Study Task 2: Reading and Understanding A Text

I have chosen to explore the question "What is the relationship between Animation and the Culture Industry?" for my Context of Practice project. To find out more about the Culture Industry, I decided to read a section on Marxisms in the fifth edition of "Cultural Theory and Popular Culture" by John Storey from page 62 to 70.

Storey did a critical analysis on the Frankfurt School's view on the culture industry. The use of language is kept formal with relevant terminologies used to describe the subject of the discussion. Hence, demonstrating the quality of an academic writing. Storey begins with presenting The Frankfurt School's view on the culture industry in an unbiased way, then he presents his view on the arguments made by the Frankfurt School and supports his arguments with facts and figures from other resources.

Five key points:

1.  The popular culture is uniform and obvious while 'authentic' culture is abstract.

2.  The culture industry distracted human from having their own unique opinions on politics as it enforces them with superficial thoughts.

3.  The 'authentic' culture has revolutionary potential, but it is compromised due to commercialisation of avant garde art.

4.   Ignorance towards the mechanical nature of popular culture establish a standard which dictates the public hence maintains the dominance of social authority.

5.  The active consumption of the mass culture allows the public to have free interpretation on the mass culture so it is not oppressive afterall.

Five key quotes

1.  "Constant reproduction"

2.  "The culture industry has worked to depoliticise the working class - limiting its horizon to political and economic goals that could be realised within the oppressive and exploitative framework of capitalist society."

3.  "What was separate became assimilated since any critical dimension which might have pertained to Matisse's painting was eclipsed by its new and unsolicited function"

4. "The function of the culture industry is therefore, ultimately, to organise leisure time in the same way as industrialisation has organised work time."

5. "Changes in the technological reproduction of culture are changing the function of culture in society"

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Frankfurt School attacks the mass culture because it jeopardises tradition and promotes public ingnorance towards political issues, hence enabling political agencies to dictate society. The school asserted that popular culture is typical and obvious as compared to the rather abstract 'authentic' culture. "Constant reproduction" (Storey[2008]62) is the main issue in the mass culture as it deters people from having their own unique political stand point by limiting their view to just on "political and economic goals that could be realised within the oppressive and exploitative framework of capitalist society." (Storey[2008]63) Furthermore, they highlighted that many artworks are being reused by big companies for advertisements and undermined their original meaning as people starts to associate these artworks with certain products advertised by the company which caused "what was separate became assimilated". (Storey[2008]65) Hence, what was complex is made simple, and simple becomes the new standard of popular culture. The culture industry is fixated on simplicity which can be clearly seen from the mechanical nature of popular music. Producers cannot be bothered to come up with novel ideas, and tweak the production that has been successful to make a new one. On the same note, Adorno argues that the function of culture industry is "to organise leisure time in the same way as industrialisation organised work time" (Storey[2008]65) which maintains the dominance of social authority. However, the author dismiss Adorno's argument for being outdated, and he points out that Adorno's account on the impact of the culture industry on people is cynical by proving that the "changes in the technological reproduction of culture are changing the function of culture in society". (Storey[2008]68) The author shows more inclination towards Benjamin's view which explains that the public are active consumers of the mass culture, and they effectively utilise their freedom of interpretation to discern the products of the culture industry.