Discuss the view that Adorno and Horkeimer's arguments are unduly pessimistic and irrelevant to contemporary society and moder

Authors Avatar

Discuss the view that Adorno and Horkeimer’s arguments are unduly pessimistic and irrelevant to contemporary society and modern day understanding of the cultural industries

The purpose of this essay is to analyse Adorno and Horkeimer’s views upon Mass Culture and the ‘Culture Industries’, juxtaposing their arguments against examples of contemporary cultural production today, and whether their arguments are unduly pessimistic and irrelevant in relation to modern day understanding. I shall assess the validity and relevance of their arguments bearing in mind the social context of the time in which they were writing and looking at the criticism of their views. Predominantly, I shall be focusing upon the way in which Theodor Adorno and Max Horkeimer view the Cultural Industries and the context in which they derived these conclusions, illustrating their views specifically using examples from their essay ‘The Culture Industry-Enlightenment as Mass Deception’ (Adorno and Horkeimer, 1979) and more specific examples from each theorist themselves.

The Frankfurt School’s position broadly was that capitalism (“false consciousness”) and the culture industry easily fools people. Their idea of reality was that of bourgeois society controlling almost everything under capitalism, that culture is processed through the culture industry. It criticised Enlightenment ideas of progressive culture, harmony, authenticity, and culture encompassing the best creative efforts of people who are authentically free, “The Enlightenment has always aimed at liberating men from fear and establishing their sovereignty. Yet the fully enlightened earth radiates disaster triumphant.” (Adorno, T & M. Horkeimer (1979:1) The Culture Industry-Enlightenment as Mass Deception in Dialect of Enlightenment.

When studying the work of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkeimer and their views of mass culture one must consider the social context of the time. It is important to establish and give a brief history of the social situation, which may have contributed to their critical approaches and pessimistic attitude towards mass culture and the effect, which it had upon the audience. This may also be useful to bear in mind, when applying the relevance of their arguments in relation to modern day understanding of the cultural industries. The members of the Frankfurt School were writing during 1930s Germany, at the time of the rising of the Nazis social oppression of the Jews. Victims of European fascism, the Frankfurt School experienced first hand the ways that the Nazis used the instruments of the Mass Culture to produce submission to fascist culture and society. While in exile in the United States, the members of the Frankfurt School came to believe that American “popular culture” was also highly ideological and worked to promote the interests of American capitalism. Controlled by giant corporations, the culture industries were organised according to the structures of standardised mass production, churning out mass-produced products that generated a highly commercial system of culture, which in turn sold the values, life styles, and institutions of “the American way of life”.

Adorno and Horkeimer’s attitude towards mass culture is clearly depicted in the title of their essay ‘The Culture Industry-Enlightenment as Mass Deception’ (Adorno and Horkeimer, 1979). They argue that cultural products are commodities produced by the Culture Industry, which, whilst claiming to be democratic, individualistic and diversified, is in actuality authoritarian, conformist and highly standardised, “Culture impresses the same stamp on everything. Films, radio and magazines make up a system which is uniform as a whole in every part”, (Adorno and Horkeimer, 1979:120). The diversity of the products of the culture industries is an illusion for “something is provided for all so none escape”, (Adorno and Horkeimer, 1979: 123).

Adorno and Horkeimer coined the phrase ‘Culture Industry’ to demonstrate to the people around them, who believed that the arts were independent of industry and commerce, that they were in actual fact cultural items used in the same way as other industries produced goods. The uppermost aim being that of profit, rationalised organisation procedures came first and dictated the product. “Under capitalism all production is for the market: goods are produced not in order to meet human needs and desires, but for the sake of profit, for the sake of acquiring further capital”. They used the term “culture industry” to signify the process of the industrialisation of mass-produced cultural artefacts within the context of industrial production, in which commodities of the culture industries exhibited the same features as other products of mass production: co modification, standardisation and massification. They asserted that cultural objects are produced in much the same way as other industries produce other objects. Cultural production becomes a routine and standardised operation, which in turn results in standardised passive responses. The assembly-line production of cars, for example, is analogous to that of music or film. The standardisation of production creates standardised and interchangeable cultural objects, which leads inevitably to standardisation of consumption. Consumers are neither “active” nor “creative”, but instead are reduced to a homogeneous, undifferentiated mass, responding to cultural objects in a predictable, uniform manner (Negus, 1977).

Join now!

It is at this point that I would like to focus my attention upon cultural production today with reference to the essay title assessing whether or not Adorno and Horkeimer’s arguments are irrelevant to contemporary society and modern day understanding of the cultural industries. I shall illustrate my answer with reference to advertising, and then further on throughout the essay switch my attention to Adorno’s views upon popular music. Adorno and Horkeimer believed that ideology permeates everything seeping into the material goods produced for exchange. It is through packaging, labelling and above all advertising, that pervades the very material ...

This is a preview of the whole essay