Word: midcult
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Crime writer Lawrence Block believes Spillane did more than spice up a genre; he created a format that bridged midcult and low art, print and picture. Block notes that Hammer "was originally intended as a comic-strip hero. The fast cuts, the in-your-face immediacy, and the clear-cut, no-shades-of-gray, good-versus-evil story lines of the Mike Hammer novels come straight out of the comic-book world. Mickey Spillane was writing something else - comic books for grown-ups." I, the Jury, then, can lay claim to being the first graphic novel, just without illustrations...
...Novels, foreign films, stage plays - isn't all this caviar culture, or at least quiche? Well, it's true that midcult media didn't necessarily penetrate the mass skull. But for the first time, many Americans were sophisticated enough to have developed a cultural inferiority complex. So they went looking elsewhere, and their restlessness encouraged the rise of small industries (back when industries could be small) in publishing, foreign-film distribution and off-Broadway production. Grove Press, Janus Films, Circle in the Square: even today these names have the aura of heroism about them. They located the nexus...