Word: lowbrows
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...fact that in these days of political and racial polarization, the only thing that holds Americans together is our common reflex to hit the remote whenever one of those Jonathan Pryce Infiniti commercials comes on. But more to the point, despite perennial complaints about TV's formulaic and lowbrow fare--and the religious right's conviction that the medium is destroying our nation's moral fiber--anyone who watches even a smattering of TV would have to agree that there are currently more first-rate programs on the air than at any time in television's nearly 50-year history...
...sequel or romanticized gunfights from the latest Arnold Schwarzenegger flick: Reservoir Dogs, and its sibling in the emerging genre of films such as it and Pulp Fiction being blazed by writer-directors like Tarantino, it on a new level. They are films more than movies--art, not mass-produced lowbrow entertainment (although they have an unmistakable commercial appeal). They take awards at the Cannes Film Festival in France. They win startled praise from formally sleepy critics who praise them for approaching literature...
...Gabler's superb, richly detailed portrait of the grade-school dropout and vainglorious, third-rate ex-hoofer who, more than any other gossipist, invented the modern celebrity industry. His syndicated "colyums" and brassy, red-baiting broadcasts to "Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea" shaped U.S. lowbrow culture for the 1930s and '40s. When he died unlamented in 1972, Winchell was a lonely and bilious has-been, still clinging to the shabby remnants of his column...
...cynical world view: people are motivated by greed, stupidity and sexual avarice. Director John Dahl gets it all right in his mean, hilarious tale of a drifter (Nicolas Cage) mistaken for a contract killer. The title town is off all the moral maps, and so -- deliriously, invigoratingly -- is this lowbrow, low-budget assault...
What capital could be made of Van Doren on lowbrow TV. And what capital he could make of it. For Charlie Van Doren was overwhelmed by his bloodlines, needed to succeed somewhere on his own. And this new medium, despised by his family and their friends, seemed perfect. He could become a hero by co-opting it for truth and light. The producers persuaded him to accept answers in advance by telling him how much good he was doing the cause of education with his presence. And the schmuck (to borrow a word from Herbie Stempel's lexicon) believed them...