Re: Horkeimer and Adorno, The Culture Industry - Angela and Matthieu

Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno describe the culture industry. This is the industry responsible for mass producing modern-day culture across different media. They argue that a technological rationale (society has consistently adopted new technologies) is the rationale of domination. The culture industry is not concerned with works of art, but with standardization and mass production; its goal is to provide needs for every class of citizen (and 'connoisseurs' perpetuate the idea that citizens/consumers have choice). The authors point to the sound film as having a drastic stunting effect on mass-media consumers. The technical emphasis of works are now more important than the content. The entertainment industry determines its own language, resulting in the negation of style, the aesthetic equivalent of domination. The argument goes on to mention that dissidence in mass media is part of the ideology of business, and is the only source of originality in the culture industry. We come to Tocqueville and how exclusion from the masses is today's form of tyranny, which leads to the fact that today's consumers are self-defeating when they are captivated by the myths perpetuated by media, leading to the reproduction of the same "content", i.e. the same crap on TV/in movies/in books/on the radio... The consumer must put up with what's offered. They argue that amusement/entertainment/culture industry is the antithesis of art. The fusion of culture and entertainment is responsible for the depravation of culture.

We started questioning ourselves as to how applicable the authors' arguments are in our personal daily lives. Though very dense and difficult, once the text has been broken down, most of their arguments make a lot of sense, and we found that it's still applicable in 2008, even with the proliferation of the Internet. In our eyes the net is like radio and telephone and movies; a gross amalgamation of all media, multi-media, one might say! Horkheimer and Adorno, we suspect, would not be phased by the Internet, though we can't help but wonder if their approach to individuality might change given its undeniable power of expression. They wouldn't be surprised, either, at how many crappy movies and TV shows are being produced. We agreed that, as media artists and media students, we are part of the mass-media consumers that Horkheimer and Adorno describe, but with a level of self-awareness that most of the populace doesn't have. After all, we're reading their texts, are enrolled in a university program that deals with these issues, so not much of this comes as a surprise. We also brought up the fact that users and consumers of mass media ought to read this text; it should come with the user manual of today's media appliances!

"... this [movie theater] bloated pleasure apparatus adds no dignity to man's lives. The idea of 'fully exploiting' available technical resources and the facilities for aesthetic mass consumption is part of the economic system which refuses to exploit resources to abolish hunger." (83) First, is the cinema exclusively a pleasure apparatus? What about dignity? Should media even be concerned with dignity?! And finally, what's the connection with the economic system and the hungry?!