Middle-brow

Characteristically, the middle-brow novel was thus written for and by middle-class women, and could be stigmatised, to use Adorno's term, as a middle-class, bourgeois activity.

'Middle-brow' literature — not to beat about the bush — is inferior literature adapted to the special tastes and needs of the middle class and of those who consciously or not adopt the values of that class.

David Thorns sets out Suburbia (1973) as a study in which he aims to demonstrate that disdain for the 'middle-brow, conformist, respectable, uninspiring members of society who are quite content to potter around in their own rather limited world' was in fact a view that was 'divorced from the realities of suburban life'.

The high-brow would like to get rid of the middle-brow, but the middle-brow outnumbers him.

The criticism of society which proceeds from this direction is self-undermined, for it is full of the images, the rhythms, the poses, the easy values of the successful midle layer, the middle competence, the middle-brow.

However, most cultural intermediaries, those in charge of television and radio schedules and newspapers and magazines, are middle-brows, and yet have considerable means at their disposal.