Word: schlock
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Americans once tended to treat high art as a refuge from mass culture. Let Hollywood exude whatever schlock it wanted; let the Box leak its eight hours of imagery a day into the average viewer's skull -- there would always be the Manet or the Rothko in the museum to reorient the distracted eye. The demands (and rewards) of painting were one thing, those of mass media another...
...astride the twilight zone of sentiment, sentimentality, and naked-nipple camp. With a synthesizer beat that commands the dance floor, tender melodies that call for industrial-sized Dramamine, and pretty-boy vocals that would do credit to the Krokodiloes. Depeche Mode somehow manages to subvert the teen-age romantic schlock slot they ought to fit so well...
...popular magazines and on television. Can anyone tell the difference between "Matt Houston" and "Magnum P.I."? Between "Dynasty and "Dallas"? Between People and Us magazines? We joke about what schlock is printed in the National Enquirer, and then watch the schlocky "Entertainment Tonight." No difference. I realize people watch these shows as a kind of fantasy to escape the unpleasantness of the real world, but look at the winners we've picked to escape...
...connoisseur of the deadpan schlock of pop culture, pro wrestling in its latest guise is like a trip to hog heaven. And the crowd is a big part of the show: part upscale, part down-home. Tuxedoed yuppies mix gingerly with the + rip-his-eyes-out! regulars. Andy Warhol shows up to pronounce, "It's hip. It's exciting. It's America." Gloria Steinem stops by to snort, of woman- mauling Roddy Piper, "He certainly is unfit to wear a skirt." Geraldine Ferraro apostrophizes, "Roddy Piper, why don't you come out and fight like a man?" Meanwhile, each month...
...Fleshtones also pull some catchy melodies out of their musical bag. "Deep in My Heart," with its ubiquitous "cheesy" Farfisa and Zaremba's mock crooning matches Romans Gods's "Hope Come Back" for hook quotient, while the mockingly stupid "Screamin Skull" competes with the Cramps' "Human Fly" for pure schlock brilliance...