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Low culture is a derogatory term for some forms of popular culture
Popular culture

Popular culture is the totality of Distinction memes, ideas, Perspective s and Attitude s that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture....
. The term is often encountered in discourses on the nature of culture
Culture

Culture is difficult to define. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions....
. Its opposite is high culture
High culture

High culture is a term, now used in a number of different ways in academic discourse, whose most common meaning is the set of culture products, mainly in the arts, held in the highest esteem by a culture....
. It has been said by culture theorists
Culture theory

Culture theory is the branch of anthropology, semiotics, and other related social sciences disciplines that seeks to define the heuristic concept of culture in operationalism and/or scientific method terms....
 that both high culture and low culture are subculture
Subculture

In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong....
s.

Kitsch
Kitsch

File:Garden gnome with wheelbarrow-20051026.jpgKitsch is the German language and Yiddish word denoting Visual art that is considered an inferior, tasteless copy of an extant style of art....
, slapstick
Slapstick

Slapstick is a type of comedy involving exaggerated extreme physical violence or activities which exceed the boundaries of common sense, such as a character being hit in the face with a heavy frying pan or running into a brick wall....
, camp
Camp (style)

'Camp' is an aesthetic sensibility wherein something is appealling because of its taste and irony value. When the usage appeared, in 1909, it denoted: ostentatious, exaggerated, affected, theatrical, effeminate, and homosexual behaviour, and, by the middle of the 1970s, the definition comprised: banality, artifice...
, bathroom humor, escapist fiction
Escapist fiction

Escapist fiction is fiction which provides a psychological escape from thoughts of everyday life by immersing the reader in exotic situations or activities....
, popular music
Popular music

Popular music is music that is accessible to the mainstream and disseminated by one or more of the mass media. It belongs to any of a number of musical genres, and stands in contrast to classical music, which historically was the music of the elite and upper strata of society, and traditional music which was disseminated orally....
 (especially Rap
Rap

Rap may refer to:*Rapping, genre of poetry and music in which rhyming lyrics are used, with or without musical accompaniment; one of the four elements of Hip hop subculture....
) and exploitation film
Exploitation film

Exploitation film is a type of film that is promoted by "exploiting" often lurid subject matter. The term "exploitation" is common in film marketing, used for all types of films to mean promotion or advertising....
s are often cited examples of low culture. It has often been stated that in postmodern
Postmodernism

Postmodernism literally means 'after the modernist movement'. While "modern" itself refers to something "related to the present", the movement of modernism and the following reaction of postmodernism are defined by a set of perspectives....
 times, the boundary between high culture and low culture has blurred.






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Low culture is a derogatory term for some forms of popular culture
Popular culture

Popular culture is the totality of Distinction memes, ideas, Perspective s and Attitude s that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture....
. The term is often encountered in discourses on the nature of culture
Culture

Culture is difficult to define. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions....
. Its opposite is high culture
High culture

High culture is a term, now used in a number of different ways in academic discourse, whose most common meaning is the set of culture products, mainly in the arts, held in the highest esteem by a culture....
. It has been said by culture theorists
Culture theory

Culture theory is the branch of anthropology, semiotics, and other related social sciences disciplines that seeks to define the heuristic concept of culture in operationalism and/or scientific method terms....
 that both high culture and low culture are subculture
Subculture

In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a culture which differentiates them from the larger culture to which they belong....
s.

Kitsch
Kitsch

File:Garden gnome with wheelbarrow-20051026.jpgKitsch is the German language and Yiddish word denoting Visual art that is considered an inferior, tasteless copy of an extant style of art....
, slapstick
Slapstick

Slapstick is a type of comedy involving exaggerated extreme physical violence or activities which exceed the boundaries of common sense, such as a character being hit in the face with a heavy frying pan or running into a brick wall....
, camp
Camp (style)

'Camp' is an aesthetic sensibility wherein something is appealling because of its taste and irony value. When the usage appeared, in 1909, it denoted: ostentatious, exaggerated, affected, theatrical, effeminate, and homosexual behaviour, and, by the middle of the 1970s, the definition comprised: banality, artifice...
, bathroom humor, escapist fiction
Escapist fiction

