middlebrow

alternative middle-brow · alternative middle brow

1. derogatorynot comparableNeither highbrow or lowbrow, but somewhere in between.

   It's for this reason some regard Hanks with a sniffy attitude, seeing his middlebrow Hollywood fare as unfashionable (yes) and reactionary (no).

   2021 February 9, Christina Newland, “Is Tom Hanks part of a dying breed of genuine movie stars?”, in BBC, archived from the original on 30 Mar 2021

   3 more examples

   What does a Princeton graduate whose old dream it was to write for the New Yorker do when that dream comes true, only to discover that his cherished magazine is no longer the middlebrow arbiter of high culture of his imagining, but just another media outlet frantic for its market share of mass culture?

   2000 September 21, Hal Foster, “Slumming with Rappers at the Roxy”, in London Review of Books, volume 22, number 18, →ISSN, archived from the original on 20 Mar 2025

   As in so many middlebrow period dramas, the vintage cars are too shiny, the clothes too smart, the upper-class accents too strained and the dialogue too contrived. However dark the plot becomes, the sun keeps shining brightly through the trees.

   2017 September 29, “Winnie-the-Pooh brought joy to readers, but misery to the Milnes”, in The Economist, archived from the original on 08 Aug 2020

   In the late ’60s and early ’70s, as independent films were diversifying their outlook and shaking off the formulas of Hollywood storytelling, Broadway boulevard comedies like “Last of the Red Hot Lovers” and “California Suite” — tales of the befuddled nouveau riche in a new world — began to look mass-produced and middlebrow.

   2018 August 26, Jesse Green, “Neil Simon Drew Big Laughs, Then Came a Cultural Shift”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 09 Nov 2020

plural middlebrows · alternative middle-brow · alternative middle brow

1. A person or thing that is neither highbrow nor lowbrow, but in between.