I watch Glee. I admit it. I watch it every week; I know the names of the characters, who is dating who, I even have every song on my iPod.
I use excuses like, “My girlfriend makes me watch it,” “I just watch it because that one chick is hot” or “Yeah, my niece had it on and asked me to sit with her.” But the truth is that I am a Gleek. And I don’t have a niece.
The problem is that our generation has no guide for what to like and what not to. There’s no style guide telling us what’s considered high quality taste, nothing for us to compare our interests to and say, “Yes, I have excellent taste.” So in lieu of anything official, I’ll breakdown just what is high taste and low taste.
Because admitting that you like Glee is like admitting that you like Robert Downey Jr. pre-rehab. It’s like admitting that Spiderman 3 was your favorite of the franchise, that Nickelodeon is better now than it was in ‘90 and that “Natty Ice” is the only beer you drink. It’s the equivalent of saying, “I have bad taste.”
And in a way, that makes you more interesting. Because our generation is allowed to like terrible things, and we’re allowed to like awesome things. But we can’t like anything in between.
The in between is boring. It’s plain. It’s picking vanilla when there are other flavors around like, “intense-sex,” “mind-blowing chocolate” and “puppy-cute.” Who picks vanilla when you could have sex instead? Boring people, that’s who. The middlebrow. The average.
And being plain nowadays is worse than being weird. At least liking Glee gets attention, but saying you like It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia says nothing about you as a person. It’s too boring.
Glee might be an awful show, and I might be embarrassed when I play it in my car, but it gives me the opportunity to talk about musicals, about The Rolling Stones, about how my high school didn’t have cheerleaders wearing their uniforms every day, and why not?
It has some famous actors, some not famous actors. It has a charm anyone can appeal to. It’s an alright show with occasional funny moments. If you like it, you’re boring. You’re easily tricked by sitcom gimmicks. You’re lame. It’s unacceptable, really. To be that normal. You can talk for hours about Glee regardless of whether you love it or hate it. But It’s Always Sunny gives no such luxury. It’s not a conversation piece. It doesn’t add to who you are. It doesn’t even deserve to be one of your Facebook likes. It’s like saying you like hair. So do most people.
But you know what? To hell with it. I like vanilla ice cream. I like It’s Always Sunny. In fact, later on I’m going to eat vanilla ice cream and watch TV and then I might just go bed to early. Boring? Sure. Middlebrow? Absolutely.
I might go play some Green Day while reading a Dan Brown novel. These things are plain, they’re boring, and they say nothing about my personality. They’re middlebrow.
But how can we compare Dan Brown to It’s Always Sunny? We can’t. Sure, they’re both middlebrow, but even middlebrow has a hierarchy. It’s Always Sunny is trashy middlebrow.
It’s so low in middlebrow it’s almost lowbrow. Dan Brown novels, on the other hand, might not be a lot of mental exercise, but the very act of reading and wondering who the perpetrator is put it at high middlebrow.
Granted, neither say anything about who you are, but at least Angels & Demons requires a little more thought than an episode of It’s Always Sunny titled, “Who Pooped the Bed?”
I’m not trying to rip on Dan Brown or Green Day. It takes a lot to be high middlebrow. Writing a book, making a successful album, it’s not easy.
The point here, though, is that Dan Brown, vanilla ice cream, water, these are things that everyone enjoys. It’s easy to own up to liking things like water or It’s Always Sunny.
But if Glee is lowbrow and Green Day is middlebrow, then what’s highbrow? It’s not necessarily something expensive, or even something rare. Highbrow is probably the most difficult to classify. Highbrow would be a classic car (but one that doesn’t make you look like a tool) or drinking Guinness when everyone else is ordering Shock Top.
And highbrow implies a certain amount of knowledge too. If The King’s Speech is your favorite movie over the last Pirates of the Caribbean installment, it’s probably because of the acting and excellent directing. It’s highbrow because it’s refined, it’s full of tiny little things that add to the overall package.
Highbrow is something that says, “I’m a classic, I’m interesting, I’m complex.” It’s a documentary on Earth, a playlist full of Rush, a Kurt Vonnegut book. It’s a conversation piece, a telling character trait. Highbrow is an aspiration.
One that, all too often, I don’t quite meet. Because as much as I love reading Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle and listening to the Beatles’ Rubber Soul album, I can’t miss a Glee episode.