Bourdieu's theory of taste: a grumbling abrégé
18 points
by sebg
2 days ago
| 4 comments
| dynomight.net
| HN
pingou
35 minutes ago
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didgeoridoo
2 hours ago
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> lower-class people are in a sort of local maxima

If the writer knew that the correct term is “maximum” (singular) and misused the Latin on purpose, this is brilliant. Failing that, it’s still a wonderful inadvertent enactment of the thesis. Well done either way.

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readthenotes1
1 hour ago
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Poorly done, either way ...
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sfpotter
2 hours ago
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He sees through his beer purchases but he doesn't see through his seeing through them.
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BalinKing
2 hours ago
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Slightly surprised to learn Master and Commander is “lowbrow”—is it just because it’s not an art film or whatever? Usually I’d expect Marvel films to be described that way (unfairly imo, when it comes to the Phase One batch at least)…
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canjobear
28 minutes ago
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It's clearly in a different category from the "highbrow" examples like Solaris, just by virtue of being entertaining to a broad audience. In contrast Solaris is the kind of movie where there's a five minute unbroken scene that's just a guy driving in traffic and thinking about his life. (Like the author, I like them both!)
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thundergolfer
1 hour ago
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The ‘brow’ standards have dropped significantly, in a process Fussell has described as the general proletarianization of culture.

For a long time films that would be considered niche and arthouse were middlebrow, because film itself was at best a middlebrow medium.

To people still concerned with the various brows, Marvel films are below low. They are sign of a debased and infantile film culture that caters to childish tastes and merchandising, not art.

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mordechai9000
1 hour ago
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Years ago I was surprised to read a critic that described Branagh's Hamlet as middlebrow. I mean, Henry V, sure - that only even qualifies as middlebrow because it's Shakespeare. I would assume it was lowbrow at the time it was written. I love the prologue, though.
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thundergolfer
1 hour ago
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Yeah I'd say the critic was most likely affirming the idea that film is a middlebrow medium. Seeing Hamlet at the Globe is high brow, but seeing Hamlet as the cinema is middlebrow.
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wahern
28 minutes ago
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> To people still concerned with the various brows, Marvel films are below low. They are sign of a debased and infantile film culture that caters to childish tastes and merchandising, not art.

Marvel films just seem like PC versions of Westerns of yore. All the moral dilemmas are there, just abstracted to avoid overt alienation of various groups. In the coming decades the better written Marvel films will likely be elevated just like some Westerns, and the superhero trope will become fodder for highbrow concepts (more so than already occurs). The bulk of the superhero films will fade into oblivion, just like most Westerns.

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rexpop
1 hour ago
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Marvel films are commercial tripe. Pure commodity fetishism and cheap spectacle. Utterly without literary merit.

Master and Commander is pretentious pulp. Real, quality media is obscure, and largely unpalatable to our debased modern sensibilities.

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