Thin Air is my favorite)
The Only Living Witness
A Christmas Carol...
on & on & on...I knew I wouldn't make any friends with this post, but I truly don't get the attraction to those 2 works...

With "Catcher" you aren't supposed to have sympathy for Holden. He's considered an anti-hero for a reason.

For "Mockingbird," there is the way it brings some of the darkness of the deep south into the light; there is the inspiration of generations of lawyers; there is the connection of childhood experiences (although those are dying out as the country grows more and more urban); the transition from childhood to adult . . .

Yes, I've heard most of that before. I once took a class on psycopathy in violent criminals. My professor cited some study in which a large percentage of violent offenders surveyed (however the hell you do that), listed Catcher in the Rye as their favorite book. The study could not account for this, but several theories were raised. I don't remember much else, but at that point, I read the book a second time (the first having been in high school). It still was like pulling teeth for me to get through it. To me, I can't get beyond the initial layer...
As for Mockingbird, it was more of the same thing. Just not my thing.

I'd like to see a study of Holden Caufield as a sociopath.

ooohhh, now we're talking.

p.s. how do you feel about A Clockwork Orange??

Sadly, since I hated (and couldn't get through) Catcher, I'm not the one to do it

Never read A Clockwork Orange, but I did see the movie. I think it was considered "great" for the same reason as Taxi Driver: the introduction of the Ultra-violent sub-genre.

Yes! I didn't read the book either but because of that damn movie (ACO) a weekend of Spielberg flixs was enlisted to save my fragile psyche!

Seems like any movie that is the "first" in something gets to be considered great, regardless of the quality of the story.

Please explain to me why people love Twilight, The Secret, The Catcher & the Rye, Lady GaGa, Steven King ans a lot more

Edit and all Star Wars movies after the first and Star Trek after the original series.

A Clockwork Orange the book is vastly superior to the movie, IMO.
I understand why the movie is lauded. It's visually compelling, and Malcolm McDowell gives an iconic performance.
But the book doesn't glamorize Alex like the movie does. While it may not have been Kubrick's intention to do so, that character has/does come off as "cool" to a lot of people.

Kubrick was lauded for being willing to break away from Hollywood standards by making films that were too cerebral for standard American movie-goers. But I've never been overly impressed with them. Too often, it seemed like he was being different for the express purpose of being different.

Twilight - The book series actually has a good plot, but if your an english major don't read it. The thousands of grammatical errors will drive you nuts (yes, I am guilty of reading it). Also, don't read it expecting typical vampires. Think of them as a different creature entirely.

The Secret - It's religious. Enough said.

Steven King - he used to be really good, although he doesn't seem to have been actually trying for a while now, and knows what he's talking about when he critiques/criticizes other writers.

The Catcher and the Rye - It made a guy kill John Lennon and was banned for a while. Being banned alone automatically makes a book good for some reason and making someone kill Lennon makes it god like to some people.

Lada GaGa - She's the best of the worst. When the only music you've listened to is horrible crap, the best of the horrible crap just seems like the best to you.

Adding to the violent criminals connection to Catcher in the Rye, that study was conducted because several high profile American serial killers had copies on their person or at easy access (car etc.) when arrested.

In a similar (and less terrifyingly creepy) vein, both Washington and Jefferson carried copies of Don Quixote with them on most of their major trips, reading and quoting from it liberally.

Thank god for friends with an interest in pub trivia and literature degrees!

Well, think of it as a sign of the times. That was the pop fiction of the day (or, well, the day a century earlier). It would be kinda like a modern general taking a copy of Apocalypse Now to watch while off-duty.

It also seems like he was intentionally trying to antagonize authors when he adapted their work. Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange) and Stephen King (The Shining) hated what he did to their books. I'm no fan of Kubrick's either.

Stephen King has no place to criticize anyone else's work. Hell, the man plagiarized himself! (compare the short story 1403 to the forbidden room scene in The Shining).

Jon Saul is better than Stephen King.

Empire Strikes Back is considered by many to be the best of the original SW trilogy. Personally, I like it because it's darker, the bad guys sort of 'win' at the end of Empire. Return of the Jedi is probably my least favorite of the original 3. The inclusion of the Ewoks makes it pretty obvious that the script was written primarily with a mind towards merchandising to a much younger audience than the first two.

The original Star Trek may have been the shit in its day, but now it's only awesome for its camp value. TNG was by far the best of the series (starting at about season 3, and really coming into its own the later the series went on. Seasons 1 and 2 are on a camp level equal to the Original Series).

I really liked DS9. I felt it fit in very well with the TNG setting, and was a well-written show.

I really didn't like Voyager. It's my least favorite of all the series. I didn't like most of the cast, and they did too many dumbfuck time travel episodes, where they totally fucked up the temporal mechanics. (The best Star Trek time travel episode is from TNG, where they travel to 1800s San Francisco, and Data loses his head. Data states, "It has happened, therefore it will happen." and then the plot is well planned and written so that things work out the way that they must, since we now how the future ends up at the beginning of the episode.)

I like Star Trek: Enterprise third best after TNG and DS9. I thought the show had a lot of potential. Great cast, and it had some really good stand-alone episodes. What killed it, I think, was:
1). That god-awful theme song.
2). Horrible writing for the most part.
2A). They hopped on the fad of every series needing to have a season-spanning uberplot that doesn't ever get resolved. Star Trek is not meant to be like that. You have some two-parters, three-parters at the most. It's meant to be episodic. That was the whole point behind 'stardates', so that episodes could be replayed out of sequence. The whole 'Temporal Coldwar' uberplot and the season 3 'Xindi' uberplot were just stupid and confusing and not well thought-out.
2B). TOO MANY DUMBFUCK TIME TRAVEL EPISODES! They totally threw temporal mechanics out the window, which works for Dr. Who, but didn't fit with the Star Trek universe. See above reference to the utter crapitude of the 'Temporal Coldwar'.
2C). With the exception of a few episodes, nearly all of season 3 was crap.

All those serious flaws aside, like I said, I loved the cast. I liked the pre-Kirk era setting, and thought it had great potential to be explored. It did have some really good stand-alone episodes.

Kevin Smith. Joss Whedon. Chuck Pahlaniuk. Familly Guy.

The list goes on and on.

Also, I think its funny that everyone who complains about The Catcher in the Rye sounds just like Holden Caulfield.

Uh, The Catcher IN the Rye was considered a classic for decades before it "made" chapman kill anyone. How does a book do that, anywa?