Middlebrow Cinema

Middlebrow Cinema argues that the centre has been too long overlooked. Reaching beyond popular and art alternatives, the volume explores films that may be middling – even mediocre – by reassessing and reinvigorating the term ‘middlebrow’.

This ambitious and wide-ranging volume brings together experts in a variety of national and transnational cinemas to examine the different meanings of this term in multiple contexts, from Spain emerging from dictatorship to democracy, to the consumer boom in contemporary China.

With 11 original essays offering case studies from around the globe, including the UK, USA, Europe, Asia and Latin America, this is ideal for students as well as researchers.

Middlebrow Cinema challenges an often uninterrogated hostility to middlebrow culture that frequently dismisses it as conservative, which it often is not, and feminized or middle-class, which it often is. The volume defines the term relationally against shifting concepts of ‘high’ and ‘low’, and considers its deployment in connection with text, audience and institution.

In exploring the concept of the middlebrow, this book recovers films that were widely meaningful to contemporary audiences, yet sometimes overlooked by critics interested in popular and arthouse extremes. It also addresses the question of socially-mobile audiences, who might express their aspirations through film-watching; and traces the cultural consequences of the movement of films across borders and between institutions.

The first study of its kind, the volume comprises 11 original essays that test the purchase of the term ‘middlebrow’ across cultures, including those of Europe, Asia and the Americas, from the 1930s to the present day. Middlebrow Cinema brings into view a popular and aspirational - and thus especially relevant and dynamic - area of film and film culture. Ideal for students and researchers in this area, this book:

• Remaps ‘Popular’ and ‘arthouse’ approaches
• Explores British, Chinese, French, Indian, Mexican, Spanish ‘national’ cinemas alongside Continental, Hollywood, Queer, Transnational cinemas
• Analyses Biopic, Heritage, Historical Film, Melodrama, Musical, Sex Comedy genres.