Why does the fantasy genre have such a bad reputation?

[Albertosaurus Rex]

Fantasy just had the misfortune to be represented by children books and shallow teen novels. Lord of the Rings is no longer as common read as it used to be and if you'd ask a person if he ever came upon The Neverending Story they are most likely to reply about the movie. This is how it's like in this era, when the most part of the human kind is shallow, and its pop-culture is made of reality shows and surgically-engineered super-models. i, as a teenager [almost 18] can see that most people in my age group hardly care for anything that's not "mainstream" [fantsy included] and the younger ones... don't even read.

Lord of the Rings, though, is creeping around at the edge of acceptable literature. You can bet that there will be people who will explain why LOTR isn't really fantasy when it's finally accepted into the literary canon. Those kind of things always seem to happen when an sf/fantasy work is praised in the media.
I recently came across some books my Michel Houellebecq, a French author I would like to check out sometime. His book "The possibility of an Island" was shelved in the literature section, despite, you know, featuring human clones in the future. On the one hand, I was glad that such a story is apperantly accepted as literature, on the other hand, it's not recognized as sf. (Note: I haven't read the book yet.)

I also like your comment about The Neverending Story. The book has real depth, especially the second half, but I am always hesistant to say it's actually my favorite book because if people know about it, they've usually just seen the movie.