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.

▲

thundergolfer 7 hours ago | parent [-]

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.

	▲	TheOtherHobbes 43 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The Globe is full of tourists, so it's multibrow at best. Bourdieu's take was that the working classes like simple sentimental art, the middle classes like aspirational, middlebrow art because they feel they have something to prove, and the upper classes often prefer kitsch. Although sometimes it's high status middlebrow kitsch, such as a lot of opera and light classical music, which is more sentimental than technical. Most opera lovers have no idea who Luigi Nono was, and would care less if they did know. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joteZTLpHdE Highbrow art is the exclusive niche domain of intellectuals and academics UNLESS it's been commodified into a Veblen good, like contemporary art.