The word midcult has a history. The critic Dwight Macdonald coined it in 1960 to describe a particular kind of cultural production — work that borrows the vocabulary of serious art while making itself easier to swallow, that flatters its audience into thinking they are engaging with something elevated without demanding too much of them. Macdonald meant it as a put-down. Mike Stites and Evan Pemberton are reclaiming it as a mission statement.
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