Culture Industry Today

After reading about the culture industry from Adorno's point of view, I couldn't help but think of another class I'm in. Right now I'm taking JOUR 3745: Mass Media and Popular Culture. In this class we talk a lot about popular culture (hence the class name) and one thing we talked about was high culture and low culture, which I think Adorno gets at quite often. He says on page one "To the detriment of both it forces together the spheres of high and low art, separated for thousands of years", and I agree with him in this sense, but I can also disagree. I still believe there's a distinguished line between high art and low art, high culture and low culture. But I do think that the culture industry tries to mold the two together. He says that the "seriousness of high art is destroyed" and I can agree to that as well. Another point that Adorno talks about is advertising. In my journalism class we watched a documentary called "The Greatest Movie Ever Sold" and it heavily emphasized advertisement in movies. It showed that once advertisement gets involved in a film they can end up having high power over how the film is made. Adorno says on page 100 that "Brought to bear is a general uncritical consensus, advertisements produced for the world, so that each product of the culture industry becomes its own advertisement", and after watching the documentary on movies and advertisement within them I find this statement to be very very true.

I found the part of that claims "art can provide an alternate vision of reality" very interesting. Adorno is arguing in this case that autonomous art has the capacity to highlight the inequalities and irrationality of the status quo. It does this by representing an "ideal vision" of what we has humans can strive towards. Adorno goes onto argue that most radical forms of art o not contain a political message because they don't exist within the realms to demand change. I disagree with this as it pertains to today's society. Many radical art forms are seen in powerful political ways such as propaganda and other acts like feminism. Both are examples of potential cultural change.

My general thoughts are that Adorno believes the "cultural industry" was their to hinder the growth of the general masses and provide a softer lens from capitalism. Almost a distraction from reality if you will.

Thoughts on my interpretation?

Also, assuming I am spot on with Adorno's reasoning and logic, I would argue this does happen today. I believe our cultural industry today does provide a blanket from what is truly happening in our culture and society. You could argue that all of the pop culture, reality TV, sports, and other forms of art distract us from seeing the truth of the outside world. However, I am not sure if this is a bad thing or not. Adorno also brings up "complex art." Does complex art still exist today? Do we only grow as a society when challenged with complex art, which causes us to truly think and peal back reality?  

Adorno Seems Pretty Upset

Adorno certainly has a pretty negative view of culture. He makes some fair points, but he seems overly scared of its effects on the masses. In fact, I don't think he mentioned any of culture's benefits. Prove me wrong for a potential comment topic, guys. Now I'm not saying the "cultural industry" is good. The movie and games industries, for example, suffer from the rather elitist stances of publishers. It's hard to rely on talent alone, you also need to know the right people and it's unfair and I get that. However, Adorno seems so offended by it. For example, on page 103, he says "The advice to be gained from manifestations of the culture industry is vacuous, banal or worse, and the behavior patterns are shamelessly conformist." Google tells me none of these adjectives are positive.

Adorno's just getting started with this verbal onslaught. Wait, I guess it's a written onslaught? Anyway, he goes on to talk about how the world wants to be deceived, even if they know the deception is occurring. He paints this in such a bad light, which I think is a little undeserved. Lots of peoples' lives aren't that great, if we're being honest. Let's use a modern day example. I sometimes would rather watch a movie where Batman drives a train through a parking structure and then flies out the window as the train explodes behind him than worry about my student debt. Is this the most productive thing I could be doing? Nope. Could I probably be out working to save money or improve my life in some other way? Absolutely. However, in today's world more than ever, people need some means of escape from day-to-day life. Times have changed since this book was written. The world gets more and more complicated as technology advances. Maybe that's the point Adorno was making. That, because we can't recognize an ideology when we're in one, we can't see any other way to run the world. We think this is just how the world works. We are a lot less likely to demand change if we wearily accept that this is as good as it gets. We don't say to ourselves "Maybe things could be better." Who knows, maybe there is some undiscovered way to fix everything. If so, I hope people get around to inventing it soon. I haven't got all day, people. The Dark Knight is on at four, and it's not going to watch itself.            

