Culture industry

Part of a series on the
Frankfurt School
Major works Reason and Revolution "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" Eclipse of Reason Escape from Freedom Minima Moralia Eros and Civilization One-Dimensional Man Negative Dialectics The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere The Theory of Communicative Action Dialectic of Enlightenment
Notable theorists Grünberg Marcuse Adorno Horkheimer Benjamin Fromm Pollock Löwenthal Kracauer Kirchheimer Neumann Sohn-Rethel Habermas Schmidt Albrecht Wellmer Kluge Negt Apel Offe Honneth Wingert Kuhlmann Kompridis Geuss Forst Jaeggi McCarthy
Important concepts Advanced capitalism Antipositivism Communicative rationality Critical theory Culture industry Dialectic Legitimation crisis Non-identity Popular culture Praxis Privatism Psychoanalysis
Related topics Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory Freudo-Marxism Marxist humanism Western Marxism Social alienation Reification Recognition
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Members of The Frankfurt School were much influenced by the dialectical materialism and historical materialism of Karl Marx, as well as the revisitation of the dialectical idealism of Hegel; both events are studied not in isolation, but as part of the process of change. As a group later joined by Jürgen Habermas, they were responsible for the formulation of critical theory. In works such as Dialectic of Enlightenment and Negative Dialectics, Adorno and Horkheimer theorized that the phenomenon of mass culture has a political implication, namely that all the many forms of popular culture are parts of a single culture industry whose purpose is to ensure the continued obedience of the masses to market interests.

The essay is concerned with the production of cultural content in capitalist societies. It critiques the extortionate nature of cultural economies as well as the apparently inferior products of the system.[4] Horkheimer and Adorno argue that mass-produced entertainment aims, by its very nature, to appeal to vast audiences and therefore both the intellectual stimulation of high art and the basic release of low art.[5] The essay does not suggest that all products of this system are inherently inferior, simply that they have replaced other forms of entertainment without properly fulfilling the important roles played by the now-defunct sources of culture.[6]

Horkheimer and Adorno make consistent comparisons between Fascist Germany and the American film industry. They highlight the presence of mass-produced culture, created and disseminated by exclusive institutions and consumed by a passive, homogenised audience in both systems.[7] This illustrates the logic of domination in post-enlightenment modern society, by monopoly capitalism or the nation state.[8] Horkheimer and Adorno draw attention to the problems associated with a system that 'integrates its consumers from above', arguing that in attempting to realise enlightenment values of reason and order, the holistic power of the individual is undermined.[9]

Adorno and Horkheimer's work was influenced by both the broader socio-political environment in which it was written and by other major theorists. Written in California in the early 1940s in an era which characterized them as two ethnically Jewish, German émigrés, The Culture Industry is influenced by European politics and the war by which the continent was consumed.[10] Simultaneously, the American film industry was characterised by an unprecedented level of studio monopolisation,[4] it was "Hollywood at its most classical, American mass culture at its most Fordist".[11]

Horkheimer and Adorno were influenced heavily by major developers of social, political and economic theory,[12] most notably:

• Karl Marx's theories of alienation and commodity fetishism,
• Max Weber's instrumental reason, and
• Georg Lukacs' concept of the reification of consciousness.

Anything made by a person is a materialization of their labour and an expression of their intentions. There will also be a use value: the benefit to the consumer will be derived from its utility. The exchange value will reflect its utility and the conditions of the market: the prices paid by the television broadcaster or at the box office. Yet, the modern soap operas with their interchangeable plots and formulaic narrative conventions reflect standardized production techniques and the falling value of a mass-produced cultural product. Only rarely is a film released that makes a more positive impression on the general discourse and achieves a higher exchange value, e.g. Patton (1970), starring George C. Scott as the eponymous American general, was released at a time of considerable anti-war sentiment. The opening shot is of Patton in front of an American flag making an impassioned speech. This was a form of dialectic in which the audience could identify with the patriotism either sincerely (the thesis) or ironically (the antithesis) and so set the tone of the interpretation for the remainder of the film. However, the film is manipulating specific historical events, not only as entertainment, but also as a form of propaganda by demonstrating a link between success in strategic resource management situations and specified leadership qualities. Given that the subtext was instrumental and not "value-free", ethical and philosophical considerations arise.

Normally, only high art criticizes the world outside its boundaries, but access to this form of communication is limited to the elite classes where the risks of introducing social instability are slight. A film like Patton is popular art which intends controversy in a world of social order and unity which, according to Adorno, is regressing into a cultural blandness. To Hegel, order is good a priori, i.e. it does not have to answer to those living under it. But, if order is disturbed? In Negative Dialectics, Adorno believed this tended towards progress by stimulating the possibility of class conflict. Marx's theory of Historical Materialism was teleological, i.e. society follows through a dialectic of unfolding stages from ancient modes of production to feudalism to capitalism to a future communism. But Adorno felt that the culture industry would never permit a sufficient core of challenging material to emerge on to the market that might disturb the status quo and stimulate the final communist state to emerge.

A center point of the Dialectic of Enlightenment is the topic of "the Enlightenment as Mass Deception."[13] The term "culture industry" is intended to refer to the commercial marketing of culture, the branch of industry that deals specifically with the production of culture that is in contrast to "authentic culture".

Horkheimer and Adorno contend that industrially produced culture robs people of their imagination and takes over their thinking for them. The culture industry delivers the "goods" so that the people then only have left the task of consuming them. Through mass production, everything becomes homogenized and whatever diversity remains is constituted of small trivialities. Everything becomes compressed through a process of the imposition of schemas under the premise that what's best is to mirror physical reality as closely as possible. Psychological drives become stoked to the point where sublimation is no longer possible.

