Culture Industry Response: Charles-Antoine, Charlotte, Jos

Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno write about culture, the culture industry, and society. They begin by defining a great artist and they denounce the meaningless styles of « non-serious » music (like Big-Bands, swing-era pop-dance-Jazz-music, which they call Jazz). (p.76-78) When they say « Anyone who resists can only survive by fitting in », they summarize briefly their main idea. In order to « touch » anyone that is receiving passively from this same industry, one must « fit in » by diverging only so little from the mass, otherwise will be shunned as « it is part of the irrational planning of this society that it reproduces to a certain degree only the lives of its faithful members ». Anyone who does disconnect from the dominance of he culture industry risks being accused of incompetency. The vicious circle as they describe is not yet closed: there is a huge problem issued by cheap massively distributed art (which is what the culture industry does best): « Pleasure always means not to think about anything, to forget even where it is shown. » The problem persists when those same passive persons create the demand for « culture-entertainment-art », because they actually want empty, meaningless, soulless culture. The public is not aware of its current situation, and fails to see that the promises the culture industry makes are always unfulfilled. We have only a few choices off the menu and they are never what we actually need as a society.

What the authors describe in the text as being the "culture industry" is essentially marketing. It is all carefully planned to appeal to as many people as possible, and has figured out how to manipulate people into choosing to desire the very thing it produces. "In the false society, laughter is a disease." (p. 84) Moviegoers and radio listeners search for something to clear their minds which is opposite to the way art was intended in earlier days; intellect and awareness were once required when viewing or listening, but now opinions are carefully formulated for them. The authors seem to fear that because of this, people have become unable to criticize the society in which they live. "Works of art are aesthetic and unashamed; the culture industry is pornographic and prudish." (p. 84). This is interesting: it seems the culture industry tempts people and taps into secretive desires which they are unable to actually satisfy--or it pretends not to be interested in such desires and plays the coy, innocent card. Is is possible however to say that works of art may do the same thing? Where do we draw the line between a work of art and a stylized reproduction of media force fed to us? The premise from which the authors of the text rule a work of art as such are a little unconvincing. One might question what kind of authority deemed Mozart and Michelangelo "real" and "authentic" artists in the eyes of Horkheimer and Adorno. Many of the arguments made could be applied to forms which are denounced in the writing (such as Jazz for example). Nonetheless, the text seems to describe what was discussed in the last class discussion: the culture industry is comparable to one of Leni Riefenstahl's films: meticulously organized to be manipulative.

Is the culture industry representative of the "banality of evil" as in a once fascist Germany? And if so, what sort of diabolical phenomenon should we be preparing for? According to Horkheimer and Adorno, what is the culture industry really hiding and why?