Vulgar
Related: vulgar latin - people
"The Kino is a vulgar modern entertainment and I doubt if it can tell us anything serious about the modern condition." --Sigmund Freud
Definition
The term vulgar originally meant "of the common people", from the Latin vulgus.
The term is now commonly used to describe things that are, from the viewpoint of the person using the word, in bad taste, indecent, or profane.
Books
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The Triumph of Vulgarity: Rock Music in the Mirror of Romanticism - Robert Pattison [Amazon.com]
This is a provocative, opinionated study about the origins of rock and about rock as an idea. The author sees rock as grounded in the ideology of the American Revolution and as an extension of 19th-century Romanticism. He finds rock foreshadowed in Shelley and in the pantheism of Whitman. At the same time, he dwells on the vulgarity of rock (and youth, democracy, and popular culture), though he admits rock brings intense pleasure to many. He considers rock devoid of logic and perceives the lyrics as "trite, obscene, and idiotic." Nevertheless he has produced a logical critical study, which, for all its paradoxes, many will find valid and stimulating. Recommended for academic collections. Daniel J. Lombardo for From Library JournalRobert Pattison is the author of five books, including The Child Figure in English Literature (University of Georgia Press, 1978), Tennyson and Tradition (Harvard University Press, 1980), On Literacy (Oxford University Press, 1982), and The Great Dissent: John Henry Newman and the Liberal Heresy (Oxford University Press, 1991). His book on rock and romanticism, The Triumph of Vulgarity (Oxford University Press, 1987), is frequently stolen from libraries. His reviews and articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, and other publications. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Rockefeller and the Guggenheim foundations. As director of the Humanities Division at Southampton College, his time is now spent writing memos.
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