(… or, yearnings of an overaged intellectual snob)
The Lancet recently delivered a textual broadside on the exploitativeness and malignity of advertising directed at children, particularly the coupling of food (junk food) and entertainment. Cruising in the direction of my own night’s entertainment last week, I had the thought that if advertising directed at children was banned (as the Lancet advocated), might popular culture be reclaimed for grown-ups? Might we return to a point – visited the century before last – where ‘adult’ does not mean porn, but works of artistic and emotional maturity?