The problem is that academics get to define what is crap and what isn't, and force that narrative. John Gardner blew several chapters arguing that people teach what is easy to demonstrate, not what is good, the end result being that pedantry defines a genre, not quality. And, the longer someone's been dead the less controversy there is. I had an English teacher argue that James Fenimore Cooper was art because millions of people loved his books but Stephen King was not because. And then she changed the subject. The fact that we're forced to choke down Leatherstocking bullshit purely because everyone read it back then is like arguing kids 200 years from now are gonna have to read goddamn Twilight because it was on every supermarket shelf, while arguing no one should read Twilight now because Stephanie Meyer isn't a hundred years dead. Most art is garbage. But "experts" get to elevate their garbage choices and lord their expertise over the rest of us. And we hate you for it.