Philip Melanchthon, engraving by Albrecht Dürer, 1526

Used colloquially as a noun or adjective, highbrow is synonymous with intellectual; as an adjective, it also means elite, and generally carries a connotation of high culture. The word draws its metonymy from the pseudoscience of phrenology, and was originally simply a physical descriptor. ^[1] "Highbrow" can be applied to music, implying most of the classical music tradition and literature, i.e. literary fiction and poetry; to films in the arthouse line; and to comedy that requires significant understanding of analogies or references to appreciate. The term highbrow is considered by some (with corresponding labels as 'middlebrow' 'lowbrow') as discriminatory or overly selective (Lawrence W. Levine, "Prologue", Highbrow/lowbrow: the emergence of cultural hierarchy in America, 1990:3; highbrow is currently distanced from the writer by quotation marks: "We thus focus on the consumption of two generally recognised 'highbrow' genres— - opera and classical" (Tak Wing Chan, Social Status and Cultural Consumption 2010:60). The first usage in print of highbrow was recorded in 1884.^[2] The term was popularized in 1902 by Will Irvin, a reporter for The Sun who adhered to the phrenological notion of more intelligent people having high foreheads.^[3] The opposite of highbrow is lowbrow, and between them is middlebrow, describing culture that is neither high nor low; as a usage, middlebrow is derogatory, as in Virginia Woolf's unsent letter to the New Statesman, written in the 1930s and published in The Death of the Moth and Other Essays (1942). According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word middlebrow first appeared in print in 1925, in Punch: "The BBC claims to have discovered a new type — 'the middlebrow'. It consists of people who are hoping that some day they will get used to the stuff that they ought to like".^[4] It was popularized by the American writer and poet Margaret Widdemer, whose essay "Message and Middlebrow" appeared in the Review of Literature in 1933. The three genres of fiction, as American readers approached them in the 1950s and as obscenity law differentially judged them, are the subject of Ruth Pirsig Wood, Lolita in Peyton Place: Highbrow, Middlebrow, and Lowbrow Novels, 1995.

See also[link]

• Bildung
• Classics
• Cultural capital
• General knowledge
• Status–income disequilibrium
• Achieved status
• Bildungsbürgertum
• Egghead
• Bluestocking
• Lowbrow

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Richard A. Peterson and Roger M. Kern, "Changing Highbrow Taste: From Snob to Omnivore" American Sociological Review 61.5 (October 1996), pp. 900–907. Extensive bibliography.

Further reading[link]

• Arnold, Matthew. Culture and Anarchy.
• Eliot, T.S.. Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (New York: Harcourt Brace) 1949.
• Lamont, Michèle and Marcel Fournier, editors. Cultivating Differences: Symbolic Boundaries and the Making of Inequality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) 1992. Includes Peter A. Richardson and Allen Simkus, "How musical taste groups mark occupational status groups" pp 152–68.
• Levine, Lawrence W. Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press) 1988.
• Lynes, Russell. The Tastemakers (New York: Harper and Row) 1954.
• Radway, Janice A. Feeling for Books: The Book-of-the-Month Club, Literary Taste, and Middle-Class Desire.
• Rubin, Joan Shelley. The Making of Middle-Brow Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press) 1992.
• Swirski, Peter. From Lowbrow to Nobrow. Montreal, London: McGill-Queen's University Press 2005
• Woolf, Virginia. Middlebrow, in The Death of the Moth and other essays.

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Mrs. Betty Slocombe is a fictional character from the BBC One comedy show, Are You Being Served?. She was played by Mollie Sugden.

Role[link]

Mrs. Slocombe born Mary Elizabeth Jennifer Rachel Abergavenny Yiddell in 1926^[1][2] in Blackpool. She is the Head of the Ladies Department. She frequently dyes her hair unusual colours such as lime green or orange. Throughout the series, her husband was alluded to have either left Mrs. Slocombe, or was possibly arrested by the Fraud Squad. (In Grace and Favour, it was revealed that her husband, Cecil, had walked out on her one morning, and ended up a successful land developer.) She lived with her cat, Tiddles, which she referred to as "my pussy;" this was the source of many a double entendre, most of which Mrs. Slocombe herself completely misses. Mrs. Slocombe also tries to use received pronunciation, but when exasperated or annoyed, she reveals more than a trace of a Northern accent. Mrs. Slocombe's catch phrases were "...and I am unanimous in that..." and "Weak as water!" She often mispronounces long words, rendering, for example, "obstreperous" as "obstropulous" and "organism" as "orgasm" and "centimeters" as "centipedes". She spent much of her free time prowling public houses, roller rinks and discos with her friend Mrs. Axelby, but due to her middle age, men are less and less attracted to her, which she dismisses as politeness on the part of all men. A running joke on the part of Mr. Lucas is to suggest that Mrs. Slocombe was a bit wilder in her younger days. At one point she mentions a wartime experience of "being flung flat on me back on Clapham Common by a land mine", claiming "the German Air Force was responsible" (prompting Mr. Lucas to reply "all the other times she was flat on her back, the American Air Force was responsible").

She is very vain about her age, once claiming to be "only 46"^[3] and another time claiming to be in her 30s^[4]. However, in the episode "Fifty Years On", the staff determine that she was born in 1926^[3], and in "Founders Day" Mr. Lucas announces her year of birth as 1926^[2]. In "The Junior" Captain Peacock threatens to reveal that she worked as a nippy, implying that she was at least in her late teens during WWII.^[5]

At various times, Mrs. Slocombe has (often while drunk) tried to flirt with various members of the male staff. Though she often sparred with Mr. Lucas, she was heard to remark that he has "very smooth hands" when he accidentally tries to straighten her stockings instead of a display dummy's. She has often cast an eye towards Captain Peacock, usually calling him "Stephen" in a conspiratorial tone and complimenting him in an effort to appeal to his masculine ego. At one point, when pretending to be locked in a passionate embrace with Peacock, Mrs. Slocombe is overcome with the smell of Captain Peacock's cologne and comments that he is actually a rather handsome man. However, the majority of Mrs. Slocombe's attempts at seduction are directed towards Mr. Humphries, as she often fixates on him; at one point her (often thwarted) desires even led to her becoming obsessed, to which she turns to drink in an effort to drown her sorrows. She even believes that Mr. Humphries had proposed marriage to her at one point (with which the good-natured Mr. Humphries resignedly decides to play along, in order to spare her feelings); however, Mrs. Slocombe herself breaks off the "engagement" when she discovers that her previously missing cat (which prompted her to be despondent and thus fixate on Mr. Humphries) had in fact turned up with a litter of kittens.

Grace and Favour[link]

Mollie Sugden reprised the role of Mrs. Slocombe for the spin-off show, Grace and Favour, in 1992.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Are You Being Served? at BBC Online
• Are You Being Served? at the British Film Institute
• Mrs. Slocombe at the BFI's Screenonline
• Are You Being Served? at the Internet Movie Database