We all have them. If we’re building a personals site we might list that our favorite movies are Skopenyahagherhaasen Stöjmenæßing’s IN LOVE WITH THE AUBERGINE WINTER and Emma Cursemen’s THE DANCE OF THE GONADS and that your favorite book is THE NIGHT THE EX-DWARF DECOMPENSATED by Luis Gutierrez y Cantinflas, a work so artistic and high brow and obscure that even the author didn’t get it. But secretly when it’s just us… well, we might really like those things even then, but there are also times when you’d honestly rather have a big fat cheeseburger than a Chateaubriand. We all have our “low culture” pleasures- junk food for the intellect that you can just laugh at or boogie to or stay up nights reading to see if the man Celeste chooses is going to be the duke or archbishop or the pirate. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. (A part of this is addressed to a couple of recent posts by newer Dopers to prove that we’re not really elitists or total snobs even though a lot of us may pan The Da Vinci Code (which I read and to an extent enjoyed, I just don’t understand its un-be-liev-ig-able popularity) or scream bloody murder that ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT got the axe while YES DEAR just keeps coughing blood and peeing on itself but will not die. We like our “silly pleasures” too.
A lot of entertainments mix high and low and mid brow (Arthur Miller is considered a great and literary writer and he included a fart joke in The Crucible for example) but I’m more interested in the movies/books/shows/other that either don’t or do so just barely. And for the purposes of this thread as in real life and objective fact, SANFORD & SON, MY NAME IS EARL, THE DAILY SHOW, THE HARRY POTTER SERIES and MISS SAIGON or other splashy B’way musicals are NOT to be counted as low-brow. It is in fact a sin to do so (it’s in the Book of Laotians I believe, or maybe Lactations, but it’s one of them).
MY LOW BROW NOT-SO GUILTY PLEASURES
Larry the Cable Guy- yeah he’s gimmicky, yeah I think that ‘Git-r-dun!’ is the most over freaking used line since “Where’s the Beef?” and I’m officially sick of it, and yes he’s crude and never gets much more substantive than fart jokes, but sometimes he’s just funny, I don’t care who y… I mean, sometimes he’s insightful and quite comedically talented. I’ve laughed out loud at his jokes more than once and don’t care who knows it.
50s Doo-Wop: I absolutely love it. “My friends call me Speedo but my real name is Mister Earl…” gives me the “Happy Feet”.
Hee-Haw: one of the discs is in my Netflix queue as we speak. It will probably satisfy my craving without having to add its brethren, but we’ll see.
PORKY’S 2: A formulaic horny-teen T&A sequel to a formulaic horny-teen T&A low budget original, but the scene in which Reverend Bubba Flavel and Coach Baubricker recite Taming of the Shrew has made me lose my breath laughing. “Heeethe talkin’ bout puttin’ hith tuuuuung in her tay-ull!”
BLAZING SADDLES and the musical of THE PRODUCERS- love both (though they’re about the only things by Brooks I could sit through).
SORDID LIVES is a movie in which the only character who’s intended to be really serious is the one whose scenes I fast forward through (Ty blathering on and on about being gay with Baptist parents- “GET THE HELL OVER IT! YOU’RE GROWN AND IN L.A. NOW. BRING BROTHER BOY BACK ON!”) yet it’s a book I’ve bought multiple copies of (one for myself and others for friends).
John Grisham’s early works- I devoured them. (His last few are just dreadful; I put down the last one [something about a pardoned traitor going to Italy] after the first 100 pages.) I used to like Anne Rice a lot until she went from nutty to barking mad and kept writing the same book twice a year (“omnisexual centuries old aristocratic vampire in Prague”, “omnisexual centuries old aristocratic vampire in London” “omnisexual centuries old aristocratic vampire in Brazil”, etc.). Stephen King’s such a wildly uneven writer but I’ve liked some of his cheese in addition to his classics.
I occasionally (very rarely) buy an Enquirer or a Star or other tabloid if it has an article that looks good but I read them while waiting in line at WalMart all the time. I’ve even gone to the longest line before just so I can have more time to read it before putting it back.
What are some of yours?
Anything - anything - in which a hidden camera is involved. I get flat-out indiscriminate when it comes to prank/hidden camera TV shows and will hoot and holler and laugh myself stupid like a lobotomized redneck. I can’t even put my finger on what it is about hidden camera stuff appeals to me so much, but it’s across the board; I love the mean-spirited (the Sci-Fi Channel’s “Scare Tactics”), the good-natured (classic “Candid Camera”), to the dumb and derivative (“Girls Behaving Badly”). I’ll literally throw down the Proust that I’m reading in order to watch any of the aforementioned.
That sounds like Jerri Blank from Strangers With Candy talking about monkeys. (In one episode it was revealed her character couldn’t see a monkey on TV without having to watch it and laughing hysterically.)
I’d watch more make-over TV-programs if they just wouldn’t draw them out so damned long. Just show me the before and after pics, tell me how it was done. All the footage where the protagonist talks through his bandaged nose about how he feels about it all? In the editors garbage bin, please.
I love eating frankfurter sausages cold from the can. With mustard.
America’s Next Top Model is the only one I actively seek out.
but I love the top 100 celebrity anythings. 99% of the time, I don’t really care about the subject matter. I just find them strangely entertaining in a way that I’ll watch it even if something else is on, but won’t tivo it.
Does The Simpsons count? My mom never shuts up about how trashy it is, but I love it.
I don’t eat cheese anymore, but when I did, I loved velveeta and american cheese. I liked other kinds, too, but I wouldn’t turn my nose up at some nice yellow velveeta cheese dip.
I read seventeen magazine… I’m maybe a little arrogant and didn’t want to admit for a long time that I found teen magazines and their makeup tips and celebrity photos anything but silly, but every month I devour the hair secrets and the embarrassing moments and the glurge stories, the “shocker: drugs are bad!” articles, and even occasionally read the celbrity interviews.
Tabloid journalism. Read In Touch magazine more weeks than not.
The romance novels of Jayne Ann Krentz, including the regencies she writes as Amanda Quick. I’ll read other regencies occasionally as well.
NCIS. I know it lacks any connection with reality whatsoever, but I find its “yeah, whatcha gonna do about it?” attitude towards plausibility delightful.
I like Star magazine, Kool Aid Slushies and and Shakira. Sometimes all at the same time.
How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days is one of my favourite movies and I constantly admire the work of Matthew McConnaughey whose motto is “just keep livin’!” and whose favourite book is by Og Mandino.
I think my brow gets to the lowest when I read the Harlequin Blaze books with a cowboy on the front.
Any time I stay home from work sick or whatever, it’s one big court tv fest. Starting with Judge Alex and ending with Judge Judy; I just can’t get enough. The funny thing is I never watch it at work (we all have tv’s on our desks and can have whatever we want on), I guess because I’d be wanting to pay attention. All the skanky goodness is lost if you can’t actually stare at these people while they try to pull one over on the good judges.
My favorite food is pizza. For some reason, it’s rather embarassing telling people that.
It is my guiltiest pleasure. I hate ‘reality’ shows in general, but I just love watching that show. If I glance at the listings and see that COPS is on later I will tear ass to do whatever needs to get done so that I can sit in front of the TV for an hour and watch skinny, shirtless, mulleted guys get cuffed for throwing beer cans at their common-law wives and all the other wonderful views into the lower strata of our society that make up the TV show COPS.
I’ll see your Supernatural and raise you a Smallville. I am the WB’s bitch.
I’ll also admit to a fondness for romance novels. I try to stay away from the ones with the people on the covers with heaving breasts and rippling pectorals, but I loves me some trashy fiction.
And man, Sampiro, I also cannot pass Porky’s 2 on cable without watching it. sigh
Oh yeah, court shows! My husband and I go home every day for lunch and watch them while we eat. Know what’s fun? Declaring who’s in the wrong as soon as they show 'em walking into the courtroom, before they even open their mouths.
I hear ya, August. There’s nothing I love better than watching those “World’s Wildest Police Chases” videos, where some young punk thinks his mom’s Estate Wagon can outrun a fleet of turbocharged police cruisers, a helicopter, and Motorola radios. Take 'em down! WOOOO!
And they always end with the footage of the guy who stole the tank…
(In one episode it was revealed her character couldn’t see a monkey on TV without having to watch it and laughing hysterically.)