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Thursday, December 19, 2013
Adorno and Horkheimer - "Culture Industry: Enlightenment asMass Deception" – summary
"Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" is a chapter in Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer'sbook "Dialectic of Enlightenment" which discusses their famous notion of the "culture industry". In thischapter Adorno and Horkheimer view capitalist society's culture industry as an aspect of the enlightenmenthas betrayed itself by allowing instrumental logic to take over human social life (a notion developedthroughout "Dialecticof Enlightenment").
According to Adorno and Horkheimer culture industry is a main phenomenon of late capitalism, one whichencompasses all products and form of light entertainment – from Hollywood films to elevator music. All theseforms of popular culture are designed to satisfy the growing needs of mass capitalistic consumers forentertainment. Adorno specifically notes that the term "culture industry" was chosen over "mass culture" inorder to make sure that it is not understood as something which spontaneously stems from the massesthemselves.
Products of the culture economy take the appearance of artwork but are in fact dependant on industry andeconomy, meaning they are subjected to the interests of money and power. All products of the cultureindustry are designed for profit. According to Adorno and Horkheimer this means that every work of art isturned into a consumer product and is shaped by the logic of capitalist rationality (i.e. whatever sells best).Art is no longer autonomous, but is rather a commodified product of the economic relations of production.The main argument of "Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" is that the commodification ofculture is the commodification of human conciseness. Adorno and Horkheimer assert that culture industryeradicates autonomous thinking and criticism, serving to preserve the reigning order. It provides easyentertainment which distracts massed from the wrongs and sickness of the ruling order. They argue thatculture industry has taken over reality as the prism through which people experience reality, thus completelyshaping and conditioning their experience of life. In addition culture industry serves to keep workers busy, asexpressed by the famous quote from "Dialectic of Enlightenment": "Amusement has become an extension oflabor under late capitalism". Popular culture appears to be offering a refuge and distraction for work, but infact it causes the worker to further dwell into a world of products and consumerism. The only freedom cultureindustry has to really offer a freedom from thinking.
Adorno and Horkheimer claim that culture industry positions the masses ad objects of manipulation (insteadof just satisfying their wants and needs). This turns people into passive and subordinated subjects, unable tofully take critical responsibility for their own action, a thing which is crucial for a functioning democracy.People therefore gladly give in a help maintain the system by taking part in it.
in "Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" Adorno and Horkheimer stress the fact that cultureindustry uses a production-line mentality in producing cultural products. Seemingly all films and TV showswe watch are different, but in fact they follow the same recycled formulas as in other types of consumergoods. Like consumers goods, it feels like "there is something for everyone" here but in fact it's all variationsof the same thing. This is a main feature of the culture industry, for the fact that all products are producedunder the same scheme allows them to be "readable" and effortlessly digested. This is how culture industryimposes conformity – with things that only seem to be different but are in fact all (slight) variations of thesame thing. The final argument posed by Adorno and Horkheimer is that people under capitalism suffer thesame fate of art under the culture industry – they are reduced to the exchange value with no intrinsic orunique traits as the Enlightenment dreamed.
see also: Theodor Adorno - culture industry reconsidered
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Posted by אני at 8:54 PM
Labels: culture industry, Max Horkheimer, summary, Theodor Adorno
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This is my first time i visit here. I found so many entertaining stuff in your blog. Keep up the goodwork.Plastic Flow Meter
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Jazz M November 13, 2016 at 10:42 AM
Thank you very much, I enjoyed this piece and it was very useful!
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Joyce Patricia Montelibano-Aquino December 1, 2016 at 9:56 PM
Hello!I am studying the "The Culture Industry" essay. I've been looking and I don't think youmentioned when this essay by Horkheimer and Adorno was written. I saw on Wikipedia that it waswritten in the late 1940s in California and I was hoping I could cross-check that in your blog but it'snot here.
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Brett Haythorpe February 1, 2017 at 4:36 PM
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