Low culture
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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| [[Kitsch]], [[slapstick]], [[Camp (style)|camp]], [[escapist fiction]], [[popular music]], [[comic books]], [[tattoo]] art and [[exploitation film]]s are examples of low culture. It has often been stated that in [[postmodernism|postmodern]] times, the boundary between high culture and low culture has blurred. See the 1990s artwork of [[Jeff Koons]] for example of [[Appropriation (art)|appropriation]] of low art tropes. | [[Kitsch]], [[slapstick]], [[Camp (style)|camp]], [[escapist fiction]], [[popular music]], [[comic books]], [[tattoo]] art and [[exploitation film]]s are examples of low culture. It has often been stated that in [[postmodernism|postmodern]] times, the boundary between high culture and low culture has blurred. See the 1990s artwork of [[Jeff Koons]] for example of [[Appropriation (art)|appropriation]] of low art tropes. | ||
| - | [[Romanticism]] was one of the first artistic movements to reappraise "low culture", when previously maligned [[Romance (genre)|medieval romances]] started to influence literature. [[Susan Sontag]] was one of the first essayists to write about the intersection of high and low art in her [[1964]] essay "[[Notes on Camp|Notes On "Camp"]]". | + | [[Romanticism]] was one of the first artistic movements to reappraise "low culture", when previously maligned [[Romance (genre)|medieval romances]] started to influence literature. [[Susan Sontag]] was one of the first essayists to write about the intersection of high and low art in her [[1964]] "[[nobrow]]" essay "[[Notes on Camp|Notes On "Camp"]]". |
| == History == | == History == | ||
Revision as of 06:38, 16 April 2014
Illustration: Pollice Verso by Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1872
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Low culture is a derogatory term for some forms of popular culture and working class culture. The term is often encountered in discourses on the nature of culture. Its opposite is high culture. Strictly speaking, both high culture and low culture are subcultures.
Kitsch, slapstick, camp, escapist fiction, popular music, comic books, tattoo art and exploitation films are examples of low culture. It has often been stated that in postmodern times, the boundary between high culture and low culture has blurred. See the 1990s artwork of Jeff Koons for example of appropriation of low art tropes.
Romanticism was one of the first artistic movements to reappraise "low culture", when previously maligned medieval romances started to influence literature. Susan Sontag was one of the first essayists to write about the intersection of high and low art in her 1964 "nobrow" essay "Notes On "Camp"".
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History
The history of low culture can be traced to panem et circenses (bread and circuses), Roman jokes and profanity in Roman antiquity, jest books of the Middle Ages, picaresque novel, rogue literature and genre painting in the Renaissance, to mass audiences for penny dreadfuls, erotic photography and music halls in the Victorian era, to pulp magazines exploitation films, video nasties and shock sites in the 20th century.
By medium
In film
- B-movies - exploitation films - grindhouse films - paracinema - television - video nasties - violent films
While the term exploitation was initially coined in the 1950s to describe 1930s and 1940s (the classical era of American exploitation film), the practice of exploitative fiction is as old as fiction itself. Areas of interest in this field include grub street hack writing, dime novels and pulp fiction, paperbacks and white slavery films, blaxploitation, Grand Guignol and slasher films.
In print
- comics - escapist fiction - dime novels - genre fiction - men's magazines - paraliterature - popular fiction - pulp fiction - yellow journalism
In music
- disco - house - music hall - popular music - pop music
In the visual realm
- advertising - applied arts - caricature - decorative arts - design - graffiti - kitsch
Low art refers to the lesser or minor arts, including the decorative or applied arts, with the assumption that these are low partly because of the poor quality of materials and manufacturing. They are said to be superficial kitsch, catering to popular taste with a couch potato mentality.
In performing arts
- burlesque - circus - peepshow - striptease - vaudeville
By genre
Body genres are the main theatres of low culture: subfields include adventure, carnival, comedy, horror, melodrama, pornography and romance.
By region
In search of national stereotypes by way of their exploitation culture.
American low culture is well-known throughout the world, European low culture less so. Japanese low culture even less.
Other regions with defined low culture consumers are:
- Bogan (Australia and New Zealand)
- Dres (Poland)
- Gopnik (Russia)
- Chav (UK)
- Redneck (United States)
- Flaite (Chile)
Main themes
Related connotations include artificial, bad taste, basic instinct, camp, cheap, commercial, conventional, common, derivative, entertaining, ephemera, exploitation, formulaic, gratuitous, low budget, lurid, the masses, ordinary, popular, proletariat, prurient, sensationalism, scatology, shocking, stereotype, trash, under-the-counter, underground and vulgar.
Baser instincts
Low culture is frequently said to address the baser instincts of hedonism and escapism.
Subthemes
blaxploitation, artsploitation, b-movie, cautionary tale, comics, cult films, "dime novels" and "penny dreadfuls", escapist fiction, erotic horror, fantasy, fantastique, giallo, gore, gothic, grindhouse, horror, mondo films, Nazi exploitation, nunsploitation, pornography, prostitution, pulp, sensationalism, sexploitation, shock, slasher, snuff film, trash, video nasty, violence, white slavery, women in prison, working class culture
Sensationalism
Sensationalism is a manner of being extremely controversial, loud, attention-grabbing, or otherwise sensationalistic.
The term is commonly used in reference to the media. Critics of media bias of all political stripes often charge the media with engaging in sensationalism in their reporting and conduct. That is to say they charge that the media often chooses to report on shocking or attention-grabbing stories, rather than relevant or important ones.
Contrast
See also
- "Body" genres"
- Bread and circuses
- Culture industry
- Exploitation culture
- Folk culture
- Human intelligence variation
- Kitsch
- Lowbrow (art movement)
- Lowest common denominator
- Low-life
- Low modernism
- Mass society
- Off color humour
- One-Dimensional Man
- Outsider art
- Primitive art
- Prolefeed
- Popular culture
- Reality television
- Shock humour
- Toilet humor
- White trash
