Culture Industry Theory

It is increasingly clear that media and culture today are of central importance to the maintenance and reproduction of contemporary societies. Cultures expose society to different personalities, provide models, which display various forms of societal life and cultivate various ways to introduce people into dominant forms of thought and action. These are the types of activities integrate people into society and create our public sphere. Media and technology surround our society; engrained into the fabric of our existence so much so, that it has become hard to find an aspect of life not influenced by its effects. For this reason, media controllers, wield extreme power and influence over the lives of everyday people. Although, they increasingly continue to feed the audience trash, despite their authority as the creator of our social/cultural interactions, and justify their actions by calling themselves industries. Reducing themselves to just businesses whose sole purpose is to create a profit. This admittance of what they feel to be their true purpose however does not hinder their control and power but instead adds to it. Creating a need for there to be some way to analyze and discuss whether they are using their position and power wisely. Filling this void, scholars have theorized ways for individuals to be critical of the media that they intake. One of these critical theories is the “Culture Industry” theory. Using Cultural Theory, as well as other complementary neo Marxist theories, it is possible to determine how Stacy Peralta, once urban youth culture advocate, became incorporated into the superstructure through media use, thus making him a tool for the continued commoditization of society, and a youth marketer for industries l...

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...that even production can be a means of enforcing hegemony, and that he integrated slowly into the dominant structure of capitalist society.

Although it was for his production of Whopper Virgins that Stacey Peralta received most of his criticism, cultural industry theory suggests that all forms of cultural media are tools for the continued reinforcement of the status quo. Culture Industry theorists did not believe in the use of the media for practices alternative to the purposes of reaffirming the status quo. Therefore in terms of cultural industry theory, it was not when Peralta consented to participate in the creation of the Whopper Virgins that he became a tool of the superstructure for the continued domination of society, but when he turned in his sub-cultural lifestyle, to become a film director. It was then that he became a producer of culture industries.