ABSTRACT
Popular art has not been popular with aestheticians and theorists of culture, at least not in their professional moments. When not altogether ignored as beneath contempt, it is typically villified as mindless, tasteless trash. The denigration of popular art or mass culture (the debate over the proper term is significant and instructive) seems particularly compelling since it is widely endorsed by intellectuals of violently different socio-political views and agendas; indeed it provides a rare instance where right-wing reactionaries and Marxian radicals join hands and make common cause.
