Reading and Understanding 'Culture Industry Reconsidered'

I decided to dedicate a post on breaking down the points drawn by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer on the culture industry based on my understanding.

Bibliography: Adorno, T. and Horkheimer, M. (1967) 'The Culture Industry Reconsidered', New German Critique, No. 6 (Autumn 1975) pp. 12-19.

Ideology

"In a supposedly Chaotic world it (the culture industry) provides human beings with something like standards of orientation."

Human beings as 'Commodities' 

Masses are debased as objects in the culture industry. It fabricates"inevitable"conditions which stimulate demand for the product of the culture industry. The culture industry is evidently capitalist since machinery are its primary subject while masses are just commodities.

'Efficacy'

The culture industry predicts the nature of consumption by looking back at the "old and familiar" products which have successfully satiates the desire of the masses. Then, similar new products will be manufactured meanwhile realisation of values will be driven by propaganda campaigns. This is why Public Relations (PR) is closely related to the culture industry. 

'Standardisation'

The product of culture industry comes with a standard which Adorno describes as "order in abstracto". It stifles creativity with or without the conscious will of those in control therefore endangering originality. Adorno also points out about the "rationalisation of office work" where working in an office set up is the norm for any form of work even if the company does not produce any tangible commodities. 

Culture and the Culture Industry

Culture, in true sense, has mutual respect to the human beings as it "simultaneously raised protest against" their petrified relations. However, the product of the culture industry disregard human through and through by labeling them as "commodities". As a result, the culture industry is freed from their duty to sell cultural commodities without any critical agreement with the consumers because they can self-advertise with the increasing rate of consumption catalysed by the rise of consumerism. It is more functional than works of art because it does not obey or rather indifferent to "laws of form demanded by aesthetic autonomy." Unfortunately, this makes the product of the culture industry to have no aura or rather it "conserves the decaying aura as a foggy mist."

Social

Roles

"The culture industry is important as a moment of spirit which dominates today."

The culture industry seems to be a perfect system that the masses seems to be indifferent towards it. Only some distinguished elites are capable of questioning the culture industry.

Consequences

"The power of the culture industry's ideology is such that conformity has replaced consciousness."

People tend to ignore the agenda behind the culture industry as they have been manifested by the concept. This is also the case for many "servile"intellectuals which leads to their "ironic tolerations"towards the culture industry as they respect its power, but have some reservations regarding its purpose at the same time.

Through the eye opening publications regarding this matter over time, the masses begin to reflect on the culture industry. Their responses are mainly positive; the culture industry is "harmless"and "democratic". Adorno disagrees with this attitude which he claimed as "shamelessly conformists"; conformity without any instructions.



"The consciousness of the consumers themselves is split between the prescribed fun which is supplied to them by the culture industry and a not particularly well-hidden doubt about its blessings."

The "blessings" sarcastically mentioned earlier is connected to the stimulated demand of the product of the culture industry. According to him, this is the reason why the culture industry has successfully controls the mass. It is a "deception which is nonetheless transparent to them" which leads to the instinctive perception that life would be meaningless without satisfaction.



"What its defenders imagine is preserved by the culture industry is in fact destroyed by it."

The genuine culture and traditions are altered, and the new fabrication of it are turned into homogeneity. I think this is highly relevant to the animation industry which is dominated by Disney since many Disney's animated feature films back in the Golden Age of Animation which are adaptations from fairy tales and folklore. The films altered some parts of the original story, mostly endings, to maintain a grasp of the idea of the good life which characterises the product of culture industry.

Culture Industry Delivers Art

"If the response of the culture industry's representatives is that it does not deliver art at all, this itself the ideology with which they evade responsibility for that from which the business lives. No misdeed is ever righted by explaining it as such."

As a matter of fact, Adorno believes that the product of culture industry is art through and through. It is just a form of art which deviates from the rules of the genuine work of art and its lack of presence of aura.

Loopholes

"Only their deep unconscious mistrusts, the last residue of the difference between art and the empirical reality in the spiritual make up of the masses explains why they have not, to a person, long since perceived and accepted the world as it is constructed for them by the culture industry."

Formulaic

The formulaic nature of the culture industry is similar to the concept of storytelling in most cases. This makes it highly predictable as it follows a certain order such that it started with an inciting incident followed by conflicts, climax then resolution of conflict. It is an art of storytelling in disguise; manipulative but futile.

Deceiving human beings by making them believe that their real trouble can be solved by fictitious solution made believable can be a downside to the culture industry. Sooner or later, the masses might be able to make sense of the unreliability of the culture industry through their own experience depending on their ability to overpower conformity with their own consciousness.

Abstract

The culture industry delivers confusingly relative order since it is oblivious to the fact that order "is not good in itself. It would be so only as a good order." Efficacy is what keeps the vicious cycle of the retrogressive development of consciousness in masses going; it drifts human beings away from their consciousness and causes dependency on the product of the culture industry.

Politics

"Dependence" and "servitude" are the vanishing points of the culture industry, and this makes the culture industry to be "obviously not harmless" in political sense. The "anti-enlightenment"nature of it is "fettering consciousness" that blinds the whole society -not only the masses, but also politicians- with sameness. Thus, this will pose a negative implication to objective decision making by the politicians as they tend to think that the same problem can be resolved with the same solution.

Conclusion

Adorno puts the blame on the culture industry for the regression of the people in this era because it restricts the capacity of growth of human consciousness.