How Can Someone Like Dostoyevsky, But Not Like "Twilight"?

[HappySqurriel]

fighter said:

jacks81x said:

The fact that Twilight is as popular as it is should tell you what garbage it is.  With each new generation, the mainstream audience is becoming less and less cultured and sophisticated.  The more shallow and trashy the content, the more the mainstream audience suck it up nowadays.  If you were to randomly poll the average American today, I bet most of them can't tell you who Dostoyevsky is.  

Mainstream audience has never been cultured and sophisticated. Don't listen to your parents, their generation is not better than ours in any way.

From what I have seen, the popularity of "cultured and sophisticated" works tend to be on a cycle related to the medium or genre; and (periodically) will see a resurgence in popularity, often driven by the popularity of the success of a crossover production.

To understand what I mean I'll try to use an example. I haven't seen the numbers (so I could be wrong) but I suspect that the massive popularity of singing and dancing shows on television, and the popularity of products like the high school musical series and Glee, has probably dramatically increased interest in musical theatre, opera, and classical dancing; and the release of the right product at this point in time could push these "cultured and sophisticated" works into mainstream acceptance (for a short period of time). Eventually, the combination of too many low quality products being released to capitalize on this wave and the short attention spans of the mainstream audience will ensure that this wave of popularity rapidly returns to its starting point.