Everyday and the Culture Industry

After reading Marx and Althusser, Adorno's assessment of culture seems relatively less prescient. However, he does raise a number of points still relevant to today's culture, albeit with some adaptation.

Throughout the text Adorno drops in scathing criticisms of how culture has become a commodified, industrial system, presumably juxtaposed against the organic creation and artistic expression of "high art". He repeatedly describes culture as imposing an ideology of conformity among consumers, and decries it as stifling the pure, untapped creative genius of mankind's collective consciousness. He also mentions how the products of culture have the ability to take a specific uniqueness of a subject and turn it into something homogenized and bland.

All of these points can be seen in modern culture - we still see plenty of cultural creations blindly following the tropes that enabled the success of their predecessors, with little artistic input to distinguish themselves and establish their own identities. More often than before, these do not succeed commercially, and the remainder of the fruit on the vine is brought to wither (His Dark Materials may never be fully adapted because of this). Culture and media are also responsible for generating persistent stereotypes via means of a single work or event, and this is as reviled today as it had been by Adorno in the 1940s.

Through no fault of his own, Adorno failed to predict the evolution of the process of cultural creation, and this should be given some serious consideration. As humanity developed more varied means of communication, the culture industry began integrating elements from numerous other cultures into single works; eventually, consumers were able to create as well as recreate popular culture. Nowadays, satire, parody, and homage may be considered legitimate forms of artistic creation, and memes can go from non-existent to pervading the collective consciousness of the Internet in a single night. One might argue that this only reinforces dominant ideology the same way the cultural industry does, but the power to create has by and large been taken away from the industry and returned to the hands of the people, and with this ability it has become much more difficult for the ideological mandate of the powerful to assert its dominance over humanity's collective voices by simply drowning them out. Even so, those voices often represent poles rather than spectra; humanity has escaped its cell only to find itself on an island, while the ocean of potential ideologies surrounds them still.

Adorno's concepts in the modern world

It is quite clear in the reading that Adorno that he believes that all culture is manufactured and reflects the ideologies of whomever is in power at the time. I believe that this is still partially true, but at the same time quite wrong.

I think that most traditional media (e.g. TV, movies) are still largely manufactured by those who control the studios that make them. It seems that every year you see big blockbuster movies or new "hit" sitcoms that follow a very basic formula that is extremely similar to their predecessors, but they still are a commercial success, because people become convinced that this is the type of entertainment they really want, even if it is something that they have seen countless times before. I think this is really well represented by the Transformers movie franchise. Every time a movie in this series comes out people say it's going to be terrible, watch it, discuss why it was terrible, then go see the next one anyway and help it be a box office success. A movie company is essentially deciding what people want to see, and the people go along with it.

However I believe that the internet is constantly spontaneously producing new culture all the time. While it is usually not shoved down people's throats and exposed to the mass population, but it is still a big part of the individual culture of the creator and consumer of whatever it happens to be. Culture, in my mind, does not exist solely at the societal level, but changes from person to person based on their thoughts and beliefs. In this sense I think it is impossible for a higher power to fully control culture, because it is nearly impossible to control people if you get to a high enough level.

The Culture Industry

In order to fully understand Adorno’s opinions on the culture industry and mass culture, we must consider the context in which he wrote them. The fact that Dialectic of Enlightenment was published only two years post World War II (and Adorno had been living in the United States for nearly a decade at this time) is highly significant here. World War II heavily influenced American popular culture in the 1940s with regard to propaganda and the anti-German and anti-Japanese attitude that consumed most of the population and its culture. Movies, music, news headlines, etc. were all focused around the war. In this sense, the feelings of distaste that Adorno (a German man himself) expresses toward the culture industry are better understood.

Adorno argues that “The most ambitious defence of the culture industry today celebrates its spirit, which might be safely called ideology, as an ordering factor. In a supposedly chaotic world it provides human beings with something like standards for orientation…” (103). Do you all think this quote still applies today? Would you consider us to be living in a so-called “chaotic world”? I would say that we are, not in the same way that Adorno was, but possibly in a different way. In an age of social media, technology, marketing, advertising and politics, we are exposed to an entirely different culture industry that the one Adorno was referring to.

