middlebrow

middle +‎ brow, by analogy with highbrow and lowbrow. The term first appeared in Punch (1925) and was later used by Virginia Woolf (1930s) in an unsent letter to the New Statesman, published as a chapter in the book "The Death of a Moth and Other Essays" (1942).

middlebrow (not comparable)

1. (derogatory) Neither highbrow or lowbrow, but somewhere in between.
   • Jesse Green (2018 August 26), “Neil Simon Drew Big Laughs, Then Came a Cultural Shift”, in The New York Times‎:

     In the late ’60s and early ’70s, as independent films were diversifying their outlook and shaking off the formulas of Hollywood storytelling, Broadway boulevard comedies like “Last of the Red Hot Lovers” and “California Suite” — tales of the befuddled nouveau riche in a new world — began to look mass-produced and middlebrow.

Generally pejorative, implying pretension and vulgarity – aspiring and appropriating high culture, but not appreciating it. On occasion instead used positively.

middlebrow (plural middlebrows)

1. A person or thing that is neither highbrow nor lowbrow, but in between.

• ESC, 2003. Re:highbrow, middlebrow, lowbrow, The Phrase finder.
• Robert Hendrickson, 1997. Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins (New York: Facts on File)