thirdform

pass the sick bucket
That's true. It's because middlebrow stuff has pretensions of being highbrow. Lowbrow stuff knows what it is.

I felt Joker was a middlebrow film, e.g. although I didn't judge it in those terms exactly.

kind of surprised that you say that with your knowledge of western classical music which is by and large based on very lowbrow peasant folk forms transposed to entertain the kings courts (and then later the bourgeoisie.) This is why Adorno venerated Schoenberg and not Stravinsky, which he thought was too tied to primitive nationalistic folk sentiments whereas schoenberg was a total avant-gardist making his music pure mathematical abstraction of the commodity with no feeling, the absence of feeling sort of becomes the feeling, as Photek said in the wire.
 

version

Well-known member
his overt antisemitism rather than concealed. his focus on the jews and not the disintegration of the teutonic war spirit.

I've been skimming a few things on Spengler recently (mostly Wiki pages if I'm honest) and that caught my eye. Apparently he disapproved of Nazi antisemitism whilst peddling a bunch of antisemitic tropes himself.

In his private papers, Spengler denounced Nazi anti-Semitism in even stronger terms, writing "and how much envy of the capability of other people in view of one's lack of it lies hidden in anti-Semitism!" and that "when one would rather destroy business and scholarship than see Jews in them, one is an ideologue, i.e., a danger for the nation. Idiotic."[23]

However, Spengler also considered Judaism to be a "disintegrating element" (zersetzendes Element) that acts destructively "wherever it intervenes" (wo es auch eingreift). Jews are characterized by a "cynical intelligence" (zynische Intelligenz) and their "money thinking" (Gelddenken).[24]Therefore, they were incapable of adapting to Western culture and represented a foreign body in Europe. With these anti-Semitic speculations Spengler contributed significantly to make stereotypes about "the Jews" in pre-WW2 german circles plausible, which locked them away from using clumsy anti-Semitic historical linguistics.
 

version

Well-known member
That's true. It's because middlebrow stuff has pretensions of being highbrow. Lowbrow stuff knows what it is.

I felt Joker was a middlebrow film, e.g. although I didn't judge it in those terms exactly.

Yeah, I haven't even seen it and view it that way. I'd say people like Paul Thomas Anderson and the Coens are very middle brow too.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
kind of surprised that you say that with your knowledge of western classical music which is by and large based on very lowbrow peasant folk forms transposed to entertain the kings courts (and then later the bourgeoisie.) This is why Adorno venerated Schoenberg and not Stravinsky, which he thought was too tied to primitive nationalistic folk sentiments whereas schoenberg was a total avant-gardist making his music pure mathematical abstraction of the commodity with no feeling, the absence of feeling sort of becomes the feeling, as Photek said in the wire.

Yeah but I suppose you could argue (this all being a matter of opinion) that Bartok or whoever made high out out of lowbrow forms. The transmutation was successfully carried out. Like Blake using popular folk songs and nursery rhymes as the basis for innocence and experience.

Funnily enough I only began trying to listen to Schoenberg this week and I really struggle to get with any of it. It's intellectually fascinating but it doesn't grab me at all.

Rite of Spring is a different matter.

But it's been well established I'm a middlebrow myself! I love Jamiroquai!
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Yeah, I haven't even seen it and view it that way. I'd say people like Paul Thomas Anderson and the Coens are very middle brow too.

I'd balk at that of course. Joker isn't on the level of There Will Be Blood or Fargo. But yeah I'm sure in some ppls eyes they're middlebrow. Anything short of Tarkovsky and Ozu!
 

version

Well-known member
I really don't like There Will Be Blood. I don't like DDL, I hate Dano's character to the point where I can't stomach the film and the whole thing's just dull anyway.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
That's true, Dani is awful.

Ofc boredom is one thing - but plenty of ppl find eyes wide shut boring. So what makes that not middlebrow? Not contending it is but I'm interested in what these words mean beyond I don't like it.
 

version

Well-known member
I wasn't putting any of those things forward as reasons for it being middlebrow. That's just me saying I hate TWBB.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
I mean I attempt to destroy the high/low/middlebrow distinction, which in essence means artistic genocide to an extent (yeh sorry about that.)

whereas the good christian revels in the failure of the middlebrow, it's the original sin that everything can be tied to.
 

version

Well-known member
 
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luka

Well-known member
Middlebrow seems to be the one which produces the most guilt. It might just be because everyone assumes you're being ironic when it comes to lowbrow stuff though. You can say you love The Fast and the Furious or whatever and everyone assumes you mean in a tongue-in-cheek way and you can avoid some embarrassment if you actually do love them whereas people don't assume you're being ironic if you say you love Inception.

The most guilt in which group of people? I wouldn't associate it with guilt.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
There was a period where I graduated from being a standard music nerd who hated pop music and venerated strictly "deep" music and probably thought rap music peaked in 1994 and had been shit ever since to a music nerd who loved pop music and modern rap music and turned against all the producers I'd formerly worshipped.

Was this my escape from the middlebrow?

Or just being brainwashed?

Dissensus is responsible.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Sometimes I'll encounter black belt nerds who are surprised and shocked by my denigrating of their middlebrow idols, not realising that I'm a 5 Dan nerd and I'm attempting Schoenberg in bed at night in-between bouts of Carly Rae Jepsen.
 

luka

Well-known member
6 music. Radio 4. The Mercury prize. The observer culture supplement. Faber and Faber. The Booker prize.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
With MASSIVE reservations I love Interstellar. Which is BLOODY middlebrow insofar as it's a stupid person's idea of a clever film.
 
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