Movies serve as an example. "All films have become similar in their basic form. They are shaped to reflect facts of reality as closely as possible. Even fantasy films, which claim to not reflect such reality, don't really live up to what they claim to be. No matter how unusual they strive to be, the endings are usually easy to predict because of the existence of prior films which followed the same schemas. Also, for example, erotic depictions become so strong and so pronounced that a transformation to other forms is no longer possible."[2]

The aims of the culture industry are—as in every industry—economic in nature.[14] All endeavors become focused on economic success.

Authentic culture, however, is not goal-oriented, but is an end in itself. Authentic culture fosters the capacity of human imagination by presenting suggestions and possibilities, but in a different way than the culture industry does since it leaves room for independent thought. Authentic culture does not become channeled into regurgitating reality but goes levels beyond such. Authentic culture is unique and cannot be forced into any pre-formed schemas.

As for discovering the causes of the development of the culture industry, Horkheimer and Adorno contend that it arises from companies' pursuit of the maximization of profit, in the economic sense. However, this cannot be said to be culture, or what culture is supposed to be. It can only be described as being a form of commerce, just like any other kind of commerce.

The culture industry argument is often assumed to be fundamentally pessimistic in nature because its purveyors seem to condemn "mass media" and their consumers. However, for Adorno, the term "culture industry" does not refer to "mass culture", or the culture of the masses of people in terms of something being produced by the masses and conveying the representations of the masses. On the contrary, such involvement of the masses is only apparent, or a type of seeming democratic participation. Adorno contends that what is actually occurring is a type of "defrauding of the masses". Horkheimer and Adorno deliberately chose the term "culture industry" instead of "mass culture" or "mass media".[15] "The culture industry perpetually cheats its consumers of what it perpetually promises."[16] The culture industry even encroaches upon the small distractions of leisure activity: "Amusement has become an extension of labor under late capitalism."[16] Horkheimer and Adorno, above all, in their critical analyses, delve into what they call "the fraying of art" and the "de-artification of art", and discuss how the arts are defused by the culture industry. Works of art have become commodified: Beethoven, Mozart and Wagner are only used in fragmentary forms when included in advertisement. According to Critical Theory, "selling out" is not the decisive factor involved, but rather it's the manner in which art is commodified and how art and culture are changed that is the crucial issue.[15]

"Culture today is infecting everything with sameness."[17] For Adorno and Horkheimer, subversion has become no longer possible.

Wiggershaus states: "The other side of Adorno's apparently paradoxical definition was ignored: that rational objectivity was still possible for the modern work of art, in any significant sense, only as a product of subjectivity"[18] This would deny Adorno contemporary political significance, arguing that politics in a prosperous society is more concerned with action than with thought. He also notes that the young generation of critical theorists largely ignore Adorno's work which, in part, stems from Adorno's inability to draw practical conclusions from his theories.

Adorno is also accused of a lack of consistency in his claims to be implementing Marxism. Whereas he accepted the classical Marxist analysis of society showing how one class exercises domination over another, he deviated from Marx in his failure to use dialectics as a method to propose ways to change. Marx's theory depended on the willingness of the working class to overthrow the ruling class, but Adorno and Horkheimer postulated that the culture industry has undermined the revolutionary movement. Adorno's idea that the mass of the people are only objects of the culture industry is linked to his feeling that the time when the working class could be the tool of overthrowing capitalism is over.

Adorno's work is still of interest. Writing in The New Yorker in 2014, music critic Alex Ross argued that Adorno's work has a renewed importance in the digital age: "The pop hegemony is all but complete, its superstars dominating the media and wielding the economic might of tycoons...Culture appears more monolithic than ever, with a few gigantic corporations—Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon—presiding over unprecedented monopolies.".[19]

Scholar Jack Zipes, influenced by Adorno, critiqued the mass commercialisation and corporate hegemony behind the Harry Potter franchise. He argued that the commodities of the culture industry are "popular" because they are homogenous and obey standard conventions; the media then influences the tastes of children. In his analysis of Harry Potter's global brand, Zipes wrote, "It must conform to the standards of exception set by the mass media and promoted by the culture industry in general. To be a phenomenon means that a person or commodity must conform to the hegemonic groups that determine what makes up a phenomenon ".[20]

• Leisure industry – Sector of the economy dealing with recreation and tourism
• Cultural critic – Professional who reasonably judges the norms and behaviors of a society
• Cultural capital – Concept of social status and social mobility
• Cultural expressions - for copyright implications

Notes

Bibliography

• Durham Peters, John (2003). The Subtlety of Horkheimer and Adorno. Cambridge: Polity Press. ISBN 978-0-7456-2934-6.
• Hansen, M (1992). "Mass Culture as Hieroglyphic Writing: Adorno, Derrida, Kraceuer". New German Critique. 56 (56).
• Horkheimer, Max and Adorno, Theodor W. (2002). Noerr, Gunzelin Schmid (ed.). Dialectic of enlightenment philosophical fragments (PDF). Translated by Edmund Jephcott. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0804736336. Archived from the original (PDF) on 14 June 2017. Retrieved 4 August 2016.
• Scannell, Paddy (2007). Media and Communication. London: SAGE. ISBN 978-1-4129-0269-4.

Further reading

• Adorno. "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" (Archive). pp. 94–136. (Alternate copy at Marxists.org.)

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