Term for forms of popular culture with mass appeal
For the UK television website, see Lowculture.
Low culture humour: Kissing the Pope's Feet [1] German peasants bare their buttocks and fart in response to a papal bull of Pope Paul III: "The Pope speaks: Our sentences are to be feared, even if unjust. Response: Be damned! Behold, o furious race, our bared buttocks."[2] The irreligious scene is low-culture humour from the Papstspotbilder (Depictions of the Papacy, 1545) series of wood cuts, by Lucas Cranach the Elder,[3] which was commissioned by Martin Luther.[4]
In society, the term low culture identifies the forms of popular culture that have mass appeal, often broadly appealing to the middle or lower cultures of any given society.[5] This is in contrast to the forms of high culture that appeal to a smaller, often upper-class proportion of the populace. Culture theory proposes that both high culture and low culture are subcultures within a society, because the culture industry mass-produces each type of popular culture for every socio-economic class.[6] Despite being viewed as characteristic of less-educated social classes, low culture is still often enjoyed by upper classes as well. This makes the content that falls under this categorization the most broadly consumed kind of media in a culture overall.[7] Various forms of low culture can be found across a variety of cultures, with the physical objects composing these mediums often being constructed from less expensive, perishable materials. The phrase low culture has come to be viewed by some as a derogatory idea in and of itself, existing to put down elements of pop or tribal culture that others may deem to be "inferior."[8]
^The Latin title reads: "Hic oscula pedibus papae figuntur."
^In Latin and Italian, the caption concludes: "PAPA LOQVITUR. Sententiae nostrae etiam iniustae metuendae sunt. Responsio. Maledetta Aspice nudatas gens furiosa nates. Ecco qui Papa el mio belvedere."
^Oberman, Heiko Augustinus (1994). The Impact of the Reformation: Essays. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. p. 61. ISBN 978-0-8028-0732-8.
^Edwards, Mark U. Jr. (2004). Luther's Last Battles: Politics And Polemics 1531-46. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Augsburg Fortress. p. 4. ISBN 978-0-8006-3735-4.
^Bru, Sascha; Nuijs, Laurence; Hjartarson, Benedikt; Nicholls, Peter; Ørum, Tania; Berg, Hubert, eds. (2011-11-20). Regarding the Popular: Modernism, the Avant-Garde and High and Low Culture. De Gruyter. doi:10.1515/9783110274691. ISBN 978-3-11-027456-1.
^Lane Crothers (2021). Globalization and American Popular Culture. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 48. ISBN 978-1-5381-4269-1.
^Brottman, Mikita (2005). High theory/low culture. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-4039-6641-4.
^Pinney, Christopher (2006), "Four Types of Visual Culture", Handbook of Material Culture, London: SAGE Publications, pp. 131–144, doi:10.4135/9781848607972.n9, ISBN 9781412900393, retrieved 2023-11-20
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