Blend ofno +lowbrow. Popularized by writerJohn Seabrook inNobrow: the culture of marketing, the marketing of culture (2000).
no-brow (comparativemoreno-brow,superlativemostno-brow)
- Completely devoid ofcultural oreducational value.
2008 April 15, Daniel Martin, “How will Battlestar Galactica end?”, inThe Guardian[1]:Fromno-brow beginnings, when BSG [Battlestar Galactica] still had to prove it had outwitted the shonky source material, the show gained cult respect and a few more viewers by the second year.
2010, Roger Chapman, editor,Culture Wars […] ,page325:During the 2000s, belles-lettres accounted for less than 3 percent of all literature sold in the United States, and popular literature made gains in prestige and legitimacy, spawning ano-brow culture.
2013, Carol Stabile,Prime Time Animation:The tremendous concern and fascination with South Park's “no-brow” humor (Wild 1998: 32) has largely deflected attention away from an equally interesting and significant factor in the show's history and status as a cultural artifact.
- Located outside the traditional taste hierarchy, blendinghighbrow,middlebrow, andlowbrow.
2005, Chris Turner,Planet Simpson […] , Ebury Press,→ISBN,page140:The Simpsons is pureNobrow, able to slide as effortlessly as Bob himself from slide-whistling slapstick to talk of Susan Sontag, and ultimately oblivious to any prejudicial classifications. It's not such much that lowbrow bludgeoned highbrow to death with a dozen rakes; it's that both of them have been subsumed into the one-stop-shopping megamall of pop.
