Teodor Adorno 's Critique on Mass Culture
“ When I was, later, confronted to the problematic of measuring culture, I understood that culture
had to be precisely this condition that exclude any mindset able to measure it” - Teodor Adorno -
Before the development of education and mass communication techniques, the production and
diffusion of culture followed a simple logic: only a cast of privileged – aristocrats and bourgeois -
had access to a “high culture” (Curran, 1997). Only since the XXth century and the change of the
political landscape as well as the evolution of technology and the liberalisation of the economy has
this trend started to change. Indeed, the rise of large scale press, the invention of cinema, the
success of radio and television, the commercialisation of pocket books and more recently the
uprising of internet and multimedia allowed the majority - which had been excluded because of a
lack of economic wealth - to access information, discover the artistic patrimony and listen to music.
Therefore, the media played an undeniable role in the democratization of culture. Nevertheless,
the question needs to be asked: did this large scale production and diffusion of information erased
all types of cultural inequalities?
This is one of the questions that many academics such as Adorno (2001) tried to understand by
questioning the effects of the industrialisation of culture and media on individuals' culture.
The development of “mass media” has been influencing cultural work and it is thus crucial to
analyse its effects on the audience's independence of thinking. We will also try to understand if
mass communication techniques create a globali...
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...ndardisation of culture doesn't necessary imply
a homogenization of consumption.
Bibliography:
James Curran, 1997. Power Without Responsibility: Press, Broadcasting and the Internet in Britain. 5 Edition. Routledge.
Hannah Arendt, 2006. Between Past and Future (Penguin Classics). Revised Edition. Penguin Classics.
Philip Schofield, 2009. Utility and Democracy: The Political Thought of Jeremy Bentham. Edition. Oxford University Press, USA.
Herbert Marcuse, 1991. One-Dimensional Man. 2 Edition. Routledge.
Amin Ash (1994). Post-fordism: A Reader. Blackwell Publishing.
Theodor W. Adorno, 2001. The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture (Routledge Classics). 2 Edition. Routledge.
Walter Benjamin, 2008. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (Penguin Great Ideas). Edition. Penguin Books.
In Highbrow, Lowbrow, Levine argues that a distinction between high and low culture that did not exist in the first half of the 19th century emerged by the turn of the century and solidified during the 20th century, and that despite a move in the last few decades toward a more ecumenical interpretation of “culture,” the distinction between high art and popular entertainment and the revering of a canon of sacred, inalterable cultural works persists. In the prologue Levine states that one of his central arguments is that concepts of cultural boundaries have changed over the period he treats. Throughout Highbrow, Lowbrow, Levine defines culture as a process rather than a fixed entity, and as a product of interactions between the past and the present.
Film, radio, and magazines form a system. Each branch of culture is unanimous within itself and all are unanimous together” (94). Coined by the Frankfurt School theorists Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer the term “culture industry” acquired wide currency after the publication of the book Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments (1944) which they introduced in the chapter “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception”. They equated popular culture to a factory producing standardised cultural goods like film radio programmes, magazines etc that are used to manipulate the mass society into passivity or inertia. People fell prey to the consumption of easy pleasures offered by the popular culture through mass communications media which made them docile and content irrespective of their economic
- Taylor, L., & Willis, A., 1999, Media Studies – Texts, Institutions and Audiences, Blackwell Publishers Ltd., Oxford
22 Apr. 2014. The 'Standard' of the 'Standard Edwards, Michael. A. Review "MARY AND MAX " What is a Culture? N.p., n.d. Web.
historically derived and selected) ideas and especially their attached values; Culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, and on the other as conditioning elements of further action.”
The issue of the relationship between the mass media and the popular culture has always been a controversial issue in social sciences. The political economists insist on the role of the media industry in the creation of this phenomenon of the twentieth century. Though, advocates such as John Fiske, argue that popular culture is actually the creation of the populous itself, and is independent of the capitalist production process of the communication sector. Basing his argument on the immense interpretive power of the people, Fiske believes that the audience is able to break all the indented meanings within a media message. He also believes- by giving new meanings to that specific message they can oppose the power block that is trying to impose its ideology to the public. Consequently, this anarchistic activity of the audience creates the popular culture as a defence mechanism. Even when we accept Fiske’s ideas, we can not disregard the manipulative power of the media and its effects on cultural and social life.
... argues that even though our mission is to understand the culture we our studying one cannot make final assumptions about a culture. One has to reflex on the fact that a culture is always changing and that our preparation of our discipline is not often the method one uses in fieldwork.
This had been a key point in Leibniz’s criticism of Descartes and in his foundation of a philosophical orientation very different from the latter’s. In the history of psychology this aspect of Leibniz’s thought is well known in the structure of his theory of “obscure perceptions” which had a major hallmark in the revivals depicting Johann Friedrich Herbart and which had some other levels of alternations which would hence be transformed within a major concept important to a critical factor of clientele management and in the development of the concept of the threshold of consciousness and hence the sensory thresholds In the present context the importance of Leibniz’s position derives from the clear implication that if mind is not to be equated with consciousness, one cannot expect to discover its nature as well as the core factors aiding the constitution. There are simple guidelines which are optimally developed through essential levels of examined consciousness and they are cumulatively determined through an integrated concept, and unquestionably improved through networked approaches. There are essential fundamentals that are important and which would be thought to be very important in creating a positive image for the examination of critical sources of the emergences of
“According to, Stuart Hall, “Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms” from Media, Culture and Society, Raymond Williams and E.P Thompson summarize about the way they saw culture, they refer it to the way of life and saw mainstream media as the main role in capitalist society. “Williams says that, his perspective and ideas are referred to culture as to social practice, he saw “culture as a whole way of life” and as to structuralism that makes the concept of
Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor Adorno. “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” in Dialectics of Enlightenment. New York: Seabury Press, 1972: 120-167.
“Culture” is a term that over the years, has taken many forms, served many purposes and has been defined in a variety of contexts. At the rise of the industrial era, inhabitants of rural areas began to migrate to cities, thus starting urbanization. As this new era began to unfold, urbanization, mass production, and modernization became key ingredients in the transformation of culture. As more people became literate and the production of mass media such as magazines, pamphlets, newspapers etc. increased, many had the option and desire to identify collectively – popular culture began to rise. Popular or “mass” culture can be described as a “dynamic, revolutionary force, breaking down the old barriers of class, tradition, taste, and dissolving
This pure openness in which and by which everything can emerge is the absolute understanding by which and in which there may be an otherness. That is why desire it is not that which is experienced; on the contrary, to experience is to desire, that is, to lack, and the empirically experienced desire is the reflection of the shape at the content level. In this sense, the subject does not come up as a subject of an experience but rather exists according to the nature of the scarcity. That is why he is able to understand and experience. The scarcity of a self is the only sense of being that is functional to that pure understanding that it is sometimes called "subjectivity". The absence of self and the acceptance of the other mutually call for each other and, in the end, are two sides of a same way of being. There is no appearance other than that which takes place against a background of a scarcity, which is always a scarcity of self, that is to say, Desire. - What has been said so far regarding the sense of the subject as Desire means, as we have suggested, that the subject comes up in desire. That is to say, he is constituted in himself by this desire. That means that the subject of the correlation can be only thought of through the correlation
has emphasized an upper class at the period. And, high status people control the people’s view.
The purpose of this essay is to firstly explain what John Fiske means by ‘popular culture lies not in the production of commodities so much as the productive use of industrial commodities’ (Fiske, J. 1990 p.28). Secondly this essay will go on to compare Fiske’s interpretation of popular culture to MacDonald’s theory of mass culture.
Firstly, I would like to add some critical point of view toward the study of mass media. I had an impression that their articles tend to focus rather on data or numbers than on thought or ideas, maybe because my major is not mass media in sociology, but in cultural studies or anthropology. As is often said,technology including new media had achieved rapidly‐advancing development for decades, but it is difficult to use technology properly. It is essential to study of mass media to intermediate between arts and sciences. Secondly, after studying mass media, I noticed how much media makes my world or viewpoints. What is particularly interesting for me is how media contribute to making one’s identity. Experiences of studying abroad as an exchange students are precious, but sometimes make questions about identity such as race or ethnicity. These familiar issues are worth studying. Finally, I recognized some common points between some theories of media effect and other studies such as cultural studies, but it was not clear at that time. I thought that making those points clear could end in connecting and deepening the discussions in many