Nobrow  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Inversions, the first French gay journal is published. Produced between 1924 and 1926, it stopped publication after the French government charged the publishers with "Outrage aux bonnes mœurs". Its full title was Inversions ... in art, literature, philosophy and science.

Ubu Roi (King Ubu) is a play developed by Alfred Jarry premiered on December 10 1896, and is widely acknowledged as a theatrical precursor to the Absurdist, Dada and Surrealist art movements.

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"Both high and low culture have produced masterpieces and works of mediocrity. It is our task to find beauty in unexpected places."

Definition

The term nobrow is a postmodern neologism derived from highbrow and lowbrow coined by John Seabrook in Nobrow: The Culture of Marketing, the Marketing of Culture (2000). Highbrow denotes a "person of superior intellect and taste," first attested in 1902. Lowbrow is a "person who is not intellectual" is also first attested 1902, said to have been coined by humorist Will Irwin. (source: Etymology online). The term nobrow denotes intellectual discourse which is influenced both by high culture and low culture as initiated by Critical Theory in the United States and Cultural Studies in the United Kingdom.

The term can also be applied to cultural products which are both a critical and box office success; and whenever "body genres" intersect with intellectual discourse.

Nobrow filmmakers and films

Roger Corman and Alain Robbe-Grillet includes high and low art tropes in his work.

Jess Franco is an exploitation director who appropriates literary classics.

Hour of the Wolf is a nobrow film because it deals with the body genre horror but is filmed by the intellectual filmmaker par excellence, Ingmar Bergman.

Nobrow television

The Simpsons' referential smorgasbord.

Nobrow actors

Klaus Kinski working both with Jess Franco in the exploitation realm and with Werner Herzog in the high art realm.

Nobrow theory

• Postmodernism
• Camille Paglia
• Cross the Border
• The Pornographic Imagination by Leslie Fiedler

Nobrow publishers

Eric Losfeld published high art (mainly surrealism) and low art cultural artifacts such as comic books, erotic books, etcetera.

Nobrow theatre

• Royal de luxe, European street theatre company

Nobrow blogs

• Esotika

Related terms

culture war - cultural pessimism - eclecticism - elite - hierarchy - high culture - low culture - mass - paracinema - paraliterature - postmodernism - good taste and bad taste

Academic theory on mass vs elite

Walter Benjamin - Stephen Bayley - Patrick Brantlinger - John Carey - Tyler Cowen - Robert Darnton - Leslie Fiedler - Herbert Gans - Bernard Gendron - Joan Hawkins - Andreas Huyssen - Lawrence Levine - John Mullan - Camille Paglia - Andrew Ross - John Seabrook - Alan Swingewood - Susan Sontag - Raymond Williams