What's wrong with "popular"?

Yesterday I was in a place with two people: an actress and a screenwriter, besides myself. They were talking and, at some point, the actress, speaking about a text by the screenwriter, said: “Oh no, this is too popular. I didn’t like it.” I didn’t go into details at the time to avoid embarrassment, and to avoid raising suspicions that hours later I would use them as characters in a text. After much pondering, I realized that this is a common thought: that what is popular is not good, or that if it is good, it cannot be popular. Nothing could be further from the truth, dear friends.

The great geniuses of humanity had their works immortalized precisely because they were popular. Even the geniuses of classical music, for example, like Debussy or Mozart, contributed to the popularization of a genre still considered "elite" today. The geniuses of literature were not those who wrote the most complicated and elaborate books, but rather those who sold the books that made people want to read. After all, isn't that the goal of a writer: to be read? Unfortunately, according to common sense, it seems not. The old Nelson Rodrigues maxim that in Brazil success is a popular offense seems to be the slogan of this crusade against the popular.

Writer X is very popular, director Y is very popular. Therefore, they can't be geniuses; after all, if everyone understood and liked their works, something must be wrong! This is one of the most idiotic thoughts I've ever heard. And it's even worse on TV. You probably know dozens of people who boast about not watching broadcast television. But ask them how many Russian authors they've read? Ask them if they watch programs about quantum physics or brain surgery. NO. These "critics" of broadcast television boast about watching exactly POPULAR TV, only American or European. They're constantly watching canned American series or British comedy shows, which are popular there, just like soap operas are here. But what matters is that they aren't popular here; after all, their popular shows are less popular than ours.

Have you ever stopped to think about the Herculean task it must take to write a soap opera? To write a plot that lasts nine, ten months, with hour-long episodes every day, that drags millions of people EVERY SINGLE DAY in front of the TV, and that needs, day after day, to KEEP that viewer there, in front of the TV? For God's sake, don't belittle this work and say that it's harder to write an intellectual program full of unintelligible French quotes and fourteen-minute long takes and get half a point in the ratings. That would be like a mosquito mocking a tiger because it can't suck blood, therefore it's more bloodthirsty. I swear I missed the point in history where doing things that are noticeably forced and deliberately unintelligible became synonymous with success. And honestly, I hope I don't live to see a fourteen-minute long take during prime time on my TV.