The Cultural Reader - WordPress.com..."Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" is a...
6
Article Summaries and Reviews in Cultural Studies The Cultural Reader Home About Article Summaries citation info contact us Thursday, December 19, 2013 Adorno and Horkheimer - "Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" – summary "Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" is a chapter in Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer's book "Dialectic of Enlightenment" which discusses their famous notion of the "culture industry". In this chapter Adorno and Horkheimer view capitalist society's culture industry as an aspect of the enlightenment has betrayed itself by allowing instrumental logic to take over human social life (a notion developed throughout "Dialecticof Enlightenment"). According to Adorno and Horkheimer culture industry is a main phenomenon of late capitalism, one which encompasses all products and form of light entertainment – from Hollywood films to elevator music. All these forms of popular culture are designed to satisfy the growing needs of mass capitalistic consumers for entertainment. Adorno specifically notes that the term "culture industry" was chosen over "mass culture" in order to make sure that it is not understood as something which spontaneously stems from the masses themselves. Products of the culture economy take the appearance of artwork but are in fact dependant on industry and economy, meaning they are subjected to the interests of money and power. All products of the culture industry are designed for profit. According to Adorno and Horkheimer this means that every work of art is turned into a consumer product and is shaped by the logic of capitalist rationality (i.e. whatever sells best). Art is no longer autonomous, but is rather a commodified product of the economic relations of production. The main argument of "Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" is that the commodification of culture is the commodification of human conciseness. Adorno and Horkheimer assert that culture industry eradicates autonomous thinking and criticism, serving to preserve the reigning order. It provides easy entertainment which distracts massed from the wrongs and sickness of the ruling order. They argue that culture industry has taken over reality as the prism through which people experience reality, thus completely shaping and conditioning their experience of life. In addition culture industry serves to keep workers busy, as expressed by the famous quote from "Dialectic of Enlightenment": " Amusement has become an extension of labor under late capitalism". Popular culture appears to be offering a refuge and distraction for work, but in fact it causes the worker to further dwell into a world of products and consumerism. The only freedom culture industry has to really offer a freedom from thinking. Adorno and Horkheimer claim that culture industry positions the masses ad objects of manipulation (instead of just satisfying their wants and needs). This turns people into passive and subordinated subjects, unable to fully take critical responsibility for their own action, a thing which is crucial for a functioning democracy. People therefore gladly give in a help maintain the system by taking part in it. in "Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" Adorno and Horkheimer stress the fact that culture industry uses a production-line mentality in producing cultural products. Seemingly all films and TV shows we watch are different, but in fact they follow the same recycled formulas as in other types of consumer goods. Like consumers goods, it feels like "there is something for everyone" here but in fact it's all variations of the same thing. This is a main feature of the culture industry, for the fact that all products are produced under the same scheme allows them to be "readable" and effortlessly digested. This is how culture industry imposes conformity – with things that only seem to be different but are in fact all (slight) variations of the same thing. The final argument posed by Adorno and Horkheimer is that people under capitalism suffer the same fate of art under the culture industry – they are reduced to the exchange value with no intrinsic or unique traits as the Enlightenment dreamed. see also: Theodor Adorno - culture industry reconsidered Check these out: 1 More Next Blog» [email protected] Dashboard Sign Out
Transcript of The Cultural Reader - WordPress.com..."Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" is a...
Article Summaries and Reviews in Cultural Studies
The Cultural ReaderHome About Article Summaries citation info contact us
Thursday, December 19, 2013
Adorno and Horkheimer - "Culture Industry: Enlightenment asMass Deception" – summary
"Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" is a chapter in Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer'sbook "Dialectic of Enlightenment" which discusses their famous notion of the "culture industry". In thischapter Adorno and Horkheimer view capitalist society's culture industry as an aspect of the enlightenmenthas betrayed itself by allowing instrumental logic to take over human social life (a notion developedthroughout "Dialecticof Enlightenment").
According to Adorno and Horkheimer culture industry is a main phenomenon of late capitalism, one whichencompasses all products and form of light entertainment – from Hollywood films to elevator music. All theseforms of popular culture are designed to satisfy the growing needs of mass capitalistic consumers forentertainment. Adorno specifically notes that the term "culture industry" was chosen over "mass culture" inorder to make sure that it is not understood as something which spontaneously stems from the massesthemselves.