Adorno's Concepts Today

While reading Adorno's 'The Culture Industry" I couldn't help but notice how many of his ideas and theories about the industry of culture still ring true today.  Even just by looking at the title, we can start to pinpoint a similarity between the way society used pop culture as a tool for profit then, as it still does today.  It's almost impossible to think of a single movie, TV show, magazine, newspaper, or even radio show that doesn't advertise something.  TV shows, specifically, were made exactly for this purpose; the entertainment content often being tailored to the advertisements they came after, rather than the other way around.  Pop culture succeeds in making money not only directly by 'selling entertainment,' but also indirectly by selling itself, in a sense.  Adorno discusses this concept at length, explaining the self-sustaining nature of culture in the way that it can promote itself through its own content.
Another concept I found interesting in the reading was the idea that "conformity has replaced consciousness."  I think that this may have been true in the 20th century, and more recently even in the early 2000s, but in the last few years we have started to see a shift in the way we view culture as a society.  Rather than taking it all on faith, we have begun to take a closer look at pieces of pop culture through a more critical lens.  In fact, I would argue that the 'cool' thing to do now is not conform to the ways of society, whereas before, conformity was what society was basically built around.  However, one could also argue that trying to not conform to everything, can be a type of conformity in itself if everyone else tends to have this same idea.  Either way, I think that as a society we are continuously moving further and further away from this idea of conformity replacing consciousness.  Evidence of this can be seen in not only the way we look at pop culture, but the ways in which we are taught to think about culture and other aspects of life.  We are focusing more and more on teaching our youth how to think, rather than what to think, a process that inevitably steers us further away from the path of conformity.

'Marxist' Dialectic

I had a few questions come up in my head while reading, most along the lines of devil's advocacy. Here's the corresponding dialogue that I hope might either clear things up or raise new questions.
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Adorno's (and Horkheimer's) central argument about the culture industry seems to be that it alienates people from the benefits of 'real' or high culture. I don't see how this can be the case; how are the products of the cultural industry any less cultural?

Well, Adorno doesn't necessarily commit to the idea that the cultural products of the culture industry are 'less cultural,' but rather that their commodification and homogenous content reinforce dominant ideology.

But how does he show this to be the case? Even though my Che Guevara t-shirt is a mass production, I, like he, am still a socialist; and furthermore, by wearing it, I use such a mass production to undermine the dominant - capitalist - ideology.  So not only is Adorno wrong in asserting that the culture industry necessarily assimilates consumers into the dominant ideology, but its products can also subvert the dominant ideology! #feelthebern

Maybe the content of something produced by the culture industry can be non- or even anti-capitalist, but Adorno's argument is more about how the products express an idea, or how they are consumed. Your shirt might indicate that you're a sell-out, but that isn't what his argument rests on, and thus that you can be a socialist sell-out doesn't really respond to what he's saying.  It is the homogenization and mass-consumption of Che Guevara t-shirts (and other cultural products) that reinforce capitalist consumerism.

Then I'll ask again, how does he show this to be true?

He doesn't really, in terms of providing examples.  But his argument is, like you had said, that mass-consumption of cultural sameness alienates us from the benefits of authentic culture.

And what are these benefits?

Originality and critical thinking. He says "that which legitimately could be called culture attempted, as an expression of suffering and contradiction, to maintain a grasp on the idea of the good life" (104).

And how is my idea of the good life grasped any less through the products of the culture industry?

Because it strengthens conformity to the status quo (which sucks), as opposed to the original, critical nature of authentic culture/art.  "While [the culture industry] claims to lead the perplexed, it deludes them with false conflicts which they are to exchange for their own.  It solves conflicts for them only in appearance, in a way that they can hardly be solved in their real lives.  In the products of the culture industry human beings get into trouble only so that they can be rescued unharmed, usually be representatives of a benevolent collective; and then in empty harmony, they are reconciled with the general, whose demands they had experienced at the outset as irreconcilable with their interests" (104-105).

Kind of like how in the plots of movies like The Princess Diaries and Devil Wears Prada, where Anne Hathaway starred as a nerdy outcast who transforms into a pretty, successful idol?  And like how that is completely removed from ordinary life?  Genovia isn't even real fuckin country.

