Highbrow, Lowbrow, Middlebrow -- how do you see yourself?

Before Obama, I was Bushy Brow.

ok ok I’m definitely Highbrow for the quality I insist upon from others and the quality I put out with my name on it. Actually, Highbrow isn’t high enough. But I always execute in a distinctively Lowbrow fashion, just for affect.

I don’t understand the classifications. Is it just from the pictures? One man’s art is another man’s puke. Maybe it’s too late at night for me. I was interested too.

If it isn’t entirely too “highbrow” of me to say this, I would describe myself as “metabrow.” Culture is what it is; it is what it is about. Popular culture, folk culture, whatever you want to call it is no less real or authentic than “highbrow” culture is. Again it is what it is. If I want to listen to Mozart and watch Jerry Springer in the same day; or read Proust and R. Crumb comics or go to the opera and then come home and listen to the Jackson Five what fucking business is it of anyone’s? O.K. well, maybe that answer is a little defensive, but people are writing Music History doctoral dissertations on what are essentially pornographic bawdy folk songs from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. One era’s low brow is todays “early music.” Yes, I am an omnibrow and proud of it. O.K, I’m going with “omnibrow’ rather than “metabrow;” I like it much better, now that I think of it. I have no problem, myself, with having my nose simultaneously both up in the air and in the gutter; I actually rather like it that way, if you don’t mind, thank you!

Löwenbräu

Nobrow.

I jump around between the levels.

Unibrow

what? I’m Sicilian.

I’m with @lillycoyote. I’ve probably been all three ‘brows’ at different points in my life, and now I’m just… me. Comfortable in any social strata, from champagne to beer, ballet to break-dancing, and classical literature to trashy novels. I quite like it that way, too.

I am a monobrow (not a unibrow, heheh good one @cprevite). That means I march to the beat of my own drum. But by the definitions in the referenced article, I too hop from one level to the next depending on the situation. Keeps life more interesting that way and I don’t feel stuck in a rut!

Browbeaten.

I didn’t get a chance to read the essay, but I will try to answer anyway. I would say that my tastes in TV tend to be at opposite ends of the spectrum. For example, I like educational PBS documentaries and dramatized versions of works of classic literature. On the other hand, I like a lot of cheesy “reality TV,” such as America’s Next Top Model and The Apprentice. My tastes in music work kind of the same: I like bubblegum Top 40 American country music, but I am also a huge fan of indie artists, especially singer-writers who sing clever, writerly, and (sometimes) esoteric lyrics.

I don’t think these categorizations apply in a “postmodern” world where most people move among the three, where entertainment is confused for art or, at least, treated as such, and where high culture has collapsed and conflated into something popular and bourgeois.

In fact this was probably already evident in 1951, so I’m not sure this essay’s fame (I’ve never heard of it) is merited. Seems to have missed the boat – or I have.

Edit: Crediting the author with this: “what was highbrow then has become distinctly upper middlebrow today.” (Should have read the essay first.) He acknowledges the changes, and today I think they’ve just been consummated so that middlebrow has subsumed high- and lowbrow sensibilities both. (I think lowbrow already replaced highbrow, for a time, and was then too devoured and appropriated by the middle.)

Since the Goog, I’m jus’ a lil’ Brow Sir.

As I am all over the place, I would say Heisenbrow (after the Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle) .

Maybe I would classify myself as Nowbrow. I enjoy many things that I have access to now. Back in earlier times, especially before the advent of the computer, people didn’t have access to as many things as we do now. You were kind of stuck by what socio-economic group you found yourself in. The computer changed all of that.

I, like many of the others enjoy “art” and “entertainment” from all across the spectrum. I enjoy watching Masterpiece Theater and I also indulge in Judge Judy. I enjoy eating dinner at the Greens restaurant and I also like Flaming Hot Cheetos.

If life is like a Chinese restaurant menu, I definitely want some from column A and some from column B.

Like the others, I definitely am a mixture of all of them and I couldn’t label myself as being in one specifically. I love the opera and ballet, fine art galleries, and expensive restaurants. But at the time time I like to drink beer and go to frat parties and watch South Park and Family Guy. I also use such lowbrow expressions like “oh yeah?” and “c’mere a minute”. ;)

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies Thanks.

@faye I’m not taking any guesses. If you don’t know, then neither do I.

@lillycoyote Sure sounds like a highbrow answer to me.

@mrentropy Great dodge, and pretty decent beer too.

@ratboy The thought occurred to me that if you just shave them off, you can eyebrow pencil new ones in at whatever level the given crowd demands.

@ragingloli What would we call that, movingbrow?

@cprevite & @gailcalled GAs for additional clever dodges added to @mrentropy.‘s

@augustlan & @rooeytoo That we be me as well.

@answerjill So many like this perhaps movingbrow needs to be added as a new classification.

@absalom It certainly fit more neatly in the America of the early to mid 20th century than it does today. We still have some who are decidedly lowbrow or highbrow, but it’s the former middlebrows that are most difficult to pin down.

@jerv You realize that refering to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is a clearly highbrow way of claiming you can’t be classified, don’t you?

@Kardamom I really like Nowbrow. The only problem with it is that it will remain a moving target. Adopt it today and 50 years from now, it is hard to define what you meant by it. But it gets at what others were alluding to and what I dubbed movingbrow.

@DominicX Thanks. One more for movingbrow/

@ETpro I could balance it out by giving you the finger :P

@jerv Ha! That’s suitably lowbrow.