Ashley G., Post 8

Ashley Green

1.) Towards the end of C.I. Reconsidered, Theodor Adorno states, "Human dependence and servitude, the vanishing point of the culture industry, could scarcely be more faithfully described than by the American interviewee who was of the opinion that the dilemmas of the contemporary epoch would end if people would simply follow the lead of prominent personalities." This statement alone seems to sum up the frustration Adorno holds towards the mass culture, or the culture industry, which he feels is an industry of anti-enlightenment. He states in his essay, Culture Industry that “today the culture industry has taken over the civilizing inheritance of the entrepreneurial and frontier democracy.” Adorno is extremely critical of the homogenization and commodification of culture. He feels that it fuses together the two spheres of art- high art and low art- to the detriment of both. (Adorno 17) High art thus crumbles under the scrutiny of it actual power and effectiveness and low art fails to keep its values of challenging societal norms and standards. (Adorno 17) Because of this, Adorno believes the motivation for creativity and innovation is not only lost but un-encouraged, and that individuality is lost through the culture industry. He also argues that the culture industry operates totally and that the whole world is made to pass through the culture industry. (Adorno 9) He believes that the culture industry functions largely through the promotion of homogenized ideologies and though we have the freedom to choose an ideology, what we are choosing is in the end all the same. (Adorno 15)

Many members of the Frankfurt school make similar claims about the negative effects of homogenized society. One important member of the school that I believe furthers the concepts of Adorno is Jurgen Habermas. While Adorno discussed homogenization in the realm of culture, Habermas discussed homogenization in the realm of socio-politics, particularly in his theory of the public sphere. Habermas’s discussion of the public sphere is important to Adorno’s predicted effects of the culture industry on society. Habermes theorized that beginning around the feudal era, there have been two spheres of society, the public and the private. Originally only a select few actually participated in these spheres, but after the Enlightenment Era, the spheres became open to most individuals. In our post-Enlightenment era, Habermas feels that the two spheres have began to merge, leaving the public sphere as the predominant influencer on the individual. Habermas felt that the media texts we consumed promoted a public sphere that was preoccupied with only satisfying the needs of a group rather than the individual. He predicted that the role of the media would become corporatized, and would promote the predominant ideology rather than focus of the individual as an autonomous being. This syncs into Adorno’s idea that the culture industry destroys individuality. By creating a homogenous society, we threaten our very autonomy.

2.) The claims that the culture industry have merely continued and expanded exponentially are completely true. This is due in large part to the utilization of the internet which allows for a greater broadening in the media produced for the masses. The growth of the culture industry is also evident in the way we consume media. The average person encounters on average 4,000 advertisements a day, spends more time in front of a TV than in school, views more than a 1,000 films in his or her lifetime, and hears over a 100,000 songs. Every aspect of that consumption is tailored to reach the maximum mass audience, not the individual. In 1983, there were roughly 50 media groups that were controlling 90% of the media and culture Americans consumed. In 2007, there are now only 6. Media conglomerates like Time Warner and General Electric control nearly every single bit of information and culture we receive. They control film, television, radio, newspaper, and magazine outlets addressing every single form of ideology, culture and counter-culture we can classify. The only possible exception to this is the internet, which in the end still promotes certain ideologies that have been imposed on us from mass culture.The expansion of culture industry is also due in large part to the overall globalization of mass culture. Social theorists like George Ritzer have now begun to analyze the effect of globalization in the culture industry, like the cases of Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, and Coca-Cola.

3.) To Adorno, the difference between formulaic culture industry products built according to specs of some target audience and freely and imaginatively created art works were who the works were intended for. Formulaic culture industry products are solely created for mass appeal and consumption, where freely and imaginatively created art works are made for the artist enjoyment alone, almost like art for art sake. In my opinion, when it comes to the creation of free and imaginative works, Adorno’s ideal artist is probably the bohemian artist, who is performing his craft for the benefit of performing it alone, instead of for fortune and fame. His idea of culture industry producers is anyone else who is not attempting to break the mold of the culture industry or facilitating the hegemony of the culture industry. I believe Adorno would see something like Kadinsky’s Composition VIII as ideal art, and the mug of another painting by Kandinsky as a preserver of the culture industry. Kadinsky created the work solely to innovate and expand the standards of art. The work does not strive to fulfill any societal standards of what is marketable or will make someone popular. The Kandinsky mug however is made solely for consumer consumption- to fulfill someone's interest or taste.

I worry that Adorno’s attacks on what is essentially pop-culture leaves no room for reasoning within the individual. In his essay Culture Industry, Adorno states, “The man with leisure has to accept what the culture manufacturers offer him.” (Adorno 3) He assumes that whatever media and cultural texts we consume will demand us to completely stifle our individuality and force us into being mere cogs in the machine. I think that in doing so, Adorno removes us, as human beings, too far away from our autonomy and completely denies what separates us as humans in the first place- our ability to ration and reason.

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