Exactly.

So, for Adorno, genuine - or proper - cultural products are only those that criticize the capitalist state of affairs?

Basically.

Then wouldn't my Che Guevara t-shirt count?  

I doubt it; Adorno would probably say that it constitutes an empty substitution for the actual rebellion that culture is supposed to engage.  Guevara's face might as well be mocking you on behalf of the capitalists who have capitalized on him through you.

I see, but that's simply an argument for the culture industry's perpetuation of consumerism, not necessarily for the reinforcement of capitalism in mass ideology.  If the formulaic schemes evident in sitcoms, novels, and action movies are so pervasive, isn't that just an indication of what the masses want?

Maybe, but that's why Adorno specifically used the term "culture industry" as opposed to "mass culture," the latter of which he isn't critiquing per se.

His argument isn't "fuck mass-product sell-outs," it's "fuck conformity."  How nuanced.

Sure, and so for him the real problem isn't the process of supply and demand prompting the market to produce a bunch of cultural products.  It's rather the particular demand that's being reinforced - a continual desire for "sameness" that constitutes a false psychological substitution for genuine sublimation, where "the physiognomy of the culture industry is essentially a mixture of streamlining, photographic hardness and precision on the one hand, and individualistic residues, sentimentality and an already rationally disposed and adapted romanticism on the other" (101).

He's saying then that the formulaic cultural products of the culture industry are the "opiate of the masses"?  In all this rhetoric about how we'll "be harmed indeed by the stupefication which lies in the claim [and] feeling of wellbeing that that the world is precisely in that order suggested by the culture industry" and that "the substitute gratification which it prepares for human beings cheats them out of the same happiness which it deceitfully projects," "imped[ing] the development of autonomous, independent individuals who judge and decide consciously for themselves," and "obstructing the emancipation for which human beings are as ripe as the productive forces of the epoch permit" (106)?

I guess.

How then is the culture industry different from any other form of entertainment? 

It's profit-driven, which can be collapsed into the imperative to create the most consumable cultural product, which leads to the extra-artistic imperative to create the most formulaic product, where "the cultural commodities of the industry are governed [...] by the principle of their realization as value, and not by their own specific content and harmonious formation," (99).

Then Adorno just seems to want a society full of critical-theory independent artists on the level of Divinci or Picasso.  And then 'all our problems would be solved.'

Or, like every Marxist, for the working class to simply revolt and establish an 'authentic' society.

K.

Adorn's beliefs

I personally find what Adorn says to be extremely relevant, perhaps some aspects are outdated, but there are definitely attributes that still hold true. One thing that Adorn states that I find very interesting is “The cultural industry turns into public relations”. I find this statement to be thought provoking yet relevant at the same time. I think that a big part of our culture today is made by few people who bring this to broader attention and eventually making it the ideals and culture of the specific society.  

                   

However, there is another statement that Adorn mentions briefly that I believe to be quite out dated. This statement is “It is true that thorough research has not, for this time being, produced an airtight case proving the regressive effects of particular products of the culture industry.” In present there has been ample research on cultural studied in the media. Many of these publications have shown a correlation between culture industries and the effects on particular products.  

has conformity replaced consciousness?

Compared to the general knowledge of mass media and consumerism effects people had in the 1940s, which was little to none, I think today, most people have a grasp on this liberal argument of criticizing the media and consumer industry. Adorno's view that "the customer is not king, as the culture industry would have us believe, not its subject but its object" still rings true today (Adorno 99).

In our consumer society today, products do not even have to be advertised. They are the heart of the ideology of consumerism and will prosper undoubtedly due to the never-ending societal desire for material goods. With the increasingly harsh competition in advertising, sales, and marketing, we have a basic standard/trend that everyone seems to willingly adhere to. For example, Apple changed the way modern advertisements look today. Their chic/sleek/simple/futuristic/minimalistic design structure can be seen in countless companies (i.e. every hipster wannabe coffee shop in Minneapolis). Originality is hard to come by and when something becomes the norm, the once original concept loses all value. But isn't that what people want? To have their ideas make them money? "It lives parasitically from the extra-artistic technique of the material production of goods, without regard for the obligation to the internal artistic whole implied by its functionality" (Adorno 101). Although there are people who don't want to sell out, the general consensus today is that making money is synonymous with success. The "individualistic residues" seen throughout media make people happy. I agree with Adorno's point that "if it guarantees them even the most fleeting gratification they desire a deception which is nonetheless transparent to them" (Adorno 103). Instant gratification is quite literally what people live for and without it, most of us who are unconsciously and/or consciously (but not willing to do anything about it) entangled in this system, would not be able to survive. The success of the consumer industry "lies in the promotion and exploitation of the ego-weakness to which the powerless members of contemporary society...are condemned" (Adorno 105). Can a human being ever be completely satisfied in the world today?

"The power of the culture industry's ideology is such that conformity has replaced consciousness" (Adorno 104). How do trends happen? How do they so subconsciously pervade society/set a standard? (i.e. fashion, recreation, even drugs)

Adorno stuck in the 40s

I would agree with Adorno in some aspects of popular culture, but in others I would starkly disagree. Yes, not all popular culture is a natural creation of what the masses want, but a business that is powered by culture e.g. the Kardashians. They haven't created any new aspect of our culture, or added to any part either, but they are an essential part of describing our culture today. But that does not mean culture is a business creation. Especially in today's connected world, anyone is able to go onto the internet find and create culture. Facebook started as a way to connect with friends. The Youtube personality, Pewdiepie, started by just posting reaction videos to video games. Now, they are both synonymous with our culture. Both were creatively made and neither, even though it may be disputed now, tried to conform us into believing popular beliefs.

Adorno perplexes me and angers me. He seems to have written this chapter with an extremely biased view of popular culture as a negative entity without exploring all of its aspects. He talks about this separation of what is popular culture and what is intellectual culture and that they cannot mix. He says popular culture is us conforming to what everybody else wants us to conform to, which is true to an extent. But, Adorno does not really give straight examples of how popular culture does this. He does give the example about movies stereotypically portraying intellectuals, but why does he just focus on them? Surely there are others that are mis-portrayed by popular culture. It was in this example that Adorno started to become a person that was against popular culture to begin with, rather than a person who looked at the entity as a whole and really dissected its true rule in our society. I can't prove that Adorno is wrong, but I'm sure "an imaginatively designed experiment could achieve this more successfully than the powerful financial interests concerned would find comfortable." (p105) :)

Blog post Adorno

Hello All,

We are reading Adorno's thoughts on the "culture industry" for Tuesday. The concept was first put forward in a chapter from a book Adorno wrote with Horkheimer in the 1940s called the Dialectic of Enlightenment. As you will see, Adorno is down on popular culture. For both Adorno and Horkheimer, the culture industry named a process of increasing homogenization of cultural products (films, music, news, really any commodity), which resulted in increased conformity with and acceptance of dominant ideologies. Culture was not spontanously expressed and creatively produced; rather, culture was itself a product that was made by the leaders of the culture industry and sold to the unthinking masses.

So, I'd be curious to see what you all think about Adorno's assessment. No doubt the world has changed since the 40s, but is there anything in what Adorno says that rings true today? Is there anything that just doesn't seem to apply? Be as specific as you can. Try to offer examples or case studies from popular culture today to back yourself up!

See you all Tuesday.

Marx Vs. Althusser

In my personal opinion I side more with Althusser than I do with Marx. This is because in my interpretation Marx believed that the only thing that is relevant in life is materialism. Whereas Althusser takes a step back and says yeah materialism is important, but so is ideology. That was said in simplest terms possible, however the remarks that Althusser makes about ideology affecting and altering life brings a whole new perspective into Marx’s argument. So basically Althusser took Marx’s base, and added on something that he saw that Marx did not initially realize. My real interest lies in how Marx would respond to Althusser new idea. Would he reject it all together or would he embrace the second look and even go off of it? Althusser’s claim that ISA’s today is school, I believe is quite relevant. I think that schools tend to focus on development of the mind. However, not in a creative way, but rather in a matter of fact and quite structured way. In my opinion school is an ideal example for an ISA.