'Deep Water' could have been artful or fun — but instead, it's just mechanical

The word "trash" is a complicated one.

Pauline Kael wrote the essay in 1969. In it, she argued that many — that most — movies are not art. They are entertaining or not, they are pleasurable or not, they are satisfying or not, but most lack the level of technique that makes technique worth talking about, and thus, they are not art. She says that after all, people who are considering seeing a movie ask the question "What's it about?" or "Who's in it?", rather than the question "How [well] is it made?" But lack of technique doesn't necessarily make the movie bad, she argues. It's perfectly valid to a movie, even while understanding it is not an artfully movie. As such, Kael refers broadly to (at least some) movies that are not art as "trash," whether they are good or not. The term "trash" is not exactly derogatory, even though it is certainly dismissive of, specifically, the idea of treating trash as art.