To read trash, to flaunt trash, to prefer trash to "better" literature was a not-so-subtle way of asserting one’s independence against one’s social superiors. It was a way of saying that we are masters of our own culture. It was a way of saying that we are Americans.
It still is. From crime pamphlets to dime novels to the "yellow press" to the movies to the tabloids to the trash of today, one theme keeps emerging. In a world culturally divided between the genteel and everything else, Americans opt for trash over alt that is supposed to be good for them as much because they resent being told what they should like as because they like trash. Seen this way, trash is not an escape from life, as some would have it; it is an escape from seriousness, which is no doubt why trash in the form of our movies, TV shows, music and popular literature has become one of our chief exports. You don’t have to be American to want to play hooky from high culture, though Americans may be prouder of it than anyone else.