In this paper, the basic ideas of cultural studies are presented in the context of contemporary Croatian novels, The Death of the Little Match Girl by Zoran Ferić and Farewell, Cowboy by Olja Savičević Ivančević, with a particular emphasis on the representation of the 'ordinary' culture in a desolate Mediterranean setting that is conceptualized as the periphery in both spatial and social sense. In spite of the deep-seated traditional values which are inextricable part of the cultural practices, the Mediterranean is represented as a typically postmodern place of marginal situations, as well as the battleground of conflicting ideologies and different cultures, which makes it suitable for representing the entire Croatian society and its bleak everyday reality burdened with growing sense of apathy, violence, and intolerance towards the different. In addition to undermining social constructs and principles of the dominant ideology, the novels strongly oppose the idea of the canon and high literature. By bringing up the issue of cultural ambiguity, this brief review of various attempts to define culture is aimed to draw attention to the radical shift in its definition, by means of which cultural studies heralded the subversive intentions of the postmodern era: resistance to the traditional view of culture and literature, breaking the genre pattern and undermining the value hierarchy. Finally, it is the distortion of the boundaries between high and low culture – both being overshadowed by the idea of fringe in Zoran Ferić's and Olja Savičević Ivančević's grotesque depiction of the world – that is analyzed as the common ground between their novels and cultural studies.