When highbrow meets lowbrow : popular culture and the rise of nobrow

Swirski, Peter, 1966- (editor.). Vanhanen, Tero Eljas, (editor.).

Summary: This book examines nobrow, a cultural formation that intertwines art and entertainment into an identifiable creative force. In our eclectic and culturally turbocharged world, the binary of highbrow vs. lowbrow is incapable of doing justice to the complexity and artistry of cultural production. Until now, the historical power, aesthetic complexity, and social significance of nobrow "artertainment" have escaped analysis. This book rectifies this oversight. Smart, funny, and iconoclastic, it scrutinizes the many faces of nobrow, throwing surprising light on the hazards and rewards of traffic between high entertainment and genre art.

Record details

ISBN: 9781137597724
ISBN: 1137597720
Physical Description: print
xv, 271 pages : illustration ; 22 cm.
Publisher: New York, NY : Palgrave Macmillan, [2017]
Copyright: ℗♭2017.

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 235-259) and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

1 Introduction: browbeaten into pulp / Peter Swirski and Tero Eljas Vanhanen : No brow, no problem -- What cultural critics are for -- Notes. 2 Pop culture and nobrow culture / Arthur Asa Berger : Li'l Abner as a dissertation topic -- Pop culture and other related concerns -- Highbrows, lowbrows, and nobrows, Notes. 3 Nobrow, American style / Peter Swirski : Two-rail engine -- Just right! -- Crowd mentality -- Notes. 4 Middlebrow and nobrow / Beth Driscoll : What happens when popular fiction wins a literary prize? -- How we fell about romance -- The limits of middlebrow and nobrow -- Notes. 5 Prequels to nobrow / Kenneth Krabbenhoft : Verbal correctness from Socrates to the Renaissance -- From unibrow to unbrow in the sixteenth century -- From unibrow to unbrow in Lope de Vega and Cervantes -- Notes. 6 Gothic literature in America / Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet : Puzzling Poe -- Mysterious Melville -- Going Gothic -- Notes. 7 Neither Indian reservation nor baboon patriarchy / Nicholas Ruddick : The talking squid of Saturn -- Outer stupidity, inner logic -- Everyone welcome (except hippos) -- Notes. 8 Mambo clothing and Australian nobrow / Chris McAuliffe : Building a nobrow brand: antithesis, take the piss, synthesis -- Mambo and the new nobrow economy -- High culture comes to the beach party -- Notes. 9 Guilty pleasures, or nobrow treasures? / David McAvoy : Pathologizing guilt -- Guilty pleasure, aka acceptable buyer's remorse -- Nobrow treasures and the glitch in the matrix -- Notes. 10 The good, the bad, and the nobrow / Tero Eljas Vanhanen : Blood and guts -- Don't believe the reaper -- Of the standard of distaste -- Notes. Bibliography -- Index.