Escapist fiction is fiction which provides a psychological escape from thoughts of everyday life by immersing the reader in exotic situations or activities....
, popular music
Popular music

Popular music is music that is accessible to the mainstream and disseminated by one or more of the mass media. It belongs to any of a number of musical genres, and stands in contrast to classical music, which historically was the music of the elite and upper strata of society, and traditional music which was disseminated orally....
 (especially Rap
Rap

Rap may refer to:*Rapping, genre of poetry and music in which rhyming lyrics are used, with or without musical accompaniment; one of the four elements of Hip hop subculture....
) and exploitation film
Exploitation film

Exploitation film is a type of film that is promoted by "exploiting" often lurid subject matter. The term "exploitation" is common in film marketing, used for all types of films to mean promotion or advertising....
s are often cited examples of low culture. It has often been stated that in postmodern
Postmodernism

Postmodernism literally means 'after the modernist movement'. While "modern" itself refers to something "related to the present", the movement of modernism and the following reaction of postmodernism are defined by a set of perspectives....
 times, the boundary between high culture and low culture has blurred. See the 1990s artwork of Jeff Koons
Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons is an United States artist whose work incorporates kitsch imagery using painting, sculpture, and other forms, often in large scale....
 for examples of appropriation
Appropriation (art)

To appropriate something involves taking possession of it. In the visual arts, the term appropriation often refers to the use of borrowed elements in the creativity of new work....
 of low art tropes. Rhys Chatham
Rhys Chatham

Rhys Chatham is an United States composer, guitarist, and trumpet player, primarily active in avant-garde and minimalism music. He is best known for his "guitar orchestra" compositions....
's musical piece Guitar Trio 1977 is also an example of incorporating (low culture) 'primitive' punk rock esthetics with (high art) contemporary classical music
Contemporary classical music

Contemporary classical music can be understood as belonging to a period that started in the mid-1970s with the retreat of modernism . However, the term may also be employed in a broader sense to refer to the post-1945 Modernism of post-tonal music from the death of Anton Webern ...
.

Romanticism
Romanticism

Romanticism is a complex artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Western Europe, and gained strength during the Industrial Revolution....
 was one of the first movements to reappraise "low culture", when previously maligned medieval romances
Romance (genre)

As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance refers to a style of heroic prose and Verse narrative that was particularly current in aristocratic literature of Middle Ages and Early Modern Europe, that narrated fantastic stories about the marvellous adventures of a chivalrous, heroic knight, often of super-human ab...
 started to influence literature.

It is claimed that in simple terms, low culture is another term for popular culture. This means everything in society that has mass appeal. In todays society, this would involve things like 'take-away' meals, gossip magazines, books that are current best sellers and sports such as football and basketball.

See also

  • High culture
    High culture

    High culture is a term, now used in a number of different ways in academic discourse, whose most common meaning is the set of culture products, mainly in the arts, held in the highest esteem by a culture....
  • Popular culture
    Popular culture

    Popular culture is the totality of Distinction memes, ideas, Perspective s and Attitude s that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture....
  • Primitive art
  • Lower class
  • Prolefeed
    Prolefeed

    Prolefeed is a Newspeak term in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. It was used to describe the deliberately superficial literature, movies and music that were...
  • Outsider art
    Outsider Art

    The term Outsider Art was coined by art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972 as an English language synonym for Art Brut , a label created by France artist Jean Dubuffet to describe art created outside the boundaries of official culture; Dubuffet focused particularly on art by Psychiatric_hospital inmates....
  • Bread and circuses
    Bread and circuses

    "Bread and circuses" is a metaphor for handouts and petty amusements that politics use to gain popular support, instead of gaining it through sound policy....
  • Lowbrow (art movement)
    Lowbrow (art movement)

    Lowbrow, or lowbrow art, describes an underground visual art movement that arose in the Los Angeles, California, area in the late 1970s. Lowbrow is a widespread populist art movement with origins in the underground comix world, punk music, hot-rod street culture, and other subcultures....