What is lost in this sea of feel-bad content isn’t just a sense of fun, but of taste . These “non-problematic” shows are not just irritating, they’re bland and forgettable—except in those rare moments when they pass through the looking glass into the world of self-parody, as in the 2018 NBC drama New Amsterdam when a doctor delivers this somber... See more

While there are notable differences in the complexity, nuance, allusion, artistic innovation and experimentation found in mass, mid, and high culture, the argument that one is intrinsically more valuable than the others is, of course, fundamentally elitist. It’s no accident that this sort of cultural work—by Macdonald and others—is often the pet

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