Society of the Spectacle

The Culture Industry

September 10th, 2006 at 07:36pm hemaljhaveri

I’m still going through Debord so I’ll save my comments on Society of the Spectacle for a bit later, but for now I wanted to post quickly on the Adorno and Horkheimer essay, “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception”. A critical denunciation of mass culture, written in the mid-1940’s, the essay compares mass-market culture to that of a factory producing standardized goods, turning culture into a capitalist industrial production system. Adorno and Horkheimer use the vertical integration of the old Hollywood studio system as a metaphor for what they view as a cultural assembly line, pointing out how elements of creation are completely controlled by producers to manipulate the acquiescence of consumers, therefore turning culture into an industry. They write that “the ruthless unity in the cultural industry is evidence of what will happen in politics. Market differentiations such as those of A and B films, or of stories in magazines in different price ranges, depend not so much on subject matter as on classifying, organizing, and labeling consumers. Something is provided for all so that none may escape.”(34) This process destroys the possibility of true art emerging from anything created under these conditions.

Driven by a capitalist economy, the centralization of the “cultural industry” leads only to sanitized, safe products that lack true creativity, expression or originality. For contemporary audiences, this is something that we’ve heard over and over again when it comes to critiquing Hollywood blockbusters, music, mass market paperbacks, and most often it seems to me, television shows. I partly agree that yes, sometimes it does seem as if the contemporary cultural landscape is a vapid wasteland of hastily assembled products designed only to sell more advertising space. But (and this is a huge but…) that doesn’t mean that these cultural products still don’t have value. Adorno and Horkheimer are highly dismissive of all almost all cultural products in their essay. For example, they rail against jazz music, what many of us might consider “high” culture. I can only guess what they would make of the new Justin Timberlake single.

Anyway, they continue on that the “culture industry” not only weakens pure artistic expression, but leads to a dangerous comodification of thought and ideology. The simple repetition of already indoctrinated values, or perpetuating the existing dominant ideology, leads to a docile acceptance of the established social order. Adorno and Horkheimer continue, “consumers appear as statistics on research organization charts, and are divided by income groups into red, green and blue areas; the technique is that used for any type of propaganda.” (Adorno 34)
This highly cynical perception of mass culture doesn’t bestow much faith in the individual’s intellect either. By dismissing any pleasure that results from the consumption of these cultural products as something entirely manipulated the common consumer becomes a well-meaning, but easily manipulated, dupe in the process. Adorno and Horkheimer write that the “culture industry perpetually cheats its consumers of what it perpetually promises. The promissory note, with its plots and staging, it draws on pleasure is endlessly prolonged; the promise, which is actually all the spectacle consists of, is illusory: all it actually confirms is that the real point will never be reached, that the diner must be satisfied with the menu. (38)

I do bristle at their accusation that we are all simple minded dupes to be so easily entertained my our magic talking boxes, but it’s hard to see some merit in their critique. To pick up on a theme from our last class, we do often see culture as a binary: high and low, good or bad, etc. One thing I do like about this essay is that it does articulate the interconnectedness of culture, ideology and capitalism, which is something I’d like to continue discussing in class.

Adorno and Horkheimer conclude, rather cynically, that products of mass culture are illusory promises, manipulating the masses into passivity, making them believe that the momentary superficial distractions we’re offered should suffice and take the place of true social change.

It’s not that I don’t agree with many of the points that Adorno and Horkheimer bring up in their essay; it’s just that, despite their sometimes valid criticism, they overlook one big factor. These cultural products have to mean something to someone. Why else would they be so popular?

I’m not trying to get too far off topic, but I agree more with Fredric Jameson’s response in his essay, “Reification and Utopia”, where he acknowledges Adorno and Horkheimer’s position but says that mass culture serves a significant secondary function: it often reflects the fundamental hopes of the collective society. He goes on to distill the divisions between the high/low aspects of culture, which I find to me a much more convincing argument than Adorno and Horkheimer, though that could only be because Jameson’s argument doesn’t make me feel like an idiot for enjoying Gilmore Girls and The O.C.

Entry Filed under: Week 2 - Debord