Products of the culture economy take the appearance of artwork but are in fact dependant on industry andeconomy, meaning they are subjected to the interests of money and power. All products of the cultureindustry are designed for profit. According to Adorno and Horkheimer this means that every work of art isturned into a consumer product and is shaped by the logic of capitalist rationality (i.e. whatever sells best).Art is no longer autonomous, but is rather a commodified product of the economic relations of production.The main argument of "Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" is that the commodification ofculture is the commodification of human conciseness. Adorno and Horkheimer assert that culture industryeradicates autonomous thinking and criticism, serving to preserve the reigning order. It provides easyentertainment which distracts massed from the wrongs and sickness of the ruling order. They argue thatculture industry has taken over reality as the prism through which people experience reality, thus completelyshaping and conditioning their experience of life. In addition culture industry serves to keep workers busy, asexpressed by the famous quote from "Dialectic of Enlightenment": "Amusement has become an extension oflabor under late capitalism". Popular culture appears to be offering a refuge and distraction for work, but infact it causes the worker to further dwell into a world of products and consumerism. The only freedom cultureindustry has to really offer a freedom from thinking.
Adorno and Horkheimer claim that culture industry positions the masses ad objects of manipulation (insteadof just satisfying their wants and needs). This turns people into passive and subordinated subjects, unable tofully take critical responsibility for their own action, a thing which is crucial for a functioning democracy.People therefore gladly give in a help maintain the system by taking part in it.
in "Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" Adorno and Horkheimer stress the fact that cultureindustry uses a production-line mentality in producing cultural products. Seemingly all films and TV showswe watch are different, but in fact they follow the same recycled formulas as in other types of consumergoods. Like consumers goods, it feels like "there is something for everyone" here but in fact it's all variationsof the same thing. This is a main feature of the culture industry, for the fact that all products are producedunder the same scheme allows them to be "readable" and effortlessly digested. This is how culture industryimposes conformity – with things that only seem to be different but are in fact all (slight) variations of thesame thing. The final argument posed by Adorno and Horkheimer is that people under capitalism suffer thesame fate of art under the culture industry – they are reduced to the exchange value with no intrinsic orunique traits as the Enlightenment dreamed.
see also: Theodor Adorno - culture industry reconsidered
Check these out:
1 More Next Blog» [email protected] Dashboard Sign Out
Posted by אני at 8:54 PM
Labels: culture industry, Max Horkheimer, summary, Theodor Adorno
+1 Recommend this on Google
12 comments:
Unknown October 28, 2015 at 12:22 PM
Thank you !
Reply
Anonymous January 14, 2016 at 7:13 AM
This piece of work was very helpful! It was clear, well written and straight to the point!
Reply
Tiffany Lin January 26, 2016 at 11:37 PM
Thanks a lot. This is a good piece of work.
Reply
Deba Sheesh October 11, 2016 at 4:48 AM
Easy readable post with many important information. I must back again for something new. Keep upposting and share with us. Thanks for your great staff....Safety Spray Shields
Reply
Khalid Alfahdi October 23, 2016 at 10:05 AM
thanks
Reply
Deba Sheesh October 31, 2016 at 6:44 AM
Great blog and I love what you have to say and I think I will tweet this out to my friends so they cancheck it out as well. I like what you have to say.Paddle Wheel Flow Meter
Reply
shini November 4, 2016 at 12:16 AM
its useful. thanks
Reply
Deba Sheesh November 10, 2016 at 8:36 PM
If you found what you werelooking for and it helped youout, please consider helpingme out by tipping whateveryou feel is worthy of myefforts. Thank you! :)
Newer Post Older PostHome
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)
Sign out
Notify me
Enter your comment...
Comment as: Gabrielle Buvinger-Wild (Google)
PublishPublish PreviewPreview
This is my first time i visit here. I found so many entertaining stuff in your blog. Keep up the goodwork.Plastic Flow Meter
Reply
Jazz M November 13, 2016 at 10:42 AM
Thank you very much, I enjoyed this piece and it was very useful!
Reply
Joyce Patricia Montelibano-Aquino December 1, 2016 at 9:56 PM
Hello!I am studying the "The Culture Industry" essay. I've been looking and I don't think youmentioned when this essay by Horkheimer and Adorno was written. I saw on Wikipedia that it waswritten in the late 1940s in California and I was hoping I could cross-check that in your blog but it'snot here.
Reply
Brett Haythorpe February 1, 2017 at 4:36 PM
Very Helpful! Nice job
Reply
saif ali February 19, 2017 at 3:42 AM
it was good but hard?
Reply
#1 Reason MenPull Away
How To Avoid The #1Relationship Mistake &Keep Him Hooked For
Good
beirresistible.com
#1 Reason MenPull Away
How To Avoid The #1Relationship Mistake &Keep Him Hooked For
Good
beirresistible.com
Got article summeries, reviews,essays, notes, anything you'veworked hard on and think couldbenfit others? why not contributeand mail them to us and we'll putthem up for others to use (withcredit).
Anything to add?
► 2017 (59)
► 2014 (20)
▼ 2013 (8)▼ December (2)
Adorno andHorkheimer -"Culture Industry:Enlight...
Theodor Adorno andMax Horkheimer –Dialectic of E...
► May (5)
► March (1)
► 2012 (76)
► 2011 (120)
► 2010 (26)
Blog Archive
Like 645 people like this. Be the first of your friends.
anthropology article review
booksummary
Carl Jung cultural
studies
Durkheim explanation
Fredric Jameson
Geertz gender studies
Hegel
Jacques LacanJean Baudrillard
Karl Marx
masculinity Max Weber
Michel Foucault myth
narratology
philosophy popular culture
postmodernism psychoanalysis psychologyR.W. Connell
Sigmund Freud
sociology summary
terminology
Labels
Adam Smith ArjunAppadurai art BenedictAnderson Betty Friedan
Bourdieu building dwellingthinking cinemaCommunist Manifesto
cultural studies' culture industryde Beauvoir De Cereau de Saussuredefenition definition Dick Hebdige
Elias Erving Goffman EvaIllouz feminism Fichte
full text GastonBachelard Gayatri Spivak Gayle Rubin
generalissues Georg Simmel Germanideology globalization Guy DebordHabermas halbwachs Hardt and Negrihayden white hegemonyHeidegger Henri Lefebvre HenryGiroux Homi Bhabha ideologyintroduction iser JanMuhamed JohnBerger Judith Butler LauraMulvey Levi-Strauss linguistics LouisAlthusser Mark Andrejevic MaryDouglas MaxHorkheimer mediastudies MikhailBakhtin monika fludernik
nationalism notes paulgilroy Paul Willis Phenomenology ofSpirit photographypolitical economy popular music postcolonialism
Prensky
richard johnson RichardPeterson Roland Barthes RolandRobertson Roman Jakobson SchellingSchutz semiotics Simon Frith society of the spectacle
sport structuralism stuart
hall subject theory Susan Sontag thepoetics of space Theodor Adornourbanism Victor Turner WalterBenjamin
cultural studies association
culture industry
other cultural readers
practices of cultural studies
the memes of production
cultural studies central
cultural studies and literature blog
keywords for american culturalstudies
americas cultural studies
MARSHA PEARCE'S CULTURALSTUDIES BLOG
CCSR - UEL
cultural studies (blog)
culture machine
new formations
theory, culture and society
CLCWeb
list of cultural studies blogs
Gayatri Spivak / "Can the Subaltern Speak?" – summary"Can the Subaltern Speak?" (1988) by Gayatri Spivak relates to the manner in which western cultures investigate other cultures....
"Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" - Laura Mulvey - summary and review (part 1)"Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" - Laura Mulvey - summary and review part 1 - 2 In her "Visual Pleasur...
Adorno and Horkheimer - "Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" – summary"Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception" is a chapter in Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer's book "Dia...
John Berger – "Ways of Seeing" – Summary and ReviewJohn Berger - "Ways of Seeing" - summary and review part 1 - 2 - 3 John Berger 's now classic article "Way...
Clifford Geertz's "Thick Description" explained (summary)One of the key terms in Clifford Geertz's anthropological theory is that of "Thick Description". Following Ryle, Geertz hold...
Fredric Jameson – Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism –summary and reviewFredric Jameson - Postmodernism or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism - summary part 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - Review ...
Sigmund Freud – "The Uncanny" – summary and reviewSigmund's Freud's "The Uncanny" ("Das Unheimliche") was published in 1919 as part of his somewhat dismal accou...
Roland Barthes – Myth Today – Summary, Review and AnalysisThe second section of Roland Barthes' "Mythologies", titled "Myth Today", is a theoretical discussion of Barthes...
Guy Debord/ Society of the Spectacle - summary: chapter 1:" Seperation Perfected"Society of the Spectacle -chapter 1 - chapter 2 - chapter 3 Chapter one of Guy Debord's "Society of the Spectacle"...
Gayatri Spivak / "Can the Subaltern Speak?" – summary - part 2Gayatri Spivak / "Can the Subaltern Speak?" - review - summary part 1 - summary part 2 In "Can the Subaltern Speak?&...
Popular Posts
![Entwinement of Myth and Enlightenment [Re-Reading 'Dialectic of Enlightenment' by Adorno and Horkheimer]](https://static.fdocuments.net/doc/165x107/577cd03c1a28ab9e7891c1d9/entwinement-of-myth-and-enlightenment-re-reading-dialectic-of-enlightenment.